The Internet Ate My Homework

I spent an hour hammering on this ?/§!&! French keyboard and hit save. It didn’t save. Suffice it to say we’re in France. More when I’m back on my own keyboard

Passports lost = 1

I lose things all the time. I have probably 20 lighters ‘in circulation’ at any given time, but often I have to go in search of one. Every time I wrap a package, I buy a new roll of tape because I have no idea if I have any or where it might be. I’ve solved my lost socks problem by buying 2 dozen pair, all the same kind at the same time and throwing the old ones away. Not only do I never miss a missing sock, but I spend no time matching or sorting, so I pat myself on the back for practicality.

One might think I’m a scatterbrain, but that’s not true; at least it’s not true when I’m firing on all cylinders. I don’t care about the lighters or the tape, so I don’t exert myself tracking them. But when we’re headed out the door for the bank and R says, “where’s my bankbook?” I can give explicit directions, and I’m not even the bankbook’s keeper.

Once when I was in college, I opened my cupboard to discover an entire loaf of bread was missing. I was disproportionately distressed about that bread, because it wasn’t where I knew it was. By the time my roommate came home and told me that she’d thrown the bread away because her cat had been gnawing on it, I’d already searched the house (including the basement and under the couch.) Not because I thought I might have put the bread under the couch, but because if it wasn’t where I’d put it any alternative location seemed possible.

Slightly more important than a loaf of bread, my passport has never been something that I need to look for. Much like my foot, I just know where it is – always. So today, around the fourth time I re-affirmed that R had his passport (I mean, he does forget where he puts his bankbook, after all) he demanded that I produce mine. When I opened my wallet, it’s absence was so shocking that I closed and reopened my wallet three times, then checked the zippered compartments so small that a passport would have to be cut in thirds to fit. Nope, nada, zilch.

Things have changed since college; I didn’t look in the basement. I did call a friend with a very messy car to see if it had fallen on her floor, and when she said no, I didn’t believe her.  R kept saying the most ridiculous things, like, “It is here, you just have to find it.” IT’S NOT A ROLL OF TAPE! If it wasn’t in my wallet, it was gone. Not that he was all positive – it was well mingled with angry comments about how someone could lose something so important.

But because he kept yammering about it, I thought to pacify him I’d browse through various important paper piles. When I still didn’t find it, panic finally set in and I cried a little. Disgusted with my lack of positive thinking, he went upstairs. He said something I couldn’t hear, so I went to the base of the stairs. While standing there, I fiddled with a National Geographic laying on the bookcase. Do you know where this is going yet?

Right. My passport was lying under the magazine. Two things are important to note. First, that particular magazine has been in the same place for 6 months. Second, I NEVER hide things. I might put them away, but I don’t think under a National Geographic can be considered ‘away.’ All I can think is that I must have put it there on my way to the street market (I never take anything of real value with me because it’s very crowded and I look like a tourist) when I was lacking sleep and running late.

That my passport was lying there under a never-touched magazine is as likely as that I’d find my loaf of bread under the couch. But this time, I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to blame it on a cat.

Language, in Retrospect

An excerpt from March 19, 2005

I sat in French class is Mme. Theiss for 45 minutes a day, 81 days a year for three years (182.25 hours, total), mostly messing around with Todd, and Becky, who’s last names also started with ‘P.’ I gave no thought to the language I was supposed to learn, never did the homework, and mostly cheated off Becky’s tests.

With all that obscene laziness, I can still, nearly two decades later, conjugate French verbs; the pronouns roll off my tongue with not a speck of thinking. I’ve now spent more than 1000 hours in Greece, and can’t say more than ‘hello’ and ‘I don’t understand.’ I can also say most of the vegetable and fruits, but not a single sentence. I suppose learning a language is never easy, but I suspect it would be easier if I were 16. The Greeks have two letters for ‘th,’ and dozens for ‘ee.’

One sees many signs and advertisements written in the Roman alphabet, and I wonder how long this one relatively small country will be able to hang onto an alphabet used solely by them. Pronunciation is fairly straightforward, once you know the rules.

