Tavernas by the sea

My new book, TAVERNA BY THE SEA: ONE GREEK ISLAND SUMMER, based on the time I spent living at lovely Ayios Minas in north Karpathos, is now at the printer, and I’m thrilled about it.

I started writing it during the winter in Karpathos in 2017 when the memories were still fresh but then ended up being diverted to focus on the more serious WILD ABANDON: THE DESERTED PLACES OF THE DODECANESE. I’m very glad I wrote that book, but I’m also happy that I went back to finish TAVERNA BY THE SEA last year and that Bradt decided to publish it.

The book shows the fun side of how I got stuck in rugged north Karpathos for longer than expected, but it also reveals what summer is like for the locals who work behind the scenes non-stop, while making it all look easy and relaxed.

When I posted something about it online recently, one of my Facebook friends told me he’d also had a fun summer working at a Greek taverna by the sea years ago, so I decided to interview him about it – and was delighted by his story. Here it is - complete with his pictures from the time!

Jen:

So, hello Paul! You ran a taverna on the island of Aegina in 1996 – wow, that’s interesting. How did the opportunity come up?

 

Paul:

I was working with a friend at a restaurant in Reigate, Surrey back in 1996 and her parents had received a small inheritance and decided that they would love to buy a little bar/restaurant in the sun and have a nice relaxing lifestyle. They had ideas of not doing much work: the wife would be swanning around with a glass of wine in her hand chatting to customers while the husband served a couple of beers at the bar to the one or two old local guys, and they’d spend a day or two at the beach.

The reality was to be completely different – it was very, very busy! The husband was stuck in the sweltering kitchen all day while the wife ran herself ragged around the restaurant. It was not the sort of relaxed retirement dream that they thought it would be. They ran it for two summers then realised how much work it was, and decided to rent it out.

 

Jen:

What made you take on the challenge?

 

Paul:

I find myself to be a rather restless soul and I have always wanted to do different things and not get bogged down into a routine. I like a challenge and to push myself out of my comfort zones and this opportunity was definitely something that was exciting and slightly scary. My mother is Maltese and I guess I have inherited her love of the Mediterranean sun and sea so as soon as I heard about the taverna I just knew I had to do it!

 

Jen:

So you set off for a summer on a Greek island.

 

Paul:

I bought a very cool VW camper van, then got two friends, a chef and a waitress, and we drove down through Europe to Agia Marina on the island of Aegina, to open the taverna and run it for the summer. It was a great road trip.

Jen:

What was the location like?

 

Paul:

The “Lanterns Taverna” was situated about a five-minute walk outside the main town of Agia Marina in a place called Alones which was just a sprinkling of houses, not even big enough to be called a village, nestled in between surrounding low hills and about 900 meters from the sea. Although it was a quiet area we were extremely busy throughout the summer mainly with tourists.

 

Jen:

Did you speak the language? What kind of food did you serve, and how did you learn how things worked there, where to order supplies and so on?

 

Paul:

I didn’t speak any Greek before I went out so had to learn very quickly. To start with I managed to get by with lots of gesticulation and a phrase book. By the end of the summer I found I could converse in Greek – as long as the conversation was all about catering!

The menu was small and mainly Greek but I did try to vary it by doing burgers, steaks, BLTs and different salads. We also did a Chinese night every Monday which surprisingly went down very well. 

I did have a little bit of help when I got there to learn how things worked. An old Scottish guy who lived on the island and was a friend of the owners met me when I arrived at the taverna with the keys and spent the day telling me where to buy most of the supplies and introduced me to a few of the suppliers. He was quite a bolshy and pushy character and right from the start tried to tell me how to run things and what to do – I guess he saw me as a naive young whippersnapper and maybe wanted to have a say (and some of the profits) in what went on. I “sacked” him after about two weeks.

 

Jen:

You said it was a great summer and you totally fell in love with Greece. If you were working such long days at the taverna, how did that happen?

 

Paul:

We worked all day seven days a week, as I'm sure you'll know. We didn't really have much money behind us and didn't save anything while we were there – we just lived off the daily profits paying for our accommodation and spending the rest on having fun.

We opened for breakfast, lunch and dinner and didn’t close until the last customers left – which, as they were on holiday, would normally be about 2 or 3am. After that the staff and I would walk down the hill back to our apartments – but due to the Greek custom of ‘philoxenia’ we found that we couldn’t simply walk past the other bars/tavernas without being called in to have a chat and a drink. It was a great way to meet the locals and make friends – long days, long nights but great, great fun!  

Philoxenia was one of the main reasons for falling in love with Greece. I did worry before I went that the Greeks may not like a foreigner in their midst running a taverna and that I might be shunned but I found that I was made welcome and felt relaxed from the first day I arrived. The scenery of low scrubby hills around me was beautiful, I loved the feeling of the heat all around me and of course the little bays and beaches with the flawless warm Mediterranean blue sea.

I closed the taverna at the end of the season and decided to go home as my job was still available at the restaurant in Reigate. I do still wonder why I decided to come back to England when I loved Greece so much. There wasn't much work on the island in the winter but I'm sure if I spoke to my Greek friends they could have helped me and I could have probably stayed and started a life in Greece.

 

Jen:

Thank you, Paul, for sharing a little of your story! Here's to tavernas by the sea...