My Greek Story.... Finale

The last chapter of the family's migration to Poros

  After two years on the island of Salamina   the Navy moved us on  again,  this time to Poros where I vowed we would stay even though it meant living enclosed in a family compound with my inlaws and my sister in law.  Far too close for my comfort  but just what the children needed.  They grew up in a close family atmosphere and their two male cousins next door became like the older brothers they had missed out on.

At first my mother-in-law expected us to live as a family unit, cooking together in the outside kitchen and eating together around her dining table.  She was so proud of her united family, boasting to friends that we all 'ate out of one pot'.  Poor K was sitting right in the middle of this pot which was ready to blow.    For a while we did cook and eat all together but the foreign daughter-in-law soon rebelled. 

I wanted my own cuisine.  Shephards pie, chicken cooked without lemon juice and no extra oil, curry, savoury rice, coleslaw, chutney, all totally unknown to greeks then.  I just started doing my own cooking and for a while  K would eat downstairs and then come up to eat with us.  It all came to a head one day when we prepared to eat downstairs with all the family and I took down a dish of rice.  M-in-law complained that the rice was undercooked (not mushy) and she got the plate thrown at her.  From then on we were on our own.  

We all got over that as families should and she continued feeding the girls when she could  and would often send up some delicacy for K.   My father-in-law suffered a stroke and had to be looked after by all of us.  We came together as a family and I was immersed in the lore of the island.

My father-in-law died soon after we settled in.  Death was 'hands on' and an occasion for all of the family to mourn together.  The open coffin stayed in the house overnight, the coffin lid outside on the road for all to know that inside was a place of mourning.  All the family, friends and neighbours gathered from far  and wide.  The courtyard was full all night as people came and went.  We served them coffee, wine, ouzo, and hard tack till the sun rose again.

Inside the house the old aunts wailed and cried until the sun went down.  The dead had to be buried within 24 hours and everyone came to say goodbye, tell an anecdote, fall weeping on the corpse, this completely covered in strong smelling flowers.  Outside they told tall tales, mostly about the deceased and many a time the mourners had to be hushed for laughing too loudly or becoming too passionate about politics or football.
I should have dressed in black for a year after the death, but I didn't. 

I learnt what was appropriate to do on a saints day, cook, clean and serve.  No ironing, sewing, knitting, washing or bathing.  I climbed up to small churches and stood piously outside while the priest droned on, but didn't join the line afterwards to kiss his hand and receive a piece of blessed loaf.  I tried crossing myself and kissing icons but felt that was going a tad too far.  Lighting a candle or two is more my style and now I disappear outside to some comfortable wall and settle down to await the end of the service.

I helped mother-in-law take the sourdough loaves to the local bakery and haul them home again.  She always made enough for a couple of weeks.  The first day the bread was fragrant and soft and we would dip slices  in olive oil.   Baking day was also the day for a pot of yellow split peas (pease pudding).  We used the bread as a shovel to eat this soft mushy 'soup'.  

The first press of the year's oil meant 'tiganites' (greek pancakes) fried in the fresh oil with sugar or honey and my mother-in-law made the best fried potatoes I have ever eaten.  She had a battered little pot  filled with olive oil and fried the chips on a little gas burner outside in the cooking shed.  They were always, crispy, full of flavour and in great demand by the grandchildren.

I wasn't expected to pick olives thank goodness. I had two children to look after.

Of course it wasn't all  rosey and I dug my heels in where I could.  The house was far too small for a family of four. Two bedrooms and a balcony we covered over to make into a small 'sitting' room.The extended family wandered in and out.  

Mother-in-law was still anxious that her only son had not married a bride with an appropriate dowry and would call us in now and again telling me that she had found a wonderful piece of land, with olive trees, a bargain, and I must phone my brothers immediately and tell them to buy it for me. 