The second letter of the Greek alphabet is Beta, but over time the sound has become ‘v’ and the letter sounds like ‘Veeta’ when pronounced correctly. The fourth letter is Delta, but the ‘d’ has become a ‘th,’ completely unnecessary by my way of thinking, because they already have theta. Actually, there is a distinction – delta (δ) is the th in ‘that,’ while theta (θ)is the th in ‘father.’ However, their desperate need for two ‘th’s” leaves them without a d. R and I joke that someday, all words in Greek will be made of four basic sounds – k, th, oo, and ee. We have great fun and crack ourselves up talking gobbledygook using only those sounds. With the incursion of English, it has become necessary to find ways to spell the sounds they lack.
A list of sounds which don’t exist in the Greek alphabet, and the workarounds they’ve arranged:

• English: B Greek: mp (μπ)

• D nt (ντ)

• J tz (τζ)

• Hard A ei (εΐ) this one is important, because epsilon, unstressed iota is ‘ee,’ very common.

• Hard G gk (γκ)

• W iou (ιου)

In Greece, the movie Finding Neverland starred Tzoni Ntep (Τζονι Ντεπ) and Keit Iounzlit (Κεϊτ Ιουνζλιτ). Add the ability to count to 100, and you know as much Greek as I do. There are two letter combinations that confound me. It seems to me that when developing a language, one should take into consideration the ease of use, but the Greeks apparently want to always know who the foreigners are. One is KPT, the other is FTH. The word for percent discount is ekptosi, and another kind of discount (cents off) is Fthinoptera. Maybe they just figure you must want to pay full price unless you’re willing to go to the trouble of pronouncing these ridiculous words. Thankfully, Greek doesn’t contain the confounding vowel sounds that Swedish has – after nearly 5 years, I still can’t tell the difference between most of them. Who needs 9 vowels, anyway!?

In the two years since I wrote that, I’ve come a long way. I can hold a slow conversation now. I’m nowhere near fluent. The simple things still confound me, like how to greet people you know. It goes something like this, and I can’t get the rhythm no matter how I try.

Person 1, “Hi. How are you?”

Person 2, “Hi. Are you well?”

Person 1, “Good, Good. You are good?”

Person 2, “Good, Good. You’re good and how’s it going?”

Person 1, “Ah, good. How are you?”

Person 2, “Good, you?”

This all happens really quickly. While they don’t repeat themselves, they do say the same thing over and over. I know all the words and phrases, but I can’t master the timing of it. I feel most lost in this language not when I’m angry or speaking on the phone, but when greeting people.

I don’t use Greek much anymore, as I’m not working. I spent 10 days working at a taverna while the English proprietor was away. Her husband speaks no English and the cook was Albanian with Greek as her second language. I learned more in that 10 days than in any of the months of study before or after.

Truthfully, I don’t know if most expats have the wherewithal to subject themselves to this intensity of learning. If I hadn’t been being paid, I certainly would have run off to a more comfortable environment after about 45 minutes of struggle. It’s hard to immerse yourself when comfortable, familiar non-immersion is just a few meters away.

One of the interesting side effects of learning Greek has been that my English is better. Words like esoteric which I’d seen but couldn’t define exist on a different plane in Greek, and curiosity leads me to learn the words in both languages. If you’re curious, esoterikos simply means internal.

I do hope I haven’t used up all my language brain cells, as I’ll hopefully soon be trying again to speak French, and hoping I really did absorb something from Mme. Theiss.

The Painters Came!

When we moved into this house just shy of 6 months ago, the landlords filled us with promises that the house, not quite finished, soon would be. The dirt to fill the concrete pit which was to be our yard would come in one month (it took 3,) the tiles on the balcony upstairs would be finished within 2 weeks (they were finished 6 weeks ago, and the leftover tiles and someone’s ladder is still sitting out there,) and the house would be painted before November.

I’ve seen our house painter. He’s also painting our neighbor’s house and the next one over. I think I’ve seen him a dozen times in the last 6 months. He’s quite a convivial fellow who seems to like his work.

Last week, just after she finished yelling at me about our dirty kitchen windows, our neighbor said the painter would be here Friday (9th March) to put up scaffolding. He’d been at her house all day touching things up. That’s the last we saw of him until 7:45 am today. There is still no scaffolding, but he and his helper worked until about noon and managed a first coat on the top story. Good for them!

