Rendering Unto Caesar

A smart bow in Chorio.

Wind on the water in Pedi. There is a gale warning today as it is a Force 8.

White horse galloping across the sea from Nimborio bay.  There is a strong north-westerly wind blowing and it is just above freezing.

The sunny side of the harbour.  The houses across on the shady side get little or no direct sunlight at this time of the year and are very cold indeed.

Wild clematis climbing high in the everygreen holly oaks.

Pomegranates are a popular motif in this part of the world, symbolising fertility and prosperity. These plastic ones are stuck onto laurel branches for decorative purposes. The grocers have lots of real ones.

Manoli feeding the pigeons while a cat looks on.  Manoli is one of the last surviving sponge fishermen, diving for sponges with a bell stone off the Libyan coast before the Second World  War.  We interviewed him many years ago for the Symi Visitor newspaper and he told us about how he was rescued by a dolphin after a shark cornered him among some rocks.  

After heavy rain on Friday and showers on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day dawned bright, clear and cold.  We woke to church bells followed by carols broadcast over the town's public address system to put everyone in a festive mood.  26 December is a  holiday in Greece, not because it is Boxing  Day but because it is a day honouring the Virgin Mary for giving birth to Jesus.  A nice tradition that has nothing to do with manic shopping or camping outside department stores to be the first to grab sales bargains.

Rain is forecast again for Wednesday and Thursday this week and temperatures will stay low with strong winds.  We can expect ice on the puddles, particularly in areas exposed to the north wind.   The snow over on the Turkish mountains is now clearly visible from the top of the island.

Something that is a cause for celebration and some relief in the border islands is that the government has announced that our VAT rate will stay as is for another year, despite outside pressure from the country's lenders to remove the VAT concessions for the small and remote islands. These concessions were brought in many decades ago to compensate for the high costs of shipping goods to these out of the way places and encourage people to stay on the islands.  VAT on Symi will remain at 17% instead of going up to 24% as is the case on Rhodes.  We do,  however, pay 24% on many services that come from the main land or are country wide and the special taxes on certain things like mobile telephony, television, wine, coffee (a new one that is coming in soon) and so on still affect us.

The reason for retaining the concession for islands like Symi, Samos, Lesbos etcetera is that the economy on these islands has been hard hit by the refugee crisis and an exceptionally bad tourist season so raising the cost of living still further will cause even more hardship and possible depopulation.  Many people are already struggling and many small business have gone under.  The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, made his announcement while visiting our volcanic neighbour, Nissyros recently. He also gave pensioners a Christmas bonus of 300 euros each, by way of compensation for the fact that their monthly pensions have been cut repeatedly in recent years.  This week we must also all remember to pay the annual taxes on our vehicles.  Sometimes the deadline for this is extended to mid-January but one cannot count on it so best to play safe and pay now as if it goes beyond the deadline one has to pay double - plus the added expense of a day trip to Rhodes to the tax office to pay the fine.

On that cheerful note I shall leave you until Friday!

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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Cats, Balconies and Summertime Musings

Symi remains exceptionally quiet for August and as you can see from this photograph taken early on Thursday morning there are very few yachts in Harani and the out anchorage.  Regular visitors to Symi and this blog will remember views packed with yachts of all sizes, types and nationalities at this time of the year.

There's a flotilla visiting Yialos which adds a bit of welcome colour and glamour.  The maroon and cream ketch in the foreground never goes anywhere.  It was impounded a couple of years ago after the German owners were caught people trafficking. They might have got away with it if they hadn't been overheard bragging about their exploits in a taverna. The moral of the story is never assume that just because you don't understand the language of the country you are visiting does not mean that they don't understand yours!

Bunting at the Vapori bar in Yialos.  If you haven't been to Symi before and are looking for the Kali Strata, look out for the bunting and you will find the start of the steps nearby.

A balcony with a view.  Presumably from those two chairs they can see the harbour just off to the left, above the blue and ochre pediment on the bottom left of the photograph. The entrance courtyard to St John's church, Symi's cathedral, in itself creates a pleasant open space to view from above.

This balcony is at the bend in the Kali Strata, just above the point where I stopped to take the photograph of the yachts, or lack of them, lying off Harani.

Symi Festival posters from the Symi Women's Association.  I like the scrapbook style but haven't found out yet who is responsible for these cheerful and effective designs. The red building is one of the two butchers in Yialos and this one is just around the corner from the bunting photograph above.

The carpenter's cat, taking a nap waiting for the pet shop to open.  Yes, that door is a pet shop that sells pet requisites as well as fish.  Symi has definitely moved on from the days when one could only buy pet food in the summer and it was only stocked by one supermarket as the only people buying it were foreign tourists.  Now not only do we have a dedicated pet shop but every grocer and supermarket sells a range of cat and dog foods.

If he gets any fatter he'll fall through the bamboo!

Taverna cats posing sleepily in Chorio.

Ruins and restorations.

