Changes

To finish off this week, I was trying to think of other things that have changed over the last 24 years. As I said, change happens slowly, so you tend not to see it as much as someone who pops in once a year. I’m thinking as I go, so this is in no logical order…

In 2003, when working in the harbour, I seem to remember counting three day-trip boats a day, sometimes only two, maybe one more at busier times. The last time I bothered to stop and count them, a few weeks ago, I counted 13, and a couple of them do two trips a day, including one that comes for the evening. There is a new port now, and a wider road in places, but not always where there needs to be a wider road, some different shops/businesses, of course, though many still are as they were. What’s now the performance area was a car park, the Nautical Museum has gone, there are far more vehicles than there were, including tour buses that have replaced the open truck trips across the island. Even a new beach or two has opened up, as has access to several hinterland churches. The Symi Visitor newspaper has sadly long gone, but so has another publication that brought Symi nothing much more than bad feeling, though the Symi magazine (published since the 1930s and posted down from Athens, mail order only) still arrives with those who know about it and order it. The loudspeaker system that used to announce everything from bad weather to lost property is no longer heard, the post office is no longer in the police building, and we finally have a permanent medical clinic, though no permanent doctors. My first visit to a Symi doctor was to see ‘the Russian Doctor’ who worked out of the old pharmacy, which is now, finally, an open museum.

Beaches are now crowded with fancy sunbeds. More ruins have come into use, though the majority look to be seldom-used holiday homes of the glossy magazine class, and where there were one or two traditional hotels, there are now top-range places at top-range prices. There are more slopes built over the steps so mopeds can access more of the village, though only one more rubbish collection point, so many people still have to walk a long way to deposit their rubbish. There’s not been as much rubbish burnt in ruins as there was, which is good, though there is still no recycling. We now have a wind turbine as a monument to an effort that didn’t last long, and I’ve not seen it turn for many years, and we have the desalination plant for water, though still not enough water to be self-sufficient, and the water boat has been seen docking again as it used to do.

Prices of everything have gone up, of course, though some shops and bars have managed to keep some drinks reasonable; ouzo and coffee prices haven’t changed that much, going from €1.50 an ouzo to €2.50 in some places, and a glass of wine at Rainbow, for example, has taken 24 years to go from €1.50 to €3.00. It is still the case, though, that you don’t plan a special meal at home; you decide your menu on the day depending on what you can find in the shops.

In the height of summer, you used to see people queuing to get into ‘Georgio’s’, and people sitting on the steps of the village square because all the tables were full at both bars. Now, those sights are rarer, but you have to book for most restaurants or be disappointed. Luggage and supplies used to arrive by mule, but I’ve not seen a working mule train for years, and now, people carry the bags and building supplies. Oh, we now have decent internet. When we first came and bought our first mobile phones (Nokia, you know the sort: press A three times for C), communication to the outside world, for us, was through pay-as-you-go phones, or the public phones which required a complicated arrangement of pre-paid cards. Our first internet connection was a 56 kbps dial-up one, but now, we have (goes to check) 140 Mb; higher at some times of the day. There is more street lighting, and there are more streets.

What’s not changed, though? Well, as I heard a visitor discuss the other day, the philoxenia of the island’s people hasn’t changed, and despite all this trying to keep up with the ‘improvements’ demanded by a modern world, our Symi neighbours remain charming and friendly, caring and welcoming.

I’m pleased to say not everyone is about making money. There remains a lively community at the centre of village life, and not always based around the churches (which welcome non-Orthodox worshipers), but also around the schools, which still don’t have decent or any air conditioning for summer or heating for winter, or enough books. There are dance, singing and other cultural classes and events, neighbours, including us foreigners, are invited to weddings and baptisms just as we’ve always been, and you know that if you need help, someone nearby will give it.

I could go on, but I won’t. There are many people who have known Symi longer and better than I, and these are just some vague five-in-the-morning memories I wanted to get out of my head before I start work. I’ll get back to my usual whitter on Monday, and leave this anniversary week there.

Thinking about it now, a lot happened in that first week of being here on a non-holiday. The first thing was to start looking for somewhere permanent to live, and how do you do that in a place you don’t know? Back then, it was a case of word of mouth, so the only way to find was to seek, and the only way to do that was to ask. So, we started asking around. We’d still not found anywhere by the end of the week, and ended up sitting on the steps opposite the Rainbow Bar with our rucksacks, wondering what was best to do, and who was best to ask.

Two years previously, we’d stayed at a holiday apartment, and it happened that I bumped into the owner in one of the shops and did that, ‘Hello! How are you…?’ conversation with the other person being polite and answering with little or no idea who I was, and that was that. So, after sitting on the steps, homeless and considering hotels, I found the same apartments, and there was the owner, and that time there was a little more recognition, and I explained the problem, ending with, ‘Do you have anywhere we could stay while we look…? The upshot was, she did have, temporarily, because she had someone coming to stay in it for the winter, but we could have a place until then, but we’d have to go as soon as she knew when the booking was to arrive. That was fine, as we’d want to move as soon as we found somewhere more permanent, and on those equal terms, she asked how much I wanted to pay. With that negotiated, we secured a small place for however long, and the search continued.