One thing did surprise me: I’ve always thought painting was rather quiet work. At 7:45 this (Saturday) morning, they were banging things against the walls and generally making a ruckus. I think one of the angles of workers here is to make you wait so long for them to do the work that when they do come, you don’t dare complain about noise, what time it is, or whether they clean up after themselves. (Our painter did, most don’t.)

I’m thinking they’ll have this done just about in time for us to see the finished product from the back of the ferry.

Best of, Apokoronas Crete Edition

Well, I do realize that those of you who rode the wave, surfing all the way to the sandy shores of my Crete blog want a balanced view of living in Crete; I also realize the balance has tipped slightly in my recent missives. Today, I’ll make it up by listing my favorite things in and about Crete.

Best Season: Spring

Best Dish: although it’s diffy to choose, I love spanakorizo (spinach and rice.) I could eat it every single day.

Best place to enjoy the sunset in Apokoronas: Kalamaki roadside cafe, just East of Megala Chorafia (June & July are the best times to go for this purpose.)

Best Pizza: Across from the police station just outside Xania proper. I think it’s called Pizza Primo. Seriously good.

Best/Cheapest Prepaid Phone Cards: I’ve used every single one available – and finally, finally found IDT calling cards online. One cent/minute for calls from Greece to the States! I could have talked a lot longer and saved a lot of money if I’d found this earlier.

Best Seasonal Fruit: Strawberries, Apricots, and Watermelon. I couldn’t choose just one, sorry. Saturday I was at the street market/laiki and bought the most wonderful strawberries I’ve ever had that I didn’t pick myself. (2 euros/500gr.)

Best Vet: Giorgos in Souda. Across from the post office. He’s nicer to my dog than I am, and I’m pretty nice to her.

Best completely touristy restaurant: Kantari, Platanias. Go when the oranges are in bloom, sit in an orange grove and listen to the Swedish (and British) tourists. They serve a very respectable schnitzel. Skip the filet mignon for two – it’s not very good.

Best coffeehouse open year-round: Milos in the marina in Kolimbari. The daughter who picks the music has THE best taste. It’s not too loud, there’s a good mix. She introduced us to Nikos Portokaloglou, who makes…

The best Greek rock-n-roll: Nikos Portokaloglou. That guy really, really rocks. It’s good even if you can’t understand Greek; better if you can.

The best Greek yogurt: hands down, NOY NOY (pronounced noo-noo) Classic. It’s 10% fat and 100% yummy. If you can’t get your mitts on that, try Olympos. It’s second best, but still very good.

Best chocolate milk: Olympos (choco-cool is the unfortunate name.) Everything else tastes powdery and too sweet. They also bottle the best tasting regular milk.

Best place to find international cheeses: Halkiadakis SPAR on the road from Souda to Xania. They’ve got an excellent selection.

Best place to buy cheap clothes: The laiki. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re crap – but they’re always cheap.

Best ground coffee for home use: There’s a little spice shop in Chania on the road between 1866 square and the covered Market. Two doors down from the Virgin music store on the same side of the street. They sell two kinds of coffee beans (dark and darker) ground or whole, for about 7 euros/kilo. It’s good, too.

Lastly, and very practically – the best dentist. Dimitri Railakis is a sound and kind dentist with good dental skills. He speaks great English. His office is a few blocks from Eleftherios Square.

So, how’s that for positive posting about life in Crete?

How can I integrate into a country lacking a discernable dessert culture?

As spring approaches, this (not so) young girl’s mind turns to France and dessert.

I think that most people, upon immigrating to a new country intend to integrate as best they can. I did. I really thought I’d integrate with the Greeks. But I’ve failed nearly entirely. Putting aside very serious issues where my core values diverge from the average Greek’s, today I’m going to take up the cause of dessert.

I hear the anonymous blog reading hordes shouting, “baklava!”; I’m not ignoring this delightful but entirely one-dimensional pastry. To those who offer this syrup-soaked sweet I say, “What else you got?”