I survived forty years in this country and am no longer quite a foreigner but am definitely not a local.  Which is why my blog is called local-alien.  When that song came out my daughters delightedly dedicated it to me and we sang it together with gusto

'I don't drink coffee, I take tea my dear
I like my toast done on one side
and you can hear it in my accent when I talk
I'm an englishman in New York

I'm an alien
I'm a legal alien'

Sting.

  

   

Linda a kiwi in flight

A trip to New Zealand ..... and back

All this time I had been back to New Zealand once after eleven years.
We couldn't afford the tickets  but the family in NZ very generously got together and paid for all the Greek family to spend Xmas together at my parents beach house at Pukehina in the Bay of Plenty (North Island of New Zealand)

For the first few days New Zealand was  totally foreign.  Green was the dominant colour. Endless fields, trees and grass. The houses were made of wood with real lawn around them. There were blue houses and yellow houses and brick houses, with jacaranda and hibiscus.  None of the fat round bushy basil the greeks planted in an empty olive oil can.  The cars were Japanese or Korean, no longer european and mostly automatic. 

There was a distinct smell of cooking oil covering my old home town.  Fish and chips in some sort of vegetable oil.  The bookshop smelled of unopened, pristine books, and they were all in English!  And there were english magazines.  The radio played music I knew with voices I could understand.  The newspaper was another wonder.  I stared in fascination at the ads  on TV, loving them all while the rest of the family just wanted to turn the sound off.

I was astonished at the variety in the supermarket.  Back then Greece had only just started selling milk in bottles (instead of cans).  European goods were slowly coming into the shops.   A greek mini market had canned tomatoes, milk, tuna and sardines and dried beans and lentils in huge open sacks.  In a NZ supermarket there were aisles of canned goods, freezers full of packaged food.  Shelves full of everything, except octopus, feta and salted fish.  Nowdays Greek supermarkets have freezers full of NZ lamb and NZ supermarkets have shelves of Greek yoghurt and even octopus.

My parent's house was just yards from a white sandy beach and across the road was an estuary where at low tide we could dig for cockles and oysters and my sister in law, Rainy, found us a huge net which we put out one night to catch flounder, with little success but lots of fun.

Ocean beach on one side, estuary on the other

Xmas day was cold ham and trifle and swims in the sea, but only between the flags where the lifeguards could see us.  There was a bad rip out there which often took unwary swimmers out far beyond the waves and into danger.  When the tide was out we dived in the gentler waves and dug for pipis and tuatuas.

The whole family got together, coming from further south in NZ and even from far away Perth in Australia.  My mother and father were thrilled but ensured their peace of mind by moving out into the little guest house off the garage!

The stars seemed so low in the sky, like a twinkling blanket above our heads. Haley's Comet was somewhere up there and we searched the night skies to catch this once in a lifetime appearance.

The little greek-girls could understand english. I had made damn sure of that.  They rebelled a bit against the sterner discipline of kiwi grandparents but generally I think enjoyed the experience, if not that longest of long haul flights from the northern to the southern hemisphere.  

If you've got to go cattle-class at least go Singapore Airlines.  One thing which I will always remember is the way they looked after my two little girls 4 and 5 years old.

Back in Greece I hated the sight of the dusty dirty streets of Athens.  Our flat in Piraeus seemed tiny and it was months before I settled down and got used to the routine of cooking greek food, shopping at the outdoor market and walking everywhere instead of driving.

My Greek Story Part Three Salamina

So we moved from the island of Crete up to the island of Salamina, just out of Athens, which is where the main Naval Base is located.  There we stayed for two years.  New schools for the girls.  Fortunately we found a few friends from Crete  who had also been transferred.  But new schools, new pupils, lots of anxiety.  One of the girls ran away from school while the other began lessons, cut off, in a small room in the churchyard next door.  There were not enough classrooms in the school to accomodate all the students. 