The first two weeks of August are historically the busiest weeks in the whole tourist season but not this year.  Symi remains unusually quiet, particularly in the evenings when the absence of yachts has had a real impact in the tavernas, bars and restaurants.  One thing that has remained the same as previous years, however, is the weather. The best way to beat the heat and humidity is still to take a water taxi out to one of Symi's picturesque beaches - Agia Marina, St Nicholas, St George, Nanou, Marathounda, Nimborio or Toli bay - or take a round the island trip on the Poseidon or Diagoras. Thanks to the efforts of the Symi Women's Association and the Diakogiannis Organisation in Support of Symi in conjunction with Symi town hall there are still free open air events most evenings, either in the town square in Yialos or up in Chorio. The Symi Gallery Cinema Club also has free film shows on Sunday nights at Mandeio.  Posters appear on lamp posts, bus shelters and social media

The resort hotels in Rhodes are quite full, as we are seeing with the number of day trippers. This is mainly a spin off of the reallocation of all inclusive package holiday tourists from Turkish and Tunisian resorts to Rhodes.  Unfortunately they don't benefit Symi much as they tend to arrive with packed lunches from the hotels and don't have much in the way of spending money to support Symi's economy but perhaps they will fall in love with Symi's charms and come back for a longer stay next time.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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Sleepy Symi

Monday morning Yialos. There are far fewer gulets than usual. These boats come over to Symi from Turkey as part of a cruising itinerary and the passengers are usually foreign tourists so if fewer tourists are visiting Turkey this year, the knock on effect is that there are fewer gulets visiting Symi and the other border islands.

8 a.m. and not a lot happening.  I think the bright orange looks better on the fishing boat than it does on the building behind.

Early morning coffee at Pachos, waiting for the day to start.  Symi Visitor Accommodation is in the diminutive buildiing set back between Pachos and the shop with the sky blue sign.  Our entrance is in the lane around the corner, between Pachos and Enigma boutique.

Looking up at Lemonitissa church on the Kastro from opposite Symi Visitor Accommodation.  For some reason my little Nikon really battles to make sense of this view and I don't think I have ever really managed to capture just how perpendicular that hillside view is without winding up with leaning lamp posts like the one you see to the right!

It is not just the gulets that are conspicuous by their absence. We are seeing very few really big motor yachts and sailing yachts these days and in comparison to years gone by, Symi harbour is quite restrained this season. The rich must have another playground this summer.

Mind you, some of the local boats haven't seen the water in years.

This is the quietest July on Symi that anyone can remember.  It is as though Symi has slipped back to the 1980s and the early days of tourism to the island. Rhodes is fairly busy as the big resort hotels have benefited from the package holiday companies placing people there who would otherwise have been in Turkish resorts so we are getting a lot of Russian day trippers but in the evenings, when they have departed, there are very few people around apart from Symi's regular visitors that come year after year and the foreign property owners.

This morning as I was walking down to work a slightly battered white van pulled up along side me and one of the Yialos supermarket proprietors offered me a lift down to Yialos.  It was a very fragrant ride as he had just come down from gathering herbs on the mountain to sell in the shop and the back of the van was full of bundles of rigani, the Greek mountain oregano.  The smell reminded me of the very first time I came to Symi back in 1993. We were anchored in Panormitis bay at the south-western end of the island and decided to walk across to send a fax to South Africa to let our families know where we were.  It was July, just as it is now, hot and dusty and the hillsides were aromatic the wonderful smell of hot sage, oregano and thyme bushes. The plants themselves had dried to dust and appeared dead but the smell was fantastic.  Come the first rains in October and overnight these tough scrubby little bushes start shooting tiny green leaves again, a botanical symbol of Greek resilience.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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Symi Summer Colours

Chorio cool cat. That is a solar water heater on the roof on a house neighbouring on this taverna in Chorio.

Bougainvillea pot pourri gathering in drifts on the Kali Strata.

Heavenly blue plumbago against sorbet-coloured walls on the Kali Strata.

Early morning haze off Harani.  Nimos is almost invisible on the horizon.

Lowering the tone of the line up - it takes a brave crew to hang laundry out to dry on the railings of a gin palace!

Spot the carpenter's cat.

Shopping for summer gear in Yialos.

That is Pachos kafeneion in the background, one of the oldest traditional cafes in Yialos.  A great people watching locale but don't expect any fancy Starbucks nonsense. This is 100% authentic Greek.

The chandlery opposite the entrance to the Symi Visitor Accommodation office in the lane.

Another sizzling week on Symi.  With midday temperatures in the forties and the humidity high, even the nights remain hot and it can be in the mid thirties at midnight.  Anyone who isn't on the beach during the day is browsing in shady shops or sipping the traditional Greek iced coffee frappe in one of the many cafes.

The first two weeks of August are traditionally the busiest time of the year in Greek island tourism in general and on Symi in particular.  Everyone works long hours to meet the needs of the many visitors who arrive daily, by ferry or yacht and it is a hectic couple of weeks as the island's population swells to double its usual number.

Symi isn't a luxury destination, how can it be with no natural water and a landscape that is more perpendicular than horizonal, hence all those unavoidable steps?  It is, however, one of the most beautiful as the island's neo-classical architecture has been strictly protected since the 1970s so there are no big hotels, resorts, swimming pools or other tourist developments.  No concrete cubes and tacky neon signs or rusty reinforced concrete.  Instead most holiday accommodation is within the community, in restored traditional houses and apartments or in small hotels, giving an authentic experience that has discerning visitors coming back year after year.

Symi's houses and imposing mansions are surprisingly small inside - a combination of thick stone walls, the necessity to incorporate cistern capacity for harvesting winter rains from the roof and the steep landscape which leaves no level or easily accessible ground for building.  The interiors of the houses incorporate all sorts of space-saving measures similar to those used on boats, including ladders rather than staircases and sleeping lofts and platform beds tucked in wherever there is space rather than lots of separate bedrooms.  A certain agility and level of fitness is required, particularly if one is staying in Yialos where steep steps are impossible to avoid as there is very little accommodation at water level and vehicle access is limited. If you have any mobility problems, Chorio is easier as although you may still be some distance from the nearest vehicle access, there are more lanes than steps and what steps there are are not as steep!

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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