And Back to Symi

Well, here we are again, back to the usual kind of blogging after our three-week virtual trip abroad. While we were ‘away’, Neil was out and about taking photos, so over the next couple of weeks, you can expect to see a lot of morning images from around the island. I was beavering away on a new book which is now published. I’ve been ordering Christmas presents bit by bit as we’re unable to go to Rhodes to shop, and most shops here are closed too. All items that can be sourced locally have been or will be, so we’re doing what we can for the local economy, such as it is at the moment.

I don’t want to go on about lockdown and all that, but suffice to say, although it’s not that dissimilar to a typical winter on Symi (in that I stay at home a lot, and there’s not much open), the travel restrictions have, and can, cause all manner of problems. A case in point. A few days ago, someone had a fall and needed to go to Rhodes hospital. The doctors arranged all that, and off the patient went. Later, it was discovered that an operation was required, and they would have to stay in Rhodes to wait the 10 days before that op, and then be there for about a week after it. This kind of thing happens, but when you’re on your own (waiting in a hotel), and no-one can visit, you don’t know anyone, and you are injured or unwell, it’s a very isolating, not to say boring, turn of events. A friend was able to go and take emergency supplies like clothes, but only after an interview with the police who at first refused the trip, and an interview with the port authorities who eventually allowed it but on strict conditions. And conditions are very strict here in Greece, although that doesn’t stop some people finding ways around the rules and accidentally finding themselves in ad hoc, masked meetings on the street or at courtyard gates.

But, back to me, me, me and my latest book under my pen name. If you’re interested in what it was like to live rough, as we’d call it now, on the streets of the Victorian East End, or be a refugee in the 1880s, or an immigrant in those times, and if you have a feel for the romantic, you might like to click this link and discover Banyak & Fecks. This can be read as a standalone novel, but it is also a prequel to a series.

 

 

Also, while we were reminiscing about Canada, I’ve started working on another model kit, and there will be photos and updates about that over the coming days. I’ve been giving Harry his piano instruction via video calls, a bit of an odd thing, but as he can now speak the language of music, we’re doing well. ‘You want your third on E, thumb under… Bb, D, G, then down a semitone in a sequence… It’s not called nothing, it’s a crotchet rest,’ and so on. He’s got five scales under his belt now, or under his fingers, including Bb and A, and we’re starting on scales of two octaves and working on pieces with right and left-hand chords. Meanwhile, schools are being conducted online, and everyone is getting on with life as best they can.

We’ve had good weather most of the time, and we’re still able to go walking in the mornings without a coat, though we have had some rain. The triumph there is, thanks to Sam and Neil (not Sam Neil, he doesn’t live here) painting the bathroom roof a while ago, we’ve had no water dripping into the bathroom or into the porch. Instead, it’s started to drip through the pointless aircon in the mousandra, through the floorboards and onto the bed. So now, I am heading up to the roof to cover the aircon unit in something to stop that happening next time it rains.

More chitchat tomorrow.

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One Photo per Day

Today, I have given myself the impossible task of choosing one photo per day from the 21-day trip we’ve all virtually just been on. You may have seen some on the posts, but others you won’t have seen. A lot of activities and people have been missed, but with over 1,000 images to choose from, that’s going to happen.

So, to round off the last three weeks travelling and before I return to the more usual Symi blog on Monday, here are 21 images that kind of represent the 21 days of the trip we started before the ‘thing’ took hold, and finished at five minutes before a national lockdown.

See you on Monday!

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The end of the line
Holiday Day 21 (March 22^nd) Piraeus to home with minutes to spare.

 

Piraeus

We really are on the very last leg of the journey now, as long as we can get onto the ferry with our pdf copies of our tax information now stored on our phones.
From our shared room to the intimacy of the lift and down to the dining area – where we had to sit at separate tables – the morning started well and, for the first time in days, with no stress. Apart from the nagging concern that our tax docs wouldn’t work, in which case I had the phone number of the British Consulate on speed dial. The ferry was at 15.00, and we booked a welcome pickup for 13.00 because you can board the ferry two hours before sailing. That’s a handy tip for if you ever make the trip from Piraeus to Symi.

