A Dog in Drapetsona

 

A dog was barking in Drapetsona. It had been barking for a few hours. It was evening, and I could also hear the neighbours’ television through the walls, and the engines and announcements of the ferries.

I’d searched on Airbnb for a place to stay overnight in Piraeus before taking the ferry home to Tilos. I was delighted to find a dog-friendly house within walking distance of gate E1, the dock for Blue Star ferries to the Dodecanese. And it was on St Fanourios Street: my favourite saint, the finder of lost things. I booked it, and Savvas arranged a transfer from the airport with Mr George.

The plane had been delayed a little, and on arrival in Athens there was a vast queue for non-EU passport holders. I felt anxious thinking of Lisa waiting in her crate. I eventually made it through, released Lisa and dragged all our things outside. My backpack was heavy with the winter clothes I’d taken to Romania. Now it was Easter.

Mr George had been circling the pickup area for a while. He turned out to be driving a very small car, and with an attendant trying to move us on, I didn’t have time to dismantle the crate. We somehow squeezed everything in, then Lisa sat happily at my feet with her nose out of the window, and an hour later I was thrilled to see blue sea. Finally, we arrived at a terraced house in Drapetsona, on a small hill above the port.  

Savvas welcomed me and showed me around the house which he’d described as ‘old-style’ and ‘homely’; it had been his grandparents’ house and was now his. Like all the houses on the street, it was a two-up-two-down terrace with a little garden in the front and the back. Savvas said there were lots of cats. It smelled a bit smoky but I knew I was back in Greece when I found in the kitchen cupboard a small water bottled filled with aromatic olive oil.

I was excited to spend the afternoon exploring Piraeus. Drapetsona didn’t seem the easiest neighbourhood to navigate, though, at least with a dog. The pavements were a bit smelly and broken, and I was abruptly reminded that in Greece pedestrian crossings are meaningless, seen by some drivers as a challenge to speed up and mow you down. I was tired from a few days of travelling and I needed to adjust to the city after six weeks away in a rural, mountainous area of Transylvania.

 

There, we’d been staying in a wooden cabin at the end of a steep-sided, forested valley with a monastery above and a river below that gushed out of a cave. Any livestock in the area were kept behind fences or protected by shepherds because of the threat of wolves. With no roaming goats or sheep, Lisa could be off the lead all the time. Seeing her racing around the hills was a joy for me as much as for her.

Someone told us that in Romania, ‘a village isn’t a village without dogs’. In our area, some had owners and some were strays, but they all wandered freely and had tight little communities which they organised along their own lines. We’d often be joined on walks by the two strays we fed, but just as often by dogs with owners that just fancied a walk with company. Lisa thrived on it. People seemed to love animals and the few cars around slowed down when the drivers saw dogs on the road.

Ian had discovered the place as a new refuge for his extra-Schengen adventures. For his first month there, the water in the pipes was frozen and had to be brought from the spring or the river. Lisa had loved the deep snow when we got there in March. By mid-April, the days were warm enough that I took a very fast dip in the cold river, I’d started learning a bit of Romanian and those empty hills and rural places were beginning to feel like another home. But it was time to leave Romania for now – Lisa and I to Greece, Ian for now to Bulgaria.

Dogs are welcome to travel on trains in Romania for a half-price ticket, which costs barely anything. It was around two hours to lovely Sighisoara, where we stayed in a historic building on the edge of the citadel and I found a ‘cabinet veterinar’ where a very gentle vet stamped Lisa’s passport saying she was fit to travel.

We continued for a long six hours by train to Bucharest, yet in comfort and with views of lovely farmland and snowy mountains. Back in March we’d stayed at Old City NF Palace in a vast room with a chandelier. The exceptional young staff had organised to keep Lisa’s airline crate in the left luggage of the hotel until the next month, which meant we could travel across the country unencumbered. Now we were reunited with it and had one last night there. I almost wished we could stay longer but was excited to get home.

Because it's not so easy or pleasant to travel by train with a dog in Greece, we were flying. Checking in for the flight to Athens, I met a Romanian woman who was travelling with her dog back to Greece where she lived – and speaking to her dog in Greek as he was from there, like Lisa. They met with much tail-wagging, and hopped in their airline crates together. I remember how much trouble Lisa used to give me getting in there. Now she knows it’s OK, and although I still worry for her, I know she’ll be OK too.

On the short flight, in Aegean’s in-flight magazine Blue I was pleased to find a feature on Piraeus. I jotted down the addresses of interesting-sounding shops and eateries. There was an ‘art hub’, someone making furniture from reclaimed marble, someone making furniture out of recycling plastic nets and other plastic waste from the sea. When I got online again and looked up BlueCycle, alas, I was sad to see a coffee table cost 650 euros.

Nice idea, but unlikely to have a big impact.

 

So, by the afternoon, I was in Piraeus.

There was something in the name of the district, Drapetsona, that sounded like something else and made me wonder about its history. I looked it up and found what might be a link to Trebizond, now Trabzon, in north-eastern Turkey on the Black Sea. Founded by the Greeks in the eighth century BC as Trapezunda.

I tried figuring out the best route to take to the ferry the next day. One way the pavements were narrow and the roads busy, which would make it impossible to trundle a huge crate and hold a dog safely on a lead. The other way went past an archaeological site and an abandoned building along a road so quiet that it seemed to be used exclusively by driving schools, but at the end was a system of roundabouts where even the drivers seem unsure which way to go, and when I attempted a trial run with Lisa, aggressive stray dogs dashed in front of juggernauts to snap at our heels.

