Symi Gold - Chronia Polla!

A sumptuous gold and crimson angel peeps through a window in Chorio.  In the Greek Orthodox church, the 12 days of Christmas come to an end with the Epiphany celebrations on 6 January so decorations stay up until then.  We have many name days as well as Independence Day, Carnival and Clean Monday and the whole of Lent before the first Easter egg appears in the shops here. Everything is appropriate to its season in Greece and looked forward to with enjoyment. 

A lovingly painted close of houses on the narrow one way street that passes close to the heart of Chorio.

The gleaming white wash of summer is washing away on the Kali Strata, replaced by a mossy garden between the old paving stones.

The dividing line between town and country is very blurred on Symi and at this time of the year I never know what I will see on my walk down the Kali Strata. These two seem quite happy.  It is not very clear in the photograph but there is a small Christmas tree, complete with baubles, at the bottom of the steps on the left of the picture.

The buildings on the right have been painted the traditional way, with ochre pigment mixed with asvesti (whitewash). The ones on the left have been painted with acrylic paint. Both are  now deteriorating but I find the ones on the right with their diverse damp patterns as the moisture seeps through the pigment much more interesting than the ones on the left where the damp simply builds up behind the paint which then drops off the wall.

A small freighter sheltering in Yialos. The original name is still visible on the stern - The River Dart of London.  She's a long way from home.

The ochre and brown colour scheme is a legacy of the Italian occupation.  Before that, Symi's houses were painted loulaki, a wonderful warm blue made by mixing azure and indigo pigments with whitewash.  Fragments of this can sometimes still be seen on old ruins up in Chorio, around the Kastro.

The vines are turning russet in the cold.

Oranges ripen in an abandoned garden on the Kali Strata.

The Virginia creepers have shed their leaves, revealing a crumbling balcony beneath.

Happy New Year and Chronia Polla to all my readers and fans around the world.  It is hard to believe that I first started writing this blog in March, 2001, long before broadband, digital cameras and blogging services.  I used to write up my two or three paragraphs - no pictures in those days - and email them by dial up to Mike Gadd,  our webmaster in the UK, who used to paste them onto a webpage for me.  When the page got too full, he would archive it and start another. Blogging has become a lot easier since then and I am also on my fourth camera but I still find things that catch my eye that I want to share with you. Symi is that sort of place. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Symi is experiencing a proper winter this year.  Rainy and stormy days have outnumbered dry ones and temperatures are low.  Those of you who follow Symi Visitor Accommodation on Facebook will know that it snowed on the mountain on Friday. The long range forecast is rain for the next few days with gale force winds on Thursday and Friday followed by very low temperatures over the weekend and early next week so we may well see more of the white stuff on the mountains. Today is a high of 11 and a low of 8 but by Saturday it is likely to be 9 and 4 and on Sunday a decidedly chilly high of 6 and low of 2.  Symi's glorious neo-classical architecture with its high ceilings and inward opening windows does not lend itself well to heating and the 'Symi layered look' owes more to practicality than sartorial style.  Hats, scarves and gloves are often worn indoors and are considerably cheaper than turning the air conditioner on to 'heat' and watching the electricity meter whiz round.  Many people have wood burning stoves these days - even the Stani patisserie next to our office has one glowing away in the corner of the shop, the chimney routed out of the top window and up onto the roof.

Friday is the Epiphany and a serious holiday in Greece. In Yialos, Harani and Pedi booths decorated with oranges are set up for the service and the priests cast crucifixes into the freezing waters for young men to recover.  With a gale warning and torrential rain expected, they will be brave young men indeed.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana

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Happy New Year!

Snow on the hills behind Athens on the morning of 7 January 2015, as see through the window of our flight to Rhodes.

Rolling  in the deep - Kamiros Skala, the tiny Rhodian port that serves Halki, during a shipping ban on 8 January 2015.

Rough seas between Rhodes and Symi on 8 January 2015.  The visibility, o n the other hand, was fantastic.  This is looking into the entrance of Marmaris harbour in Turkey from a point near Kamiros Skala on Rhodes.  In clear weather like this one can understand the strategic importance of the old citadels on both coasts.  