I liked Salamina.  It is very close to Athens, either a twenty minute car ferry ride or an hour by small boat putt-putting into the port of Piraeus.  At weekends the island would be buzzing as hundreds of Athenians with holiday homes filled the streets, beaches and tavernas.  

Once again we lived in a funny little two bedrooms house.  Both bedrooms had no windows and no light but it was cheap and clean and there was parking next door for our car and an empty lot where we dug a pit and spit roasted our lamb at Easter. 

It was back at the end of the eighties.  I remember watching the fall of the Berlin wall on TV there and it was there that we watched the first private run Greek TV channel and the american soap opera, Santa Barbara and the Young and the Restless in english with greek subtitles.  A new era in entertainment.

We made the best of it.  K was home most days and together we explored all the out lying beaches.  We bought a small blow-up boat, loaded it up with our picnic, put on flippers and swam it across to a small island for a day of swimming and snorkelling.  K and the girls dived for mussels on the other side of the island in the polluted waters just off the big Navy Base.  It's lucky we survived the contamination.  The girls learnt to hunt octopus, we saw cuttlefish mating, swam in a thunderstorm.

Salamina

We spent a lot of time with friends, eating out at small tavernas where there were just a few tables and one or two items on the menu, mussels and oysters, pork chops or salt cod.  The girls had a lot of concerns though after their third change of school and we all knew we would be up and moving again soon.

The first summer we spent two weeks at a Navy camp.  A real holiday.  We had a small one bedroomed cabin, cooked simple meals or ate at the cheap restaurant on base.  The sea once again was not the cleanest being just across from the main fleet but there was an Olympic swimming pool where we dived dangerously from a 3 metre board, hanging out there almost every day at the beginning of another sweltering summer.  K went to work during the week but was back each evening so it was a family holiday.

My Greek was reasonable by then .  I could understand everything and communicate well but keeping up with conversation was fraught with problems.  By the time I had understood the subject and wanted to dive in with my own opinion they were off on another topic.  I just tuned out and the long evenings of loud harsh music and tiring chat bored me stiff.  I thanked the lord that I had two small children and could use them as a reason to retreat early.

Salamina was a sort of interlude.  Next we go to Poros.

This is turning into a life story.  One, maybe two chapters, I think and that's it.  But it has got me writing and remembering.  I have promised my two girls that I shall write more.  The bits I've missed out.  But not for this blog.

A kiwi in flight

My Greek story Part two

Part two of my greek story. 

I have been in Greece since 1976.  That is a very long time.  We lived ten years in Piraeus. The last five years in a two bedroomed  flat on the first floor .   Underneath lived a woman without children and the noisy pitter patter of our feet above her head gave vent to much banging on the radiator pipes.  Fortunately we were well liked by the rest of the occupants and never had any other trouble.  

K was away on Navy business a lot of the time and I was on my own.  I used to put both children, around 2 and 3 years old then, in a pushchair, and haul them onto the green bus which took us an hour away to Syntagma Square in Athens.  From there we would walk up to the British Library where at least I could find English books to read.  They saved my sanity.  Not much else in english was available then.  Or we would go for a walk through the National Gardens, feed the ducks and stare for a while at the pitiful 'zoo' of two mangy wolves, a couple of monkeys and a peacock.  Often I would push them up to the top of the Acropolis.  Because I had Greek citizenship I had an official ID card and we were allowed in for free.  Now the Greeks pay just as much as the tourists if they want to see their national monuments.  At least my girls can boast that they have seen all the ancient ruins and not only once or twice.  We would picnic in the ruins around the old Agora (market place) at the foot of the Acropolis and in the temple to Hephaestos (the God of metal working and fire).  It is cordoned off now but then we could go inside and the girls would play around the columns. 

National Gardens

All our entertainments had to be cheap.  We lived on very little and I remember once towards the end of month going to the bank to withdraw our last 500 drachmas.  That is about 3 euros now.  I bought macaroni, sugar and custard powder to give us a few more meals.  The children didn't mind at all. 

