Symi Snapshots

Harani and Mouragio, Yialos this morning.  The fashionable summer season may be drawing to a close but there are still plenty of boats of all shapes and sizes passing through Symi.  That is Evangelissmos church on the hill.  NOS beach and Tholos restaurant are on the point to the right.  That white building in the foreground with the arches and pointed roof is an old Italian mansion that now houses the post office and police station.

Rhea as seen from my office window.  

This old beauty often includes Symi on her summer charter route and adds some old world charm to Yialos harbour.   On the hill to the right you can just see the scar that is the motor road which connects Yialos and Chorio and continues on to Panormitis.

Far from the glamorous yachts in Yialos and Pedi Bay, this old Volkswagen van and its driver spent the night on a dirt track next to a pig sty in the Pedi valley.  Such mobile frock shops were very common when I first came to Symi and people would look out for regular visits from their favourite hawkers.  It is much harder to earn a living this way now and with the dearth of big boats and the high price of ferry tickets very few make they way as far south as Symi.  That is Pedi bay in the haze in the background. This dirt road now goes all the way through to the football stadium at the bottom but is pretty rough in places and not recommended for the average hire car.

It is not just hawkers and gypsies who find a resting place in the valley. 

This little boat is a very long way from the sea.

Pedi bay at daybreak.  Many boats prefer a quiet night, swinging to anchor in Pedi, and if I had a better camera I would share with you the twinkling lights of a floating fairytale town as many of the larger boats have wonderful decorative lighting displays in the evenings.

A room with a view at the Hotel Fiona in Chorio. Situated at the top bend in the Kali Strata the Hotel Fiona is in a very convenient location and also has excellent harbour views.

The Little Blue House catching the early morning sun.  The row of windmills marking the crest of the hill were used to grind grain that was brought to Symi from other islands and the adjoining coast of Asia Minor where, in the days of the Ottoman Empire, many Symiots had their farms.

Have a good week.

Regards

Adriana

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Peaches and Black Polyester Frocks

Agios Athanasis, one of the most important parish churches in Chorio.

A rather surprised angel above a door in Chorio

Shadow play in the lanes.

How to advertise a birthday celebration in a place with no road names or street numbers

That bulge is a flight of steps from the avli, courtyard, to the balcony above.

The bell tower at Agios Athanasis.  As many of the parish churches have similar bell towers they are often an aid to confusion rather than navigation for new comers.  It is better to look out for angels and other small quirky details as aids to finding the way home after dinner in the Chorio square.

Such close neighbourliness forces social interaction and tolerance in the community, but makes privacy a luxury enjoyed by few in the densely packed lanes of the old town.

August is drawing to a close but  here on Symi the heat and humidity continue.  The air hangs hot and heavy over Symi, stirred only by the desperate drone of thirsty bees.  Down in the harbour day trippers move slowly from shop to shop, examining sunhats and wondering if they feel up to a proper lunch or just another cold beer.  At Pachos visitors wait for the next taxi boat to the beach and fan themselves with holiday paperbacks.   As the new moon approaches the water level in the harbour is high and cars and scooters move carefully round the quay, trying to avoid the salty puddles that lap up to the shop fronts in some places. 

Up in Chorio hawkers are parked at Kampos corner, selling melons, peaches and black polyester frocks of the sort that form a wardrobe staple for village ladies over the age of 50.  Widows’ weeds that have not changed much since the Fifties and are worn for the daily trips up to the cemetery.  The Greeks don’t have much time for therapists and bereavement counsellors – the Orthodox Church and tradition provide a structure to grieving and as the dead always remain a part of family life the modern concepts of ‘closure’ and ‘moving on’ have no part.  Dishes of boiled sweet wheat and pomegranate seeds are taken up to the Agia Marina cemetery on anniversaries and All Souls in a ritual that has not changed much since Demeter mourned Persephone. There is no pressure on the bereaved to ‘bounce back’ and the steady succession of small ceremonies and memorials over time work their own healing.  The ladies in black keep the flickering oil lamps alight and the graves neat and well tended, unlike the neglected and vandalised cemeteries of the West where ‘closure’ so often means ‘out of sight is out of mind’.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

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Hot Weather Means Cold Drinks

Imagine stepping out onto the balcony of your third floor accommodation to find the bows of a ship blocking out the view. This happens a lot on the Mouragio side of the harbour in the summer.

