Late Season Glamour

The tourist season may be drawing to a close on Symi but this quiet Greek island in the Dodecanese is still on the mega yacht cruising itinerary. Skat, the quasi-naval superyacht built by Lurssen for one time Microsoft Software Engineer and twice space tourist, Charles Simonyi, pulled into Yialos last night, giving the locals a touch of late season glamour. Painted battle ship grey, bristling with radar and communications gear and sporting a dinky helicopter, it looks sufficiently intimidating to be able to round the Horn of Africa without fear of attack from Somali pirates.

Megayachts and software millionaires aside, there are not many people around on Symi apart from residents, Symiot and otherwise. Pick up trucks stacked high with café tables and chairs inch round the waterfront and all the trappings of summer are being packed away into sheds and storerooms. The cafes that stay open are rigging winter awnings and dusting off their patio heaters. With fewer tourists staying on Symi or visiting from Rhodes, many businesses are working shorter hours and employing fewer staff. Others, like Symi Dream, are closing for a few weeks break and will then reopen in their winter format.

Temperatures are still mild for the time of the year but the weather is expected to break this weekend as the low pressure system that is working its way across Italy and mainland Greece reaches us, bringing several days of thunderstorms and, we hope, some much needed rain. http://www.ekathimerini.com/ has published the following:

Weather warning

The General Secretariat for Civil Protection yesterday issued a warning to local authorities that heavy rainfall and thunderstorms are likely to affect much of the country today and tomorrow. The Ionian Sea is expected to be the worst affected with southerly winds forecast to reach 8 or even 9 on the Beaufort scale. Winds are likely to intensify in the central and southern Aegean on Sunday and could affect scheduled passenger ferry itineraries

So it sounds as though winter is on its way!

This will be my last news update from Symi for a while as I am going on leave. I will be back on line on Symi on 10 November.

Regards,

Adriana

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Still a Lively Place

It is a hot and hazy day on Symi. Occasional thunder clouds drift by and the temperature is once again hitting 30. Rain and showers are forecast for the whole of Greece but all we have had so far on Symi has been mud sprinkles and fleeting rainbows. Day trippers, fooled by the low clouds into thinking it will be a chilly day, are peeling off unwanted coats and fleeces and sunning themselves on the benches around Yialos. There’s not much movement among the water taxis and the beaches are packing away their sun beds and umbrellas for another year. In a few short weeks local boats will be hauled out on the same beaches in Pedi where visitors soaked up the summer sun in July and August.

At night there are fewer lights to be seen in the harbour as more houses are closed up for the winter and there are fewer people around. Evenings in the tavernas are cosier with more locals and fewer visitors. As you can see from the Out and About photos taken at Giorgio’s on Friday night, Chorio is still a lively place to be late in the season.

There have been significant changes to the ferry schedules as the shipping companies move towards their winter services and there are fewer boats around. For instance there is no longer an evening connection on Wednesdays, unless one waits for the big boat from Pireaus, the Ierapetra, which is currently scheduled to leave Rhodes at 10.30 p.m and passes through Symi at midnight. Extra trips to Panormitis are also being squeezed in to allow for the forthcoming festival on 8 November. Over the coming weeks more and more hawkers and stall keepers will arrive as the Panormitis Festival is as much a travelling market as a major religious event on the Dodecanese calendar.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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The Promise of Spring Flowers and Big Bangs

It is a wild and windy autumnal day on Symi. Strong south easterly squalls are buffeting the boats in the harbour and the taxi boats are bobbing forlornly on the quay. I think we can safely say that summer is now over in our corner of the Dodecanese and winter is not far away. It is still quite mild on Symi with temperatures in the mid twenties are midday and the sea is still warm so while it might be a bit windy for sunbathing, swimming in sheltered waters is perfectly possible. The southerly winds that bring the clouds and rain tend to be warm winds from Africa and when the sun breaks through it can be quite hot and bright. The long range forecast remains unsettled with more blustery days ahead.

While it might not be beach weather it is certainly coffee and shopping weather and the harbour is humming. As many of the tourist businesses are closing down for the winter and prefer to sell off their stock rather than store it through the winter, there are plenty of bargains to be had. Other businesses are undergoing the seasonal transition from tourist shop to general dealer and the souvenirs of Symi are being replaced with heaters, fleeces, scarves and school satchels. This being Greece, however, it will be a while yet before the first Christmas items appear in the shops on Symi. First there is the big Panormitis Festival on 8 November and some of the locals are already closing up their houses and moving across to the monastery at the south-west end of the island.

While the 2009 season may be drawing to a close many of Symi’s regular visitors are already making plans for 2010 and with both Easters coinciding we could see an early start to the season with more visitors than usual in April, drawn by the promise of spring flowers and big bangs.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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Fluffy Clouds

It is a mild autumn day on Symi with fluffy clouds gathering around the horizon and the smell of wet earth on the breeze. Perhaps there is some truth in the forecast for showery weather tonight. It is the season for heavy dews and misty mornings as the winter rains approach and the first light snowfalls are expected on the mountains in northern Greece in the next few days. There are still quite a few visitors around on Symi even though 15 October usually marks the beginning of the end of the tourist season on Symi and many tourist businesses make that their closing date for the season. Here on Symi those beach tavernas that are still open have reduced their menus to the absolute minimum and are starting to pack away their sunbeds and umbrellas as the water taxis are not running as frequently and many of the beaches are in shadow from quite early in the day. The Cyclades has already battened for the winter and the gypsies are heading south on the car ferries with their vanloads of kitschy quilts, fleecy pyjamas and sensible slippers. It is only a matter of days before the carpet sellers arrive.