I had a network of foreign friends and we met at different houses (apartments) for coffee mornings.  I had to take my unsociable children with me and they did tend to scream a bit in company.  I met a South African couple, Margo a doctor and Jimmy a bank manager now retired, who lived on a yacht in Piraeus marina and they would walk the girls till they calmed down.  We often visited them on their boat.  I valued their friendship tremendously.  Understanding, common language, book swapping, wine drinking.  Manouvering two small children on and off a small yacht was a little complicated but they just took it in their stride even when one of the girls threw their shoes overboard.

 Then my husband, a Naval Officer was transferred to the Navy base at Souda in Crete.  I loved Crete.  We lived in a small village, Mournies, in an 80 year old house for the first year which had great cracks in the floorboards, a leaky bathroom where you sometimes needed an umbrella to go to the loo and watercuts which meant carrying buckets of water from a tap across the road. Great fun.  I even ran the washing machine by pouring in buckets of water at what I deemed to be the right time, water often left in buckets on the balcony to be warmed by the sun. The youngest started schooling at a school where the first two classes were taught by one teacher.  I learnt to read and write with her.  

 Two little Greek girls with haircuts done -at- home and hand-me-downs from their (boy) cousins

  The village people just took us in as their own.  On the first day we moved in we found a big bag of grapes on the doorstep and the villagers just continued to give and give.  We were overwhelmed with oil and tomatoes, and whatever was in season in their gardens.  They gave us advice, looked out for our children who ran free in the fields, invited us into their homes and would take nothing in return.

A village street in Mournies

We would walk for miles through the narrow lanes visiting the other villages, often late at night, singing nursery rhymes in Greek and English at the tops of our voices.  Or just after payday we would visit the local taverna and eat grilled chicken washed down with a very rough strong, dark red wine.  
Coming home we would always be freaked a little by the hooting of the owls.  Time to sing even louder, me in English, the rest in Greek.  I did english animal noises and they would reply in unison with  Greek animal caterwauls.

There was only one store then and two cafenions (where the men went to drink coffee and raki) but down the road was a pitta bakery. OMG those delicious pittas still hot and moist from the oven.  It was lucky we walked a lot.

K brought lots of recruits and fellow officers back to the house and we would have BBQs in the back garden where the pig sty used to be and eat meat from the Navy storehouse, meat which had been in the freezer sometimes for a couple of years and could be as tough as an old shoe.

 The next two years we spent in Navy housing with the girls going to a Navy school.  Life was cheap there.  Everything was subsidised and we managed to buy a small car and start exploring the island.  Crete has everything.  Mountains, cities, lakes, long empty beaches, crowded tourist resorts, small villages and ancient ruins everywhere, most of them unknown back then and unvisited, except by us with a picnic. We went searching for snails when it rained and kept them on the balcony till we cooked and ate them, we saw a goat being born.  We spent the summer on the Navy beach and exploring the island.  We ate for next to nothing at the NATO base.

This is the site of Aptera.  It must have been excavated since we were there.  We used to picinic on some of the huge stones enjoying a panoramic view of the gulf below.  It was overgrown back then and hard to see it's dimensions.

My parents and one of my brothers visited us while we were there and we did more exploring, taking our car to the ruins of Phaestos, Frankocastello, Gortyrs, Mallia, Zakros, Paleokastro.  Knossos, the best known ruins just outside Heraklion I think I visited four times, once on a school trip.

Knossos, partly restored by Arthur Evans

 I loved the life there and actually cried as I saw it disappear into the clouds when we left.  But being in the Navy then meant that every 2 years would mean a transfer.

I'm sorry I haven't scanned any more photos.  When I learn to re-use the scanner  I'll post some more.  This story was just three paragraphs but it seems to have grown as I rewrote.  And this is only part of the memories.  The good memories

The family today (well two years ago).  I took the photo

My Greek story. Part One

It is rather long so I'll break it up into two or three posts.