When I was a sailor it was regarded as poor etiquette and bad seamanship to set off with laundry flapping and fenders trailing but times have evidently changed.

That black cat gets around.

Edging her way in.

It is half past seven in the morning and the Salamis Lines cruise ship, Salamis Filoxenia, has just docked in Yialos, Symi’s picturesque harbour.  Announcements over the ship’s tannoy echo round the harbour, telling the passengers where they are, what they should see and when they should report back to the ship. Salamis Lines and Louis Lines, both Cypriot cruise lines, pay regular visits to Symi during the summer.  Their cruises are not so much glamour outings as pilgrimages, stopping at the most important monastery islands in the area, and their passengers are looking for something  a bit deeper than fun in the sun.  This is why on cruise ship days one cannot find a taxi on Symi – they are all busy shuttling people across the island to Panormitis monastery.  Last year Dodecanese Seaways used to time one of their trips to take people round the island to Panormitis Bay, and the year before that it was the sadly missed Symi II which used to provide this service. This year, however, it seems to be entirely in the hands of Symi’s six taxis. After Symi the cruise goes on to Patmos, where St John the Divine is believed to have had his Revelations.

Many of Symi's old buildings have stones marked with the date on which they were dedicated.  

See if you can find this one the next time you are in Yialos.

Villa Azra, the top left apartment with the blue shutters, is a new listing on our books.  It has one of the most astonishing and distinctive pediments on Symi.  That is supposedly the Colossus of Rhodes, legs astride, but what the prone female figure beneath him is pointing at we leave to your imagination.

Hot weather means cold drinks.  

Thousands of plastic drinking straws on the wall at Sotiris' supermarket in Chorio.

Today  there is the annual festival at the small monastery on Nimos Island, with music, dancing, food and wine until late in the night.  The water taxis will be providing a shuttle service and there are posters up around the town, advertising the event.  This name day celebration is popular with locals and visitors alike and is a good reason to visit this usually inaccessible and uninhabited island.  Unlike summer festivals in other parts of the world, ones on Symi are seldom disrupted by rain.

The weather on Symi remains hot and humid with day time temperatures in the high thirties and the nights very still and sticky with mist.  We are all looking forward to the cooler days of September.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana 

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Postcards from Symi

As the temperatures moderate the island's insect life is reviving.  Thirsty bees clamour for water at every tap and animal water dish and the butterflies are back.  This beauty was in the shade house where I grow my peppers and aubergines.

Another restoration completed.  This old house on the Kali Strata was reroofed about 2 winters ago and fully replastered.  In recent weeks the paint work was completed and a fine piece of pebblework laid at the threshold.  Symi's main attraction is the island's beautiful neo-classical architecture and the Kali Strata, the nineteenth century highway of about 350 steps connecting the old top town of Chorio with Yialos, the main harbour, has some of the finest examples.

The upper reaches of the Kali Strata are deserted when I walk to work in the morning but in the evenings, when the shops and cafes are open, the same steps are humming with people.  The corner where the cat has paused is the place where I stop to photograph the yachts lying off Harani and the clock tower, a familiar view on these pages but one which changes daily throughout the year as boats come and go.

The same black cat.  I wondered what the cat was watching so intently and a few minutes later a labourer emerged from the lane, pushing a wheelbarrow.  In this climate anyone doing manual work starts at 7 a.m or even earlier to avoid the heat of the day. 

A tantalising glimpse of the harbour from between the mansions on the Kali Strata.  This keyhole reveals a different view every time I stop to look.  While changes to the buildings on the shore are more subtle and harder to discern, the orderly arrangements of Symi's hard-working 'mooring men' provide a different pattern on the water every day.

The view from my desk at Symi Visitor Accommodation gives me everything from tall ships and classics to power yachts and ferries, a view we share with the world, not just through the photographs on this blog but also via our addictive webcam.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

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Chasing Shadows

Mouragio and Harani on 15 August, traditionally the busiest day of the year in Greece.  

The island of Nimos, serene in the morning calm.  

The small white building just visible is the monastery which celebrates its name day on 23 August.