It is not only the hawkers that are heading south. Symi is filling up with cruising yachts waiting for their winter berths to become available in marinas along the adjacent Turkish coast and charter flotillas heading back to their bases. In the evenings Pedi bay is a floating village of bobbing riding lights and Dino, the chandler in the lane below our office, is busy every day measuring out chains and warps for those who want to improve their ground tackle against the winter storms.

Have a good week. I am going home to watch my carrots grow.

Regards,
Adriana

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October on Symi

We are having an exceptionally warm October on Symi this year with midday temperatures hitting 30 degrees centigrade or more. Despite rumours of rain the month has remained dry so far and if anything those who booked their Greek island holidays for late in the season are enjoying better weather than those who came in mid September. Symi is humming with an interesting mix of nationalities at the moment as apart from the usual British, Scandinavian and German visitors who frequent the island at this time of the year, there are lot of Eastern European, Russian and Balkan visitors on Symi at the moment. As the tourist season is shorter in the Ionian, Sporades and Cyclades and in the more northern parts of the Aegean, late season visitors to Greece tend to favour Symi and Rhodes where things only really wind down completely at the end of October and the chances of good weather are higher.

ANES and Dodecanese Seaways have released their October schedules on line. There have been a few ferry dramas recently as the north bound Dodecanese Seaways catamaran broke down on Wednesday morning and no replacement was provided, resulting in the cancellation of the south bound routes from Symi to Rhodes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings this week. As always we advise visitors to check with the ferry agents before travelling.

Have a good weekend and if you are on Symi don’t forget to visit the new art exhibition featuring the work of Jyette Loehr which opens at the Symi Gallery tonight.

Regards,
Adriana

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New Symi Art Exhibition

"The third exhibition at The Symi Gallery will be by Danish artist Jytte Loehr. Entitled 'Another Day On Earth', Jytte has exhibited around the world, but now brings her work to Symi where she also has a house. Open evening this Friday (9thOctober) at 7.30pm onwards. Drinks and refreshments, all welcome.

The exhibition will run from the 9th October to 6th November.

Born 1943, Copenhagen, Jytte studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, has worked in studios in Copenhagen, Paris, Greece and in Japan. Jytte Loehr has exhibited every year since 1978 in Copenhagen and participated in individual as well as group exhibitions in Brussels, Paris, London, Athens,Rhodes, Vilnius, Barcelona, Rostock and Budapest.

ARTIST`S STATEMENT

Symi has for 30 years been my place for inspiration, for concentration and enjoyment of the silence in my studio on Kali Strata.

My paintings are stories from the universe, inspired from the immediate reality that surrounds me. With the colours I want to meet others in silence. I leave it to the observer to perceive the person’s own landscapes.

http://www.symiart.com/

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A Sense of Relief

Proud on the Vigla the wind turbine maintains a static majesty with its head in the clouds

Symi’s coffee shops are humming with optimism as the results of yesterday’s Greek parliamentary election are discussed and there is plenty of animated discussion drifting up through my windows from Pachos. Symi has always been PASOK country with strong links to the Papandreou Foundation there is a sense of relief on the island now that the results are out.

It is a sunny day with small plump clouds drifting low across a bright blue sky. As the tourist season draws to a close and the visitors are departing the people of Symi are making preparations for the winter. Leaky roofs are being repaired, gutters replastered and cisterns cleaned to make the most of the winter rains when they start in earnest in the next few weeks. The greengrocers and supermarkets have taken delivery of pockets of onion sets, the tiny immature onions which, when planted in rows on the terraces provide Symiots with spring onions – the climate here is usually too extreme to run to maincrop onions. As soon as enough rain has fallen to break the crust, terraces will be ploughed and spring onions, broad beans, spinach, chard and grazing grasses planted. Up on the mountain the squills are already punching through the parched earth and the sage bushes are turning green, nutured by heavy nocturnal dews.

The views in today’s photographs are taken from the road to Panormitis that snakes up the Vigla and show Chorio, the Castro and portions of Yialos and Harani.

Chorio with the new sports stadium taking shape on the right, at the top of the Pedi Valley.  The sharp ridge divides Pedi from Yialos.   The edge of Harani is visible on the left with the island of Nimos in the background. The little white blob is the Nimos monastery. 

Agios Trianda church in the foreground with the Kastro mound behind.  The big sweep of Chorio's many houses, showing just how many ruins have been rebuilt in recent years.  In the background on the left some of the houses of Mavrovouni, one of the hills shaping the harbour, are just visible. There is a shipping passage between Nimos and the tongue of land that is visible in the photograph (Analipsi - Nimborio)

A clearer view of the Kastro with Agios Thannasis church in the foreground and Evangelismos church on the hill above Harani in the background. 

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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A Golden Autumn Day

It is a golden autumn day on Symi and the bees are drowsing in the tamarisk trees. Temperatures are in the mid twenties and a light breeze is riffling the water in Yialos. The water boat is lying alongside at the clock tower and the recent water shortages in the Mavrovouni section of the harbour have been resolved. They were caused by a break down in the pumping station serving that neighbourhood and parts had to be brought in from Athens. Living on a small Greek border island means accepting that there are occasional unavoidable glitches in the infrastructure but that is a small price to pay for being here, as you can see from the photos.

With the election only days away the whole of Greece is now on the move. Regular readers of this column will remember that in Greece voting is compulsory and has to be done in the place where you are on the voters’ roll, which is usually the place of your birth. This means that Symiots now living in Athens have to return to Symi to vote, while Athenians working Symi have to go to Athens for the weekend - the boats and planes will be very busy this weekend.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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