A few days later, we were offered the share of a house, using a spare bedroom until the occupier moved to a new house of her own, leaving us this one and its contract. That was a very kind offer, and it was what we did. It involved a visit to the landlord in Rhodes so we could take over the contract, and when the time came, we found ourselves with a two-building property that housed only us. All a stroke of luck and at the expected price of €300 a month in rent, plus bills. Now, after 24 years, we’re in our third rental house, and the rent is 60% of my pension, and that, these days, is something of a bargain.

Talking of changes, it was much easier to find decent housing then, though it is all arranged privately, as there’s no such thing as social housing around here. These days, there are more letting agencies, and there are online ways of searching, but as with everything else, the cost of renting has gone through the roof, and with many people greedily grabbing the Airbnb craze, fewer decently sized houses/homes to rent. I’ve seen adverts for what we’d call a bedsit going for €500 a month, and that’s just ridiculous. After living in the first house for a year, we decided to make our move permanent, and that meant finding another home on a longer lease, and while I went back to the UK to sort things out there, Neil went looking.

He’d found a place within a week or so, and it was a two-bedroom house with a garden and terrace and was also at €300 a month. There were other options too because there were long-term rentals available in those days, and at sensible rents. There still are some to be had, but not many, and that’s a constant worry, unless you are very rich. We stayed in that house, at that rent, for 11 years, until the daughter it was being kept for was heading for marriage and needed it back.

That might have made it all sound very easy, but there were difficult moments. Sitting on the steps homeless was one, but weren’t worried then, because we knew there were places, and it was only a case of finding one, or asking the right person. Now…? Well, now we’ve been lucky enough to have been in a third house for 11 years, but things here are changing; the price is going up while the condition of the property is going down, and we’re thinking about starting the same search over again. Gone are the days when you could turn up, find a long-term place to live and get on with life. You can still ask around, and that’s the best way if you want somewhere as secure as it can be. The trend for renting property while it waits to be sold is very helpful, and how we came to be in home number three, but that’s not secure, and when you have furnished a home with everything you own, and then have to transport it to somewhere else, that’s another matter entirely. You don’t want to be doing that every few months.

So, I guess the more the years go on, the luckier you have to be, because now the island is more about holiday rentals than it is about permanent residents (unless you own a house, and at these prices, forget it unless you’re very privileged). That’s one of the main changes I’ve seen: the cost. People say, ‘that’s cheap’ when you tell them you pay €500 a month, but then people on Symi aren’t earning comparable incomes. Nowhere near.

Anyway, let’s not get started on that, it’s far too serious. Let’s get on with Thursday instead.

When chatting to customers at the bar over the years, one of the most common questions asked by visitors is ‘How long have you lived here?’ I heard that only yesterday. On hearing the answer, a common follow-up is, ‘You must have seen lots of changes.’ Not a question exactly, but a statement hoping for an answer. Yes, lots of things have changed on Symi over time, but they have gradually changed around us, which means they are not as dramatic as they are to someone who only sees the island now and then. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many ruins have come into use, or how many people, at school when we arrived here, are now married and starting families, and so on. Other changes are more obvious.

The hydrofoil, for example. We took ‘the Flying Dolphin’ Aegli from Rhodes to Symi on that first afternoon, arriving over near the clock tower. The hydrofoil was always noisy, bumpy and often very hot, but it was quick. It gained various nicknames, some of which can’t be repeated (the Vomit Comet comes to mind, though I never suffered from that side effect). It brought us here, and some time later would bring Neil back from Rhodes with his broken and pinned heel, and took me and our cat, Jack, to the vet and back when he had problems. (The cat, not the vet.) There was also an afternoon, probably about 21 years ago, when I was on it, waiting for it to set off, and there was a delay. It transpired we were waiting for a new arrival; a new mother and her baby. When they did arrive, the passengers welcomed him with a round of applause, and not because we could finally set off; it was a welcome to the world. That young chap now lives a few doors down, is about six feet tall, and has done his national service.

The hydrofoil is no longer in use and hasn’t been for some years, and we no longer see it skidding around the headland before the engines slow, and the boat drops into the water to glide to a halt as if the whole trip had been graceful. Yesterday all those years ago, we clambered our way out of it with that strange sense of having come home. We hadn’t. We didn’t have a home, only a booking for a week’s stay, and as we couldn’t get in there until later in the afternoon, we spent a few hours in Yialos being neither tourists nor residents. When the time came to meet the person who was to show us into our holiday home, we trudged up the Kali Strata, luggage and all, to wait at the locally named ‘plastic chairs.’ These are now canvas in the summer, but back to plastic in the winter, and we’re talking about the Rainbow bar and Lefteris Kafeneion. They’ve changed a little over the years, but not much; new decoration, new furniture and a new bar at one. New beer mats at the other, which hasn’t changed much since 1987 (there’s soap in the gents these days), and at which we have worked since 2004.