The Blue Star leaves Piraeus at 15.00, and its dock is a long way from the harbour gates, about a 45-minute walk, so I’d take a taxi. Where there is a courtesy bus from ferry to gates when you arrive, there isn’t for when you leave. If you take the airport bus, you need the X96 which, last time we did it, cost €5.00 each and took one hour forty-five minutes. It should be slightly less time than that, but roadworks had uncovered a site of archaeological interest, and there was traffic congestion. Happens a lot in Athens as there’s so much history beneath your feet – see the airport museum for an example. The Blue Star for Symi leaves from Gate E1, about as far as you can get from the underground and main streets, but the X96 terminates there, so that’s easy enough.

Anyway, if you arrive early, you can (usually) board early, and that’s handy because some of the ferries, like the Patmos, have dining rooms where you can sit down to lunch before departure and have a leisurely meal as you set sail. The Patmos dining room closes at 16.00 I think and reopens later for dinner, and it’s a grand experience. However, we were on the Chios which only has a canteen, self-service (still nice food though, and lots of it).

Arriving early also gives you time to sort out your cabin and watch the loading going on at the stern; always a comedy show.

That’s for later. Meanwhile, back at the hotel, we had breakfast, hung about, packed and finally said our goodbyes to the helpful staff and wished them well, fully aware that we were their last guests to leave before the hotel shut for… who knew how long.

So, we’d closed London shows, cities, flights, bars and now hotels, it felt like, and with a national lockdown happening at six the next morning, we really did feel we were being chased, and the trap at the end of the game of ‘Mousetrap’ was about to fall.

Aboard the last mode of transport

Taxi ride to boat, check, exchange paper for tickets, check, find tax details on phone… Find tax details on phone… I’ve found Neil’s so mine can’t be far away… Walk across to boat, show tickets and Neil’s tax details,… fine. Phew… Search for mine… ‘I have them here somewhere…’ They were right there, don’t say I deleted them. ‘Honest, guv, I’ve got them right here. Do you want to see my marriage license?’ Maybe it was my faffing, maybe it was because they were glad to have passengers at all, but, ‘That’s okay, I believe you,’ happened, and I got away with it. Only to find the document 30 seconds later and return to proudly wave my screen in the guy’s face. ‘I wasn’t making it up!’

Checking into your cabin on the Blue Star is a hotel reception kind of experience, and never a hassle as long as you’ve booked in advance. We found ours a deck up and to the front. Not the bow view we’d had on the way out, but a side view and a very nice cabin where the bears were able to watch the ships coming and going.

That done, it was up top to watch the Harold Llyod meets Keystone Cops affair taking place at the loading ramp, where, I decided I would pop back and get my jacket as the weather was, for the first time in days, starting to cloud over and the temperature was dropping. So, back along the passage to the cabin, insert key, green light comes on… nothing happens. Try again… Nothing. Check door number with that written on the key card’s wallet. Correct. Try again, green light, handle moves, nothing. So, you do the whole process again just in case you hadn’t got it right the first or second time and still no joy. Back to reception to apologise (why?) for not being able to get in, and an escort back to the cabin by a man in overalls feeling like I’m suddenly in Prisoner Cell Block H.

This mechanic also went through the process several times before whipping a screwdriver out of nowhere and doing something to the lock before inserting a real key and letting me in. Phew! Back to reception, given another cabin, back to the first one, moved house, bears and all, and all wardrobes checked. New door and lock checked by me and man in overalls (and Paddington), and satisfied, I went back to the stern deck, got halfway there and realised I’d forgotten the jacket I went back for in the first place.

17 hours at sea

The journey down to Symi takes around 17 hours, depending on the route, and we were due to arrive just before five the next morning. During the afternoon, we watched various grey islands go past, rain-spattered from the dull sky, took a turn on the boat deck, played quoits, took tea in the first-class Palm Court Tearoom, played cards with Lord Astor, had a guided tour with Thomas Andrews, counted the lifeboats, and generally filled in time with other fantasies.