Chasing shadows down the Kali Strata

Man's Best Friend

 

Traditional Stone Balconies.

I noticed these along the quay in Yialos this morning.  

It is unusual for them all to be in such good condition and 

for a whole row to have the original stone and wrought iron work.

A very happy name day to all the Marias, Marys, Virginias, Despinas and Panayotis out there.  The Feast of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, better known as the Assumption in Catholic countries, marks the high point of the summer season in this part of the world.  From tomorrow the slow process of winding down to the winter commences and Greeks start wishing each other ‘Kalo Chimona’ (Good winter) as they bid their friends and families good bye.  In a few weeks the children head back to school and the tourist shops will replace their displays of sarongs and sunhats with scarves and schoolbags but for now everyone is making the most of what is left of  the holidays.  Symi is certainly not as crowded as in previous years and the enormous megayachts that were a feature of Yialos in 2005, 2006 and 2007 seem to have found new playgrounds. 

The August full moon is quite spectacular this year and as the nights grow longer they are also becoming a more tolerable temperature.  Symi is starting to cool off a little after the sweltering days of the solstice and July.  Midday temperatures are around 38 degrees centigrade, dropping to about 25 degrees centigrade at night.  It is still not cool enough to require shawls or an extra layer of clothing in the evening but one no longer breaks out in a sweat with the exertion of turning the pages of a taverna menu either. 

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana

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The Meltemi is Blowing Hard

Flags fluttering in a sea of rigging outside Symi police station.

Symi Morning Rush Hour - The Thursday Cruise Ship from Cyprus

A long way from home.

The meltemi is blowing hard and the day’s excursion boats have been cancelled.   The ferries, however, are running as scheduled at the moment.  It is unusual for us to have a Force 7-8 at this time of the year but not entirely unheard of. The wind should abate tomorrow and the forecast for next week is calm.  In the meantime we are enjoying cooler temperatures and excellent visibility. The wind has whipped up the sea into a froth of white crests and every secure anchorage had a boat in it last night.  Pachos, the old café below our office, is busy this morning as people are waiting to find out if the water taxis will be allowed to operate at all.

The Pedi Valley is carpeted with sun-dried leaves that crunch under foot and pile up in rustling drifts against the stones.  The leaves don’t wait for autumn in a Mediterranean climate, but start to fall from drought with the first heatwaves.  Symi last had rain at the end of May and it is now mid August.  The hillsides are a brown scrub of frazzled thyme and sage bushes, punctuated by tough silver-dry thistles.  The thistles are usually the first to recover, turning slowly green from the top down towards the end of September. The only patches of wild greenery in evidence at the moment are caper bushes and they need so little to sustain them that they grow quite happily out of stone walls and roof-top gutters.

The Water Boat in Pedi.  The fence in the foreground is the newly surface 

football pitch with athletics track at the bottom of the Pedi Valley.

Falling leaves and dry grass in the Pedi Valley.

August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a major holiday in Orthodox and Catholic countries and therefore a bank holiday in Greece.  This weekend will be the busiest weekend in the whole of the summer season as even those Greeks who cannot afford a proper holiday this year will at least take Monday off.  Here on Symi this weekend there is the finale of the BASE jumping at St George as well as the traditional celebrations in the churchyard at the Alethini monastery on the Pedi Road.  This is a bouzouki party that continues well into the early hours with plenty of traditional Greek dancing and much supported by the Symiots as well as visitors.

I have received a message that some of the details of the accident at the BASE jumping event are incorrect in my blog.  Interested parties can check out the official website www.probaseworldcup.com1 and also http://www.verena.gr/nea-dodekanisoy/symi/symbainei-tora-sobaro-atyxima-sto-festibal-symis-sto-athlima-toy-%E2%80%9Cbase-jumping%E2%80%9D-o-ellinas-athlitis-b

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

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As Bright and Cheerful as the Symi Summer Sun

Symi's new bus at the bus station in Yialos, waiting for its number plates. 

The current bus, a large beige coach is just visible beyond the 

front of the new one in the lower photograph.

