More self-deluding guff is written about Greek islands than about anywhere
else on the planet.
Their enduring out-of-the-wayness, raw beauty and sparse, matriarchal
communities, even now, foster the illusion of personal discovery - of
ownership almost, as if we were staking out a private paradise handed down
by Homer.
There is another illusion, too, a hang-over from the islands’ colonisation by
hippies, of a freewheeling, free-loving detachment from time and toil, in
which everything drips with honey.
Within a day or two we are on first-name terms with at least one fisherman and
a shepherd, and eating goat with our fingers.
Not everyone buys into it, though.
One visitor to Alonnisos, the northernmost and most beautiful inhabited island
of the northern Sporades, described its nameless hilltop settlement, the
Chora (old village), as “Disneyland”.
This was gratuitously insulting, but I could see what he meant. The village
appears typically Greek - old houses leaning against new; ruins craning
suicidally over a hanging precipice; narrow stepped lanes lazily furred with
cats. The postcard view is classic, a heroic blend of beauty and endeavour,
where ingenuity is spiked with cussedness.
Buildings are suckered like limpets onto rocks; roads twirl around contours
and unravel in deep, thyme-scented voids that spill onto beaches. “Unspoilt”
is the lamest of clichés, but it fits.
The illusion is to believe that unspoilt means unchanged. The village,
fortified and built at a commanding height, was once the capital of a
well-populated island known for its wines.
Phylloxera in the 1950s did for the vines; an earthquake in 1965 did for the
houses. What happened next mirrored the destiny of islands right across the
Aegean and Ionian seas. Over the water came not the murderous pirates that
had once driven people into their mountain redoubt, but a waft of hippies
lured by the promise of lotus-eating (in reality, bread and tomatoes) and
the absence of sniffer dogs. The die was cast.
In their sandalprints soon came escalating numbers of conventional tourists,
to whom the more enterprising villagers rented rooms that often bore the
imprint of hen or goat but cemented the islands’ reputation for rustic
charm. The innocence of these places overwhelmed us. People wrote seriously
of beauty that made them weep.
The beauty is still there, but the innocence has taken a hit. The last
pack-saddle maker in Alonnisos died 20 years ago; his tools are in the local
museum in Patitiri. So are the relics of the wine-making industry,
agriculture and other traditional crafts (piracy and guerrilla warfare
included). In the hills, olives, pomegranates and lemons drop from trees no
longer harvested.
YES we are in Athens when can we go
Seb Kruz, athens, greece
I own about fifty olive trees in Samos and they also fall to the ground unharvested - breaks my heart - you want to go pick them you're welcome - you can even stay in the cottage
haralambos, joburg,