Born and bred in far away New Zealand I had to get out and see the rest of the world and all the relatives in the northern hemisphere.  Nowadays this is called the OE (overseas experience, I think) and almost every young person downunder has that same urge to get up and go.  Youth.

  I just did not go back.  Not for 11 years.  Seems incredible now but after 3 years in London and 2 trips around the Continent (Europe) I found Greece and my greek.   I came out on holiday from London with a friend and found a job for the summer in a hotel on the island, working with my husband's cousin.  We visited Marthitsa on her name day. Word went round the neighbourhood in an instant that there were some foreign girls (think 'aliens') at her house and in another instant the funny little cave like house was filled with eager 'sightseers' peering in at us, including all the male cousins.  And that's how I met K.

 At the time he was already in the Navy working on a destroyer and had a tiny roof top 'apartment' (think store cupboard with a bathroom) in Piraeus.  We married without his parent's blessing but for me it didn't matter, we lived in the city, a long way away.  With the first child came acceptance, even though it was not a boy.  My mother in law told me she would not have objected if I had a dowry, a house of course, which my brothers should have provided, unbeknown to them, when we married.

  We married, had two girls and now we have five grandchildren.  Doesn't matter how long I'm here I'll always be a foreigner.  It's not just my accent, it is my whole way of thinking. 

On children.  Back then every good greek wife was supposed to provide half a dozen sons and a couple of girls to look after their parents in old age.  In some places when asked how many children they had a mother or father would answer 'two children and a daughter' instead of 'three children'.

  Just a note on the accent.  I always prided myself on my wonderful grasp of the Greek language and the masterly way I spoke.  Prick that bubble!   I heard myself on tape one day and couldn't believe the way I spoke, with harsh New Zealand vowel sounds and the way I tortured the pronunciation was excruciating.   No wonder my grandchildren laugh at my mistakes and my neighbour screws up her brows trying to understand. 

It was, and I believe still is, difficult for a kiwi to stay here for any length of time.  I had to apply for a visa or leave the country every 3 months and re-enter to get permission to stay for another 3 months.  Twice I left the country taking the overnight ferry from Patras to Brindisi, getting an exit stamp and coming back on the next boat to receive another 3 month stamp in my passport.

Yes, that really is us.  Love sick pigeons.

But we did get married and I got dual citizenship.  Citizenship and the marriage meant a lot of work.  So much red tape, so many papers to gather, from the embassy, the police, the department of immigration and references from the community.  A paper to say I had not been married before, translated offically by a women in  a grotty office up 5 flights of stairs in the middle of Athens.  Another paper from the church in NZ to say I had been baptised Church of England and could thus be married in an Orthdox Church without being re-baptised.  My mother just happened to be working as a secretary for some Church of England Bishop and arranged it quite easily.  I had a paper from our local Orthodox Priest to say..what?  I was a nice Christian girl?  I can't remember.   And finally I had to swear before a Notary and sign in triplicate that I would let my children be brought up as Greek Orthodox.

Meanwhile my mother in law, through some educated neighbour, had written a letter to my parents telling them to come and take their daughter back home.  They would find a nice Greek girl for their son.  On the wedding day the Priest almost backed out because someone had phoned and threatened him a with a lawsuit if he carried out the ceremony.  Back then Naval officers were not supposed to marry without the permission of a senior officer.

Kyria Eleni, my mother in law.  We eventually got to almost like each other.  It took a few years but I did come to realise that I really was an alien as far as she was concerned and I turned her known world upside down.

Reading all that I am gobsmacked that I am still here, legally married, 40 years later, with a Greek family!

  Now with civil marriages between foreigners in places such as Santorini and our own 'Daskalio', the little heart shaped island as you enter Poros harbour, it has to be so much easier.

  It is many years since NZ had an embassy here.  There is a phone number you can ring and a man in some small office will advise if you're lucky.