We passed between Kea and Kinthos, by Siros, Mykonos and Naxos as the sun set, all the time heading south towards home.

Back to my ‘not being able to sleep while on the move’ habit, I was up during the night to watch other islands pass and see their ports in the darkness.

I can’t remember what this one was, so if anyone recognises it…

Being unable to sleep much, at least I was awake in time, so we didn’t miss our port of call. Actually, when you have a cabin, the receptionist rings you about 30-minutes before you are due to arrive, so in theory, you can’t sleep in. We didn’t and were glugging down coffee by three in the morning, bleary-eyed on the deserted stern deck. Only one café stays open 24/7, usually in the bow which means a long, meandering stagger with two cups of hot coffee. You do your best not to appear drunk as you weave from one side to the next past reception and sleeping passengers, but unless it’s a flat calm, it’s very hard to achieve any kind of dignified result.

Finally, at about 4.45, we rounded Nimos, and the pin-prick lights of Symi came into view. We collected our bags, double-checked the cabin and readied ourselves for departure.

Although there was hardly anyone on the ferry, we still managed to distantly bump into a neighbour of twenty yards away from our house. He had enough luggage for the entire Von Trapp family to escape with, plus a yappy-dog, so we helped him down the steps to the unloading garage, ears splitting with the sound of the sirens when the boat is reversing. I don’t know if you ever saw that remarkable cultural event, ‘Starlight Express’, but if you did, think of the pre-race sequence when warning lights whirled, the barriers steamed into life and ascended from the set, and the siren screamed. It’s as noisy and dramatic as that but with added clunks from somewhere below. The drawbridge was lowered, and there was the sight of home for the first time in three weeks. Well, the sight of a concrete wall and the rockface above, but it was one we knew well.

The end of the adventure

We’d finally reached home after travelling 13,000 miles in three weeks, which is more than halfway around the circumference of the planet. It didn’t feel like it, but then it didn’t feel like three weeks either. It did feel a little bit like a race to the finish line as the 06.00 lockdown rapidly approached, but, I am pleased to say, we got in just under the wire at 5.55.

So, folks, thank you for coming on the journey with us. I hope it’s kept you entertained through the first three weeks of our lockdown. Let’s face it, without it, I’d have been writing about nothing but the weather for the past three weeks, as that’s about all I’ve seen. There is some Symi news to catch up on though, and we’ll get back to that from Monday next week. Tomorrow, I will post some of my favourite phots from his last journey, possibly our last travelling for some time, years maybe, and after that, the normal Symi Dream blogging service will be resumed.

Mind you, our lockdown here in Greece may be extended beyond 7^th, possibly to the 21^st, so I might have to think of something else to talk about. Who knows? This could be the end of one adventure and the beginning of another.

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Passports, Tickets, Money, Marriage license…
Holiday Day 20 (March 21^st)

I’m still titling these posts ‘holiday’, but it turned into more of an adventure. When I left you yesterday, we had just taken off from Heathrow, and here we are, still flying, only now, we’re flying over Split, in Croatia where we went on our honeymoon a couple of years ago. You might notice that the clock on my phone (this is a screenshot) was two hours out. It had kept up with the time zone changes through Canada, but somewhere on the way back, started to do odd things. We weren’t flying over Croatia ten minutes after take-off; more like a couple of hours. Anyway, we were on our way to our next pitstop on the long journey home.

Landing in Athens at some time in the early morning, and having collected our bags, we found our taxi driver and greeted him in the standard way, by touching elbows and tapping our shoes together, a tradition started back in the early days of the Masons, I believe. I told you about Welcome Pickups and the easy way they do things, but I might not have mentioned that they also supply their guests with maps of the city, talks about what to see (if you ask for them) and bottles of water. In this case, we were also supplied with a facemask and told we were required to wear it. This was the first time we’d had to adhere to a guideline rather than be politely asked to consider the option in that British way we’d seen on TV back in Heathrow. Apart from steaming up my glasses, it wasn’t an issue at all, but it did add to the unsettling dystopian feeling of it all.