Ice on the puddles on Symi, 10 January 2015.  After several days of freezing weather and strong northerly winds the ice was still thick on Saturday morning.

Count the legs - mummy makes a convenient windbreak!  The black plastic pipes run from the water metres at the corner to various small holdings in the Pedi valley.

 A more conventional view of a ewe and her lamb.

Little lamb goes exploring in the Agia Marina river.

The cats have grown their thick winter coats as they spend much of their time out of doors.

Pedi bay on Saturday 10 January.  No yachts, just a patrol vessel gliding by.

At New Year, Symiots traditionally tie the giant bulbs of the wild squill to their doors for good luck in the year ahead.

Happy New Year!  I apologise for the delay in posting my first blog of 2015 - the winter weather intervened and the Blue Star Diagoras was unable to dock in Symi on Wednesday.  The next boat to Symi was the Blue Star Diagoras on Friday night.  By this time many people had been stranded in Rhodes since Monday and the majority of people taking the ferry were destined for Symi.

Those of you who follow our Symi Visitor Accommodation Facebook page and other Symi fan pages have no doubt seen the photographs of icicles taken at various locations on Symi during the week 5-10 January.  The cold northerly blast affected Symi far more harshly than it did Rhodes and we were far better off tucked up in the warmth of the Best Western Plaza than would have been the case in the cold stone houses of Symi where heating is rare or, in the case of our farm house and many others, just a wood fire in the kitchen.  Winters on Symi have tended to be quite mild in recent years and the rainy season can be more of a second spring, encouraging a lot of soft new growth.  Many of the more tender plants have been destroyed by several days of unusual frost and we hope that there will be some recovery when the weather starts to warm up.  Meanwhile I will get replacements started in the greenhouse and cold frames, safe from any further frost depredations.

As I write this, the rain is lashing the harbour and we are back to what is normal for Symi in the winter - wet conditions and temperatures around 10-12 degrees.  The forecast for the rest of the week is more of the same.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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Still Very Quiet

The ducks investigating some interesting bits on the customs house slipway.

This bizarre arrangement is to provide solar and wind power to batteries to power two small electric outboard motors.  No, it is not some sort of floating sentry box.

Yialos is still very quiet and all the shops along the front are still closed. They won't start showing much life until late March when the owners start painting and decorating for the new season.

Probably the most photographed flight of steps in the harbour.  Day trippers delight in photographing each other posing on them.  That is the war memorial to the left with a small cenotaph.  On 25 March there will be a wreath laying ceremony there to commemorate the Greek War of Independence.

A rather more conventional vessel - a typical Symiot fishing caique.

If you go to the Symi Visitor Accommodation Facebook page you will see a photograph of this view taken some 40 odd years ago.  The most striking difference is how well wooded the Akropolis and Kastro now are.  Fewer free ranging sheep and goats have a lot to do with it.

Another view of the head of the harbour.

The long forecast rain still has not arrived, although the sky is ominously black over towards Turkey and there is a damp chill in the air.  After such a dry February we actually need this rain, particularly as the spring that supplies the main reservoir at Agia Marina is apparently no longer running to feed that reservoir.  Our part of Chorio has been without mains water for several weeks - understandable in high summer when water is diverted to the harbour for the tourists but not so normal in February.

With mayoral elections on the calendar for May this year the town hall has asked us to remind all foreign property owners and residents with EU passports who are currently on the island to please register on the voters’ roll before 28 February, i.e. this Friday.  So if this applies to you, please exercise your democratic right and register to vote.  Remember, in other parts of the world, people are still fighting to attain this privilege!

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana

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When The Rain Passes

The little church on the corner  of my road has sprouted a name board in my absence.

And sheep may safely graze - in the shelter of the chapel walls.

 Every morning we seem to wake up to downpours and grumbling thunder and the sunny intervals are often too brief to dash dry shod down the Kali Strata or pop out to the supermarket.  The island’s taxis are doing brisk business.  In the absence of storm water drains Symi’s steep lanes and myriad flights of steps rapidly become fast flowing streams and the stones are well scrubbed.  The dust and cigarette butts of summer are long gone.  Grass and moss grow in every crevice and the stone walls are sprouting gardens of ferns and cyclamens.  Many sheep are roaming free range at the moment, grabbing any grazing they can.