There have been changes in the village square too. Back then, there was none of this paving we now have on the road and square. The road to Panormitis hadn’t been finished, and only went so far before it became rubble; there were fewer concrete roads to hinterland churches. In those days, you could take thrillingly uninsured truck trips across the terrain, clinging on and bouncing around in the open back. People still do, though not in any commercial way. There was one more leaning tree in the village square than there is now, the peripteron had things to sell, and what’s now known as the ‘Chinese clothes shop’ was a taverna. Not much else has changed dramatically around this area, though businesses have either developed or come and gone.

Our current local government was elected in the October of that year (2002), and is still in office after several elections. I remember, during the campaign, the mayoral hopeful talking to a very young girl in the way politicians do, and her replying, ‘I’m not voting for you, you —.’ Well, she’s now married and a mother.

Of course, the whole adventure meant a big change for us, but as this was only the start of your year-long trial, change was expected. It wasn’t until we were in our holiday accommodation during that first week that I started to realise this was where we were going to settle, and we only had what was in our rucksacks to get us started, and half of that was winter clothes. The other issue to contend with was where we were going to live, and that’s a reminiscence for tomorrow.

It is quite a day for celebrations today. Most importantly, it’s happy birthday to Neil Day, then it’s happy wedding anniversary, and happy landing on Symi Day. In the wider world, Michelangelo’s ‘David’ was first shown on this day, as was the first episode of Star Trek (not in the same year). We shan’t mention the darker events of the day in history, such as the finding of the second Jack the Ripper victim, the death of Queen Elizabeth, and the first football league matches, but on the other side of the coin, we could mention the birthdays of Richard the Lionheart, Patsy Cline, Peter Sellers and my grandfather. What a dinner party that would make.

Yesterday, 24 years ago, we were enjoying our last day on Antiparos. We’d had some holiday time there, doing that lazing on the beach thing that I am no longer any good at, and we had taken a trip. Eight kilometres outside of Antiparos town is the cave of Agios Ioannis, an 85-meter-deep cave that contains Europe’s oldest stalagmite (45 million years, and being Greek, still working 18-hour days), and, carved into the rock among others, the signature of Lord Byron. We’d also dome some asking around, checking out the prices of any properties to rent for a year, but there weren’t any, and asking about job chances. Again, not many, and mostly to do with teaching English. So, although the island was suitably small and reasonably non-commercial, we decided it was not for us, and that we would go to straight from there to Symi. The holiday fund was wearing down, and we had been mooching around for about 10 days so far, and it was time to move on. This involved nothing more complicated than buying a boat ticket from the local agent.

The boat was called Marina, an inter-island ferry that called at Paros and ended up in Rhodes, and, according to our ticket, it left Paros at exactly 23.59 on September 7th. We thought that timing was somewhat precise, but we packed up, took the small boat back to Paros, and there, in the afternoon, found somewhere to leave our luggage. We were travelling with a large rucksack each, a small rucksack and a laptop bag, and that was it, but it was still a fair amount to carry around. So, that lot dumped, we decided to come back for it at ten that night, and, meanwhile, enjoy a leisurely dinner somewhere along the front.

The place we ended up in was one of those where the taverna is on one side of a busy-ish main road and the outside tables, on the other by the sea, from where we could see the port. We opted for pizzas, and the cheerful chappie waiter/owner/lord high everything else, persuaded us to try his saganaki cheese in brandy. Turned out the pizzas were the size of tractor tyres and the cheese not much smaller, and we had to leave most, else we’d be unable to walk. Still, with plenty of time, we waddled back to pick up our luggage, and found a café opposite the port entrance, and there, dumped the bags and ourselves, ordered an ouzo each, and with well over an hour to wait, watched the world go by.

I’d done some background work before setting off on this adventure, and had taken nine months of Greek lessons with a brilliant young woman in Brighton. German by birth, and Greek by parentage, she was at university studying English law. She had also studied languages (understatement), and was a strict grammarian. Hence, I’d learnt how verbs, adjectives and so on worked, and why there are three genders (because there are), and how to decline an active verb (you politely say, ‘no thank you’), and so on, but there was no way I was ever going to pronounce the letters gamma or chi, and nor did we have time to understand reflexive verbs and sentence construction before we left. I could, though, read the language because it is handily phonetic.