Before the Greek dessert defenders gather up their tiny forks and come hunting, I would like to point out that while Baklava is likely the best known Greek/Turkish sweet, there are others. There’s kadaifi. What’s this? That’s easy. Kadaifi is like baklava, except the sheets of phyllo are replaced by…shredded phyllo.

There’s also a cake called revani which is made with wheat meal (like semolina for pasta) and soaked with syrup. Occasionally I’ve been offered a fried ball of dough coated in – surprise, surprise – syrup. When I’ve tired of all things syrup-soaked, I turn my attention to cookies. The thing I really love about cookies is that there’s such an endless variety. One particular branch of the cookie tree is dedicated to dry cookies which taste like lightly sweetened sand. That’s the branch that grows in Greece.

This is not to say there’s nothing good and sweet to eat after a meal here. There’s Greek yogurt with honey or fruit preserved in syrup (are you sensing the syrup theme?) I love Greek yogurt; it’s better than ice cream, but it’s not on the same plane as chocolate apricot torte, creme brulee, nectarine tart or a strawberry-brioche donut. I’m talking about serious desserts, which are utterly absent here.

With a zaharoplasteo on every corner displaying 15 kinds of cakes and sweets it’s difficult to believe that a good dessert is simply unavailable, but it’s true. I’ve eaten some of these and they are foul. Brown wax instead of chocolate, sweetened vegetable oil instead of cream…well, you get the picture.

I should have know there would be a problem when my fudge frosted chocolate cake with apricot filling leftovers sat untouched for days in our local taverna. The cake had rightfully recieved rave reviews when served the international guests. Finally, I asked the proprietor why no one was eating the remains. She said she couldn’t be sure, but she suspected it was the apricot filling. They, apparently, don’t like too much flavor in their sweets.

And so my heart swells with hope that I shall soon relocate to a place where desserts are given the respect and honor they are due. My mouth is watering.

Unlucky, in Greek

Today in Greece is unlucky. Tuesday the 13th is the Greek version of our Friday the 13th. Wikipedia says, “In the case of Greece, Tuesday, April 13, 1204 was the date that Constantinople was sacked by the crusaders of the fourth crusade. The first ever fall of the richest then Christian city, and the looting that followed, allegedly gave Tuesday 13 its bad meaning.”

The Animals

I think everyone knows about the poor treatment/care of animals in Crete. What I think they maybe can’t fathom is how bad it can be. It’s bad, really bad. I am not a competent writer to convey the disgusting things I’ve seen. I’ve done my fair share of rescuing animals, but I have limits.

Of course if you want to do something about it chances are good that you will be involved, however tangentially with the Cretan animal rescue community. Therein lies the dilemma – you want to help the animals but the animal rescue people are mostly…well, unstable is a nice way to put it.

These are people who have sacrificed pretty much everything for ‘the good of the animals.’ They often spend 5-12 hours per day dealing with animals, cleaning up after all the foster animals, taking them to the vet and the like. They typically spend most of their money on the animals, and they are very, very sensitive. There are exceptions, but I’m not talking about them.

The universal truth about these people is that they believe no one else is doing enough or doing the right thing. If you foster one, you could have fostered two; one looked at the unfinished lower floor of my house and told me that it was perfect for housing the multiple hunting dogs she’d rescued! Never mind that dogs left outside are a nuisance, or that my neighbors (who are my landlords’ relatives) would put a stop to it instantly. Never mind that R is an extremely light sleeper and would get no rest or that I’m not going to spend my day cleaning up shit and smelling like dog – that’s certainly not why I came here. Never mind that I’ve said no before. It is obvious that I’m not doing enough.

I’ve told everyone who approaches me with another hair-brained scheme involving me and the poor animals here that they only thing I’m willing give money for is neutering. Not feeding, housing, injury care, or rehoming. Neutering. They think I’m a cold hearted bitch.

I’m not a cold hearted bitch. I am ridiculously in love with my rescued dog; more than I ever thought I’m capable of. But I’m determined not to end up like them, constantly at the end of my rope and willing to sacrifice just about everything to save an individual animal without effecting any significant change in the cause of the general level of animal distress. These people are so emotionally high-strung that after an hour with them, I have to take a nap.