When the rain passes the shiny new snowfalls on the distant peaks of Anatolia sparkle in the sun. So far we  have not had snow any closer to Symi this winter but last year we had the coldest weather of the year at the end of February so we cannot assume the worst is over yet.  The island is very quiet.  It is too wet and cold for outdoor work, even for those who are employed, and everyone battens down early by the fireside.  Whiffs of woodsmoke curl from chimneys around Chorio from mid afternoon.

Greek Easter is very late this year – Greek Easter Sunday falls on 5 May 2013 – so Carnival which normal enlivens the gloom of February falls mainly in March this year.  Nothing daunted many of the expats and their friends on Symi settled into an evening of pancake tossing  to celebrate Shrove Tuesday – living in such isolation the community is adept at finding its own amusements and celebrations.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

Free range chickens wandering through the Pedi valley.

That is a little glimmer of snow just to the right of the largest peak on the horizon.

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Symi's Shades of Grey

The Symi Gallery's current premises on the Kali Strata

 The days may be growing longer but February is often the greyest and most dismal month on Symi and this year is no exception.  Very little sunshine is filtering through as one cold front after another piles up across the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing rain and strong winds.  The Blue Star Diagoras arrived 24 hours late after a departure delayed by strikes in Piraeus and storms in the Aegean and  passed back through on her return journey from Rhodes at 1 this morning.  The Dodecanese Pride spent last night in Kalymnos as the sea was too rough for the return journey down to Rhodes.   The long range forecast shows more rain and stormy weather ahead, alternating with partly cloudy or overcast conditions.  February is a month for hunkering down by the fireside with a pile of books, sorting cupboards and catching up on overdue correspondence rather than basking in spring sunshine and pottering in the garden.  Many households up in Chorio are still waiting to have internet and telephone access restored after recent lightning strikes took out the network but down in the harbour the infrastructure is holding up quite well.

The almond trees are flowering in the gardens and on the terraced hillsides, delicate shades of white and palest pink, luminous against the wet grey rocks.  The lower temperatures are turning the oranges from green to gold and the lemon trees are heavy with fruit.  Greek Easter falls late this year, in early May, by which time the Pascal lambs will be plump indeed. 

Today’s photographs were taken on my walk to work this morning and from the Symi Visitor Accommodation office window yesterday and give an idea of what Symi is like in the winter.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

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Picture Postcard

The Gate House shining in the morning sun, as seen from the Kali Strata

Yialos and Harani.



Symi is basking in bright blue and white light, the sunshine of every glossy brochure and picture postcard. The recent cold weather has left the air sharp and clear with no trace of haze or dust. Symi looks newly painted, even though most householders have only just embarked on the annual whitewash job. In a climate of extremes it is traditional in Greece to spend much of Lent painting away the moss and mildew of winter and prepare for the long dry summer. It takes a while for all the woodwork to shrink and there is undoubtedly more rain to come but the days grow longer and warmer and the intervals between downpours increase until finally the number one topic of conversation on the bus changes from the iniquities of the ferry companies to speculation as to when the first rains will fall.

The Mouragio section of Yialos, with some of the houses of Harani in the background.

One casualty of Symi’s wet winters and scorching hot summers is the Symi Visitor Accommodation webcam. The webcam itself is fine, thank goodness, snug in its weather proof casing, but the cabling degraded in the sun and then let the rain in. A replacement cable is being made up so all being well we should be back on the air later this week.

In the Pedi Valley the Easter lambs grow fat on a diet of daisies and every patch of greenery seems to have a ewe tethered in it. Down in the harbour men are hard at work, laying the new paving outside Pachos. March on Symi wouldn’t be the same without roadworks and the staccato of jackhammers as the townhall rushes to get things finished before Easter. With the water table still high and springs popping out of the road near the bridge, paving the road around the head of the harbour is a challenging project involving much discussion and advice from bystanders, as well as the consumption of large quantities of caffeine and nicotine by all parties concerned.

One of my favourite pediments. 

I wonder what the story is behind that little saucer in the bull's eye.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana

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