Delivered safely to the hotel not far from the seafront in Piraeus, we checked in and crammed into the lift. It was one of those where, if you have more than two people in it, you’d better be married or be very liberal in your views, and clunked and clanked up to the second floor and our room.

There’s not a lot to tell you about most of this day, except things were still changing rapidly. Unable to sleep as it was, by now, breakfast time, we went downstairs for something to eat and discovered that although we had no choice but to be intimate in the lift, there was no chance of dining together.

Our job for the day was to change boat tickets, and I set about the Blue Star website looking up the nearest boking office that was open and the sailing times, only to discover that the law had changed overnight. In order to return home, we needed to prove that we were tax resident on Symi. This measure was put in place pretty quickly and was designed to prevent people from the mainland fleeing to holiday homes on the islands and potentially spreading the virus. It was Saturday morning, we wanted to change the tickets asap, and of course, we weren’t travelling with our tax folders and paperwork. So… A quick think while standing on the balcony watching some kind of weird delivery to and from a bank across the road, and we contacted Jenine.

Being one of those semi-organised people, I knew exactly where our tax papers were, as in: which room, desk drawer, folder and under what other piles of other documents and Jenine volunteered to head down to our house, find them and send photos. Meanwhile, I also emailed our accountant, assuming I’d not hear anything because it was Saturday, but all the same, explained our predicament. Stelios replied almost immediately with a helpfully vague ‘Ok’, and with nothing else to do but our best, we set off to the port and the ticket office. At this point, you could still go outside without SMS permission, but there was queuing at supermarkets, everything else was shut, apart from the peripteron, and most people were masked. I say ‘most’, we saw about ten, whereas usually in Piraeus, you can hardly move no matter what time of day.

A decent walk later, we found the Blue Star offices open and empty apart from two ladies behind the counter wearing masks, so we put ours on, and stood behind the tape that distanced us from the counter, where there was already a Perspex shield in place. (Very organised.) I know it sounds odd, but when we set off for this trip, I thought to bring documents with me that proved I lived in Greece. I was thinking of Brexshit at the time, not a pandemic. We both had our residency permits of course, and my Greek driving license and Neil had his Irish passport, and in the end, we didn’t need any of them to get into the country. But, what I also had just in case, was a copy of our civil partnership registration document from Symi Town Hall. We didn’t have our tax papers by then, but after an explanation to the lady behind the counter, I handed over the certificate to which she said, ‘Congratulations! But on Symi?’ as if we’d pulled off some impossible feat. Her colleague was equally as charming and enthusiastic about our marital status, and our tickets were changed. We would, however, still need our tax papers to actually step foot on the boat which was leaving the next day at 3pm.

Back to the hotel.

Where we spent a very quiet afternoon in our room, reading, popping out once for a sandwich and some cream for Neil’s hands which, thanks to his allergies and various different hand-sans, were now blotched and itching. As were his legs and arms. The sedate raid on the bank opposite went on well into the afternoon and gave us something to watch while not reading, and later, we had dinner at the hotel – the only table – and noticed a new sign by the compact lift.

We were leaving the next day, 22^nd, so that wasn’t a problem for us, but it was sad. One of the very helpful and cheery young staff behind the counter had only just started working here, and her ambition was to work in hospitality. Hopefully, she, and the others, will be able to resume their dream soon. (I just looked on Booking.com, and the hotel appears to be open again, which is good news. It’s the Savoy Hotel on Iroon Polytechniou Avenue, if you are interested.)

Finally, later that evening, we got to bed and slept for the first time in I can’t remember how long, and by that time, both Jenine and Stelios had come up trumps with emailed tax documents, so we were all set for the journey home.

I know that wasn’t an exciting post, but I didn’t want to leave the story hanging. Tomorrow, I’ll round things off by talking about the boat journey. I’ll finish today by saying that at some point over this weekend, while still on the move, we learnt that a national lockdown was due to start at 06.00 on Monday morning, one hour after our ferry was due to arrive at Symi.