I think they probably didn’t plan this, to spend their days and nights and money caring for animals. I’m sure they probably came to Crete for sun and beach or a better quality of life, but some sensitive people just aren’t equipped to make the hard decisions. These tender hearts are the ones who end up sacrificing everything, not for a sun-filled life and a home on Crete, but for the far too many animals mistreated, neglected, and outright abused. How can any civilized person love ‘the Cretan way?’

Days and Doors on Crete, a Retrospective

The following is what I wrote when my parents asked what we did in Crete every day. When I said ‘nothing’ they wouldn’t accept it. It’s been two years, on the dot…

Crete, in Retrospect March, 2005

Weeks in Greece start on Sunday, and after six weeks, I’m finally getting used to calling Monday ‘deftera’ (spelled deutera.) Tuesday is triti, Wednesday is tetarti (teserra is ‘four’,) Thursday is pempti, and Friday is a bewildering paraskevi (for the record, six is ‘exi.’) Saturday is easy – ’sabbato,’ and in true Greek style, the weekend is called sabbatokyriako.

R likes to have his first cuppa on the patio, looking over the mountains and out to the sea. I’m not so keen on going out until the sun has had time to warm up the stones. In was a strange day, as we were actually up in the morning. He called in to let me know that ‘our cat’ was here, and I grabbed the cat food and went outside. The door slammed behind me and I made nice with the cat for a few minutes, when R asked, “did you lock us out?” Our door latches when it closes, like most any door you’ve seen, but there is no handle – a key is required to open it from the outside.

Normally, when we get up in the morning, I unlock the door with the key from the inside, then put the key in the lock on the outside. Safety isn’t much of a concern, so we leave the key there unless we are leaving the house to go to town. This day, R had unlocked the door while I was still puttering around the ‘campstove’ making coffee, and hadn’t followed my system. Long story made short, I had locked us out. I went to the old lady neighbor, who keeps the keys and asked her – she had a kledia for every one of the houses except #2 – ours. I then remembered that when we moved in, R was concerned about being locked out, so G got us the second key as a backup. We’d hung it inside on a nail, to be dealt with later, and there it still hung.

After much deliberation, we decided the only thing to do was to break the window in the door. I beat on the window with a fair sized stone for a while, but it wouldn’t break. R suggested that I stand back and heave it through, which worked, but had me cleaning glass out of every nook and cranny for the majority of the afternoon.

Two years later I know that the word for Friday (Paraskevi) is related to the Greek word for preparation, which makes sense when you know that Savvato is related to the word Sabbath. Kyriaki (Sunday) is related to the Greek word for lord; it is the Lord’s day.

Most (though not all) Cretan external doors have this automatic lock/no external handle system, though we now have balconies and patios, so we don’t go out the front door as much and I’ve never had a repeat of locking myself out; everyone I know on Crete has done it at least once.

What My Neighbors Said…

when R sent our landlords an email with a few maintenance issues and a request to have a conversation about the amount we pay in rent:

“This place is very dirty! You have never cleaned these windows!”

I wonder if it she’s at all curious about why I would clean all the windows in the house except the ones facing her house. Probably not.

Our neighbor is the sister of our landlady, who is in England teaching Greek to Greeks. That’s why my neighbor is involved in this discussion.

I’ll admit that I’m not a spic-n-span type of girl, except as regards bathrooms. There has never been a bathroom as clean as my bathroom. That said, I’m a messy person. Not dirty, messy.

My neighbor’s second big complaint was that the internal doors were ‘dirty.’ One might wonder how a person achieves dirty doors; it seems that this would take an effort. In this case, the ‘dirt’ was fingerprints and in my defense, who would purposely install doors that show every blinking fingerprint? And are fingerprints actually classified as dirt? Additionally, what sort of fingerprints don’t wash off with soap and water? I tried when we first moved in, but they wouldn’t budge! Years ago I developed a habit to only touch door handles (because the doors where I worked were glass and I didn’t want to clean them) and R pretty much never touches anything (don’t ask.) So, how would our fingerprints dirty up the doors? I maintain that the majority of fingerprints dirtying the doors around this stupid house belong to my landlady and her husband. I just wish there were some way to prove it…