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BASE Jumping at St George's Bay Symi

St George’s Bay, Symi, is currently hosting the Pro BASE Jumping World Championships, a form of extreme sport for which St George’s sheer cliff is ideally suited.  For those who don’t know what this entails, in a nutshell it involves parachuting off tall stationary objects such as bridges, steeples and cliffs while aiming to hit a specific target for which points are awarded. Unlike hang-gliding, the parachutes are not steerable and the jumpers have little directional control.  On Sunday one of the participants had an accident which according to various sources may have been caused by opening his parachute to early or being caught by a fluke gust of wind.  Whatever the cause, the outcome was that he was blown into the cliff face where, luckily, his parachute snagged, saving him from serious and possibly fatal injury.  Once it was established that his injuries were not actually life-threatening, while attempts were made to effect his rescue, the scheduled events continued.  In the meantime the Super Puma that is used for medical emergencies arrived.  This spent several hours circling over the area and the neighbouring  Pedi valley – an unusual sight at a time of year when such activity is usually associated with rich megayachties showing off their mini helicopters The injured man was eventually brought down the cliff in the early evening with shoulder and arm injuries and after being stabilized by Symi’s medical team was casevaced to Rhodes. 

On a less dramatic note, Symi’s long awaited new bus has arrived.  It is bright yellow and was driven here from Belgium.  It is not in use yet but can be admired at the kiosk by the bus stop.  There will be a photograph tomorrow.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana

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The Symi Gallery - Art in a Domestic Setting

The Symi Gallery is now open in its new temporary premises near the top of the Kali Strata.  The opening exhibition, featuring work by Ian Haycox, is entitled Art in a Domestic Setting and is open to view every day from 15.00 until dusk.  Opening hours will be extended once the electricity has been reconnected.  As was mentioned in an earlier blog, this old family mansion has been uninhabited for some time and it takes a little while on Symi to get things done.

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Heading for the Beach

Heading for the beach - the water taxis are busy.

Fresh figs.

According the stone above the door, this house was dedicated in August 1878

Our link with Pireaus - the Blue Star Diagoras. 

Those gulets had raised their anchors before realising that something far too big to argue with was coming round the corner.

Yialos - Mouragio, with Harani beyond the clock tower.

The Symi Gallery is in the upstairs of the lower of the two houses on the left of the picture.

It is August, the busiest month of the tourist season in Greece. The taxi drivers’ union has decided to call off their strike until parliament reopens at the end of the month but the taxi drivers in Rhodes, Crete, Mykonos and the other holiday islands were already fed up long ago at losing their incomes for the summer and resumed service this week. We just hope that an agreement is reached at the end of August and the whole sorry business does not start again in September. Not surprisingly the Greek car hire companies are reporting an increase in business and many tourists visiting Athens have discovered just how good the metro railway system is.



Symi is busy but not as full as the island normally is at this time of the year. With fewer Greeks able to afford holidays this year and the lack of big name events at the Symi Festival to draw Greek visitors from neighbouring islands, there are markedly fewer Greek visitors on Symi this year. The BASE jumping event at St George’s Bay has, however, attracted an unusually large number of athletic types running up and down the mountain in temperatures of 40 degrees centigrade to the astonishment of the locals. Italian and French are the main languages heard down in the harbour these days as many of the island’s foreign property owners have now arrived for the summer.

The figs are ripening in the ruins and the melon man is hawking his wares at street corners. A truck has been rattling around the island, selling pithoi, the traditional clay pots from Crete that have not changed in design since Knossos was new and bull-dancing fashionable. These days they are used for patio plants rather than for storing oil and grain but over at the folk museum at Panormitis monastery they have some on display that were certainly used for food storage in the centuries before the invention of Tupperware. While I don’t want to knock the advantages of the advent of plastics and safe food storage, there is no denying that potsherds are far more attractive in the environment that discarded plastic.

Last night was the name day festival at Megalo Sotiris, a small monastery at the top of the cliff above Panormitis. For an evocative description and photographs, please read James Collins’ blog on http://symidream.com/wp/night-culture-candles-dancing-megalis-sotiris/ As he says, “Somehow these events draw into focus a fact that is easily overlooked: You don’t have to go out of your way to feel part of the community you live in. You’re in it every day.”



Have a good weekend. And if you are on Symi, don’t forget that the Symi Gallery is opening at the top of the Kali Strata at 3 p.m tomorrow and will be open every day until dusk.



Regards,

Adriana









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