To be continued… (And, thankfully, concluded.)

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Reshuffle
Holiday Day 19 (March 20^th) A Friday reshuffle

I woke up around six the next day (I had a lie-in) knowing that we had a long day and a long night ahead what with overnighting in Athens airport to look forward to. What I didn’t know then was that we weren’t going to end up doing that at all, and wouldn’t get to sleep until the following night, about 40 hours later.

Hanging around

There was no rush for anything that morning, so we let the bears sleep in, took showers, and from the bedroom window, watched planes taking off. I think we saw one in the space of an hour; a bit on the slow side for one of the world’s busiest airports. There was a strange sense of ‘nothing happening’ across the distance between us and the terminal and runway, made even more creepy by the grey morning mist.

Downstairs, the bar/dining/reception area of the hotel was equally as calm and quiet, with a few people up and about, talking in respectfully hushed whispers as if we were in church. Maybe it was because it was still early. The wide-screen TVs were on, and the volume turned to an audible but low level, the flight announcement board showed more cancelled flights, and the staff went about their business calmly and with smiles. Remember, we were not yet at the mask-wearing stage, that precaution was only rumoured.

Yesterday (March 19th), the UK government “no longer deems COVID-19 to be a high consequence infectious disease.” Also yesterday, Northern Island reported its first death, the MoD formed a special force to support public services and civilian authorities, the Bank of England cut interest rates in an emergency measure and the government released £1.6b for local authorities, and £1.3b for the NHS so that 15,000 patients could be released from hospital. Prior to this, various countries had put border restrictions in place, cinemas had been closing, the BBC rescheduled programmes, there had been 104 deaths in the UK, the pound had dropped to its lowest level since 1985, theatres had closed, and the government had advised people not to travel if they could help it, work from home if they could, and, if you wouldn’t mind awfully, try not to mix with anyone there’s a good chap, and anyone over 70 should consider this advice “particularly important.” Remember, they were also telling everyone this wasn’t ‘a high consequence infectious disease.’ So, you can see why there was no great sense of urgency at our hotel, more a sense of ‘how inconvenient.’

Compare that to Greece:

February 27th. All carnival events in the country were cancelled
March 10th. The government suspended the operation of educational institutions of all levels.
March 13th. All cafes, bars, museums, shopping centres, sports facilities and restaurants in the country were closed.
March 16th. All retail shops were closed, and all services in all areas of religious worship of any religion or dogma were suspended.

End of. Get over it.

While here at Heathrow, we had breakfast, read our books, stood outside to get fresh air, and spent most of the day in our room. We washed our hands and sanitised them at every opportunity, and waited for the evening when we were to taxi over to the airport to wait for our midnight flight to Athens.

And then…

We were sitting in the reception area, well away from everyone else as most people were distancing, when I had a text message from Aegean to let me know our onward flight to Rhodes had been cancelled. That was it. ‘Your flight to Rhodes is cancelled, please check with your travel agent…’ Etc. As I was our travel agent, I checked with myself and thought, ‘What are we going to do about this?’ It was about three in the afternoon by then, and I took the executive decision to go to the airport now and see what was what.

So, we packed (checking wardrobes for left items), settled up, called a cab and scuttled over to the airport dreaming up all kinds of worst-case scenarios and thinking how interesting it would be to walk from the UK to Greece and experience the life of the refugee.

It turned out to be a timely move on our part, as we found the Aegean desk half an hour before it closed, confirmed our flight was cancelled, though the midnight one was still running (phew!) – though would probably be the last for several days. ‘Could we change our onward flight?’ was the first thought because often the very early morning shuttle from Athens to Rhodes is taken off and passengers moved to the one a couple of hours later, so that really wasn’t anything new. Answer: no, the next available flight from Athens to Rhodes that wasn’t full was a week on Monday, so that was no good.
‘Right!’ he says, adopting a Basil Fawlty voice as he strides across the concourse to find a place to sit and think. ‘Let’s start again.’