At around 22.20, I noticed a ferry lumbering into port, and happened to read its name. ‘MAPINA.’ The tailgate went down just as we settled into our seats, and a crowd of waiting passengers moved forward to embark.
‘That says Marina,’ I translated, cos, let’s face it, you’ve only got to change the P to an R, so it wasn’t much. ‘I’ll check.’ A quick trot across the road to an officer at the gate, and ‘Is that this boat?’ Showing her the ticket. ‘Yes. Why does your ticket say 23.59?’ Well, I’m sure I don’t know, but that’s our boat. A run back across the road. ‘Grab the bags!’ The waiter arrived with the drinks. ‘Sorry, can’t stop.’ (We left the right money.) Another run back across the road with rucksacks hanging, and a dash to the tailgate just in time to be about the last people on – and off it went. We’d thought 23.59 was precise, but not that, when translated to Greek, it stood for 22.36.

There then followed an overnight to Rhodes, trying to sleep on the floor between the airline seats, with, for me, no luck. The boat was packed, and everyone was sleeping wherever they could find a place, but me being one of those who can’t sleep on the move, I wandered about for most of the night. Just before dawn, we were coming up on Kalymnos, so I went to wake Neil so he could see the sun rise over a Greek island on his birthday, which he did. On returning to our nest beneath the seats, we found someone had nicked our roll mat. Ah well, if they need it more… I vaguely remember the boat arrived into Akandia (I think it must have been), and the hydrofoil to Symi left at around two that afternoon. This gave us plenty of time to find it, get on it, and discover that, yes, it left at the time stated on the ticket.

A new week, a blank page (literally), as I stare at the screen wondering what on earth to tell you about today. It occurs to me that we are now in anniversary season, because this time 24 years ago was our last night of travelling before arriving here on Symi. It also occurred to me how much things have changed in that time. So, although the images here will be of Symi and purely decorative, I thought I might spend the week thinking about these changes, while recalling the journey we took to reach here.

Meanwhile…

We’d flown to Athens on 29th August, got ripped off by a taxi from the airport, and had booked into a hotel near Omonia Square for a couple of nights. Dodgy to say the least. From our crumbling concrete balcony, we were able to watch police officers moving on the homeless with their batons, and we only had to walk ten yards up the road before being offered ladies of the night and/or illegal substances. During the day, the air was thick with fumes and stifling, and breathing was a trial. We managed to visit a couple of sights, walked for hours, and decided we would move on to take a look at Paros. Why not?

When it came time to go, we gleefully checked out of our squalor, battled with a ticket seller because our pronunciation of Piraeus wasn’t perfect, took the train to the port, and searched out our boat. I can’t remember where we booked the tickets. Must have been a travel shop because this was 2002, before online booking, and we had no mobile phones. On the way to the ferry, following a large group of holidaymakers across the port, we were offered various properties to rent nearby, and had some other approaches made about who knew what because we weren’t interested.

I remember the ferry as being busy, but we found a spot up on deck with a bench to ourselves, there to sunbathe, read, watch the sea and coast go by, until we pulled into Paros roughly five or six hours later. There, we were immediately offered rooms by a variety of men and women holding boards (and, we later found out, acting illegally), and settled on a hotel a little way back from the seafront. We gave Paros the benefit of a couple of days during which time we took a look around the main town of Parikia, mainly to find inspiration for where to go next. We had two weeks of holiday fund spending, but by the end of that time, we had to find a place to settle down and live off €600 a month between us.

I can’t remember how we decided on Antiparos, but that was where we headed, and on the way to the ferry, secured accommodation on the tiny island across the water well in advance. The chap who’d found us on the street even put us on the ferry and told us someone would be waiting for us on the other side. A little ominous, but sure enough, there was a cheery chap who took us to his cousin’s father’s cousin’s… you know how it is… accommodation. This was a one-bed apartment in a new purpose-built holiday accommodation complex on the edge of the small town, a stone’s throw from the beach. Very nice, and something like €10.00 a night. There, we settled in for what was to end up being five nights, and it was during that time we decided to move on to Symi.

Changes?

I’ve not been to Athens since a year ago last Christmas, but between our first visit there and now, things have certainly changed. Even Omonia Square has been revamped, and the area has improved. The cost of visiting the Acropolis has more than doubled, but there was no museum to visit back then. The traffic pollution also seemed better, but I’ve not been there in August only in winter. I doubt you can get a room anywhere in Greece for €10.00 a night these days, but you can book ahead online. I see fewer accommodation touts in the ports, but there are more homeless people and, I assume, the same authoritative attitude towards immigrants. What’s for sure is that it is now no longer possible to survive on €600 a month; we have to pay almost that in rent just to have a roof over our heads. The average wage in Greece in 2002 was around €900 a month (not that we have ever earned that much), and I am told it is now around €1,400 a month, and we still don’t earn anywhere near that.

Anyway, more tomorrow…