We still had Blue Star tickets for the following Tuesday, 24^th, part of our original plan. It shouldn’t be too hard to bring them forward and change them to the Sunday 22^nd sailing, as long as we could get to the office in Piraeus, assuming it was open as most other outlets in the city had closed a few days before. A fair amount of photo tapping occurred (not that FBI kind of phone tapping), and we cancelled the Plaza Hotel room booking for the following night and the Dodecanese tickets for the Sunday. There was no point trying to follow that route. The final leg of the journey had to start from Athens, and flying on from there was out of the question. I didn’t expect any refunds for those bookings which had been made the day before and now cancelled with short notice, but within a few minutes, the Plaza had refunded me the pre-paid room, and a little later, Dodecanese Seaways did the same. A ray of sunshine in a rather turbulent sunset, you might say.

All that left us with a 3.00 a.m. arrival in Athens and a potential three days there to wait for the ferry. So, back on the phone, more tapping and searching, and I came up with a hotel in Piraeus that was not only still open (many had voluntarily closed already), but one which also offered meals. That was handy, remember, because restaurants and cafes etc. had already been ordered to shut, unlike the British ones where we were able to have dinner in departures.

A hotel booked, we still had the journey to Piraeus, so I got back on the Welcome Pickups website (highly recommended) and booked a car to meet us at the airport. I’ve mentioned this company before, and since first using them a couple of years ago, now always use them when I arrive in Athens. You swap your details, phone number and even photo with a stranger as if you’re on some dating site, and they send you a picture of your driver and his/her phone number in return. You also pay in advance, so you not only are you not going to be ripped off, you also know who is meeting you and don’t get in the wrong cab.

That sorted, there was nothing to do but ‘relax’ until called to board which was due to happen at 23.20.

Closing down behind

As I said, we had plenty of time to hang around a quiet departures and find somewhere that was open so we could have supper and chill with a glass of wine while we waited. Most of the shops were closed, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of an edict or if they were always closed at that time of night, but we didn’t need to buy anything, so that wasn’t a problem. A pre-flight drink or three was more important and that all went smoothly, though not cheaply, until 23.00. Then, returning from a walk around, we decided on one last glass of wine at the gate, as it was right next to the shops and bars (handy).

We headed back to the last place we’d been only to be turned away as the shutters were pulled down. The government had, within the last hour or so, ordered that all bars and so forth across the country had to close at eleven. And they did. They couldn’t have made it 11.15, could they? Ah well… We found a sushi place that was somehow still able to stay open and even more miraculously had cans of G&T in its fridge, so going against the grain, we had one of those each while waiting to board.

Sorry if this reads like a list of obstacles and details but that was how that day and evening was, but finally, at 23.30 we boarded our plane, and at roughly one minute past midnight, it took off. Good old Aegean Airlines, I say. We didn’t have any accidental priority boarding on this flight, but we did have those seats near the escape hatch with extra legroom. The nearest seats in front of us were a good four feet away and the guys there were wearing masks.
The only notable thing about the flight was that we had to fill in forms before we landed. These asked what’s now become common, your name, address, phone number etc., but also your onward journey details, hotel, when you will reach home and so on. This was before the phone app that’s now in place and the other forms now in use, and there was also talk of random testing.
Maybe because we arrived at 3.00 in the morning, there were no testing stations, but the flights before us had all been tested, or the passengers had, at least, and we were only slightly disappointed we didn’t get a turn. (As it turned out, we were fine and still are, in case you were worried.)

Just to recap. So far on this trip, since joining the train in Toronto: The Canadian stopped running after we left it. The CN Tower closed to visitors after we dined there. Vancouver shut as we were leaving. The bars in Heathrow shut as we left. The shows we’d seen in London two weeks earlier were now dark, the tourist attractions shut, and we’d closed most of London too, it felt like. It didn’t bode well for the next two days, and we weren’t going to be happy and secure until we were on that ferry and it had pulled out of Piraeus. More about that to come as the race to reach home continues tomorrow.

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