It was a bit intense. Being tired wasn’t helping. Deciding to leave the discovery of the interesting shops and art hubs and eateries for now, I did some shopping at the supermarket around the corner.

I tried taking Lisa for another walk later but she got spooked by some almighty bang that sounded like a very loud gun. It was already Easter week, and everything from firecrackers to dynamite is deployed in the Greek celebrations, making it a time of misery for many dogs and their owners. I left her in the house to snooze, and went for a wander down side streets for half an hour until I reached, amidst some abandoned industrial buildings, a park that ran down to the sea. It would be a perfect place to take Lisa tomorrow. I returned feeling curious about the area again, opened a bottle of wine and studied the map.

It was a little later when a message came through from Savva, my host, telling me that the neighbourhood was one of the poor neighbourhoods of Piraeus, ‘where our grandparents came from Turkey from where they were kicked off in 1922’. Of course – these were some of the prosfygika, houses built for Greeks from Asia Minor who came here as refugees.

It was a hundred years ago that the complex and terrible events of war between Turkey and Greece led to what is known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe, when many lost their lives in Smyrna and other cities with Greek populations. This was followed by the population exchanges along religious lines, ending thousands of years of Greek Orthodox presence in Asia Minor, as well as Muslim presence in Greece. It made refugees of many thousands of people, who had to leave behind all they had, as so many Ukrainians are doing today.

The people who came from Asia Minor a hundred years ago doubled the populations of Athens and Thessaloniki. As Auguste Corteau wrote in The Book of Katerina:

‘… in Samsun, Turkey … at the beginning of the 1920s the Konstantinidis pack is practically well-off: the girls at a good school with piano lessons and foreign languages, meat on the table every day, and thanks be to God. And then the Asia Minor Catastrophe happens and they suddenly find themselves in Upper Town, Thessaloniki, without two pennies to rub together. Gentleman and businessman Dimitrós is overnight a spawn of the Turk, and young Irini, who used to be at the top of her class, is suddenly cast amongst smart Greek girls who look down on her and whisper behind her back: “Her family lives in a shack. Can you imagine?”’

Savvas sent me another message.

‘Nowadays the area is still poor but authentic persons are living there.’ He said the people who came from Turkey were given small temporary houses and in 1974 the state gave them the opportunity to live in these houses – I guessed he meant to keep them.

‘In this neighbourhood is born the rebetiko,’ he said, referring to the underground blues-type tradition of music. And the film that made Melina Mercouri a star, Never on Sunday, in which she plays a happy, romantic prostitute, was set here. The song in which she sings of the magic of her favourite port was ‘Ta Pedia tou Pirea’, the Children of Piraeus.

 

Next morning in the sunshine, workmen were painting next door and neighbours passing one another calling Easter greetings, ‘Kali anastasi na echoume!’

Feeling happy to have learned a little more about the history of the area, I walked Lisa all the way along Ethnikis Antistaseos (‘National Resistance’) Street, past nice neighbourhood shops selling bougatsa or wine from barrels, to the park covered in wildflowers that led down to the open sea. There were rusty ships in a harbour, and an abandoned factory. I’d noticed the name of the area was Lipasmata – ‘Fertilizers’. It was the site of a fertilizer factory, part of Piraeus’ industrial past, and in recent years the land has been allowed to re-wild and turned into a park with a couple of cafes looking out to the big blue and the islands.

Lisa was desperate to find a way into the water – and she did. An attendant said, ‘All the animals do the same!’ People of all ages were strolling and enjoying the sun and sea breeze. Dogs had to be on leads, another attendant told me later, but you can't have everything. By then at least she'd had a run around. She'd be more relaxed for our onward journey to our island home. What a wonderful adventure we'd both had.

It seemed like the beginning of a damn good story…

An interview with John X. Cooper (born Yianni Xiros) about his new novel Dead Letter – and two excerpts from the book

The ruins of Rhamnous, the ancient city just north of Athens, where Akritas is pursued by assassins

Why did you decide to set Dead Letter in contemporary Athens? 

I taught English literature at the University of British Columbia for many years and when I retired I thought I’d finally get to read all those books that I had referred to many times in lectures and my academic writing but never actually read from cover to cover. One of those books was the Bible. So, I started with Genesis, Chapter 1 and worked my way through to the final chapter of Revelations. There was an episode in Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 17: 16-34) that really caught my attention. 

It was St. Paul’s visit to Athens in 51 AD, when the news of Christianity arrived in Athens. I was amused by the reaction of the pagan philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics, to Paul’s message. They dismissed it as the ramblings of a lunatic. I remember thinking that not much had change in the sceptical attitudes of Athenians in 2000 years. 

But later I wondered why Paul had never written one of his famous letters to the Athenians. Why did the Corinthians, Thessalonians, Philippians, and others receive epistles from Paul but not Athens? Then it occurred to me that perhaps he had written such a letter, but it was lost, or better still, it was suppressed. What if someone in contemporary Athens found it in the National Library and then was murdered? It seemed like the beginning of a damn good story.

Raphael’s picture of St. Paul preaching to the Athenians

What is your own connection with Greece? 

I was born Yianni Xiros in the Kypseli neighbourhood of Athens and lived there with my parents for the first few years of my life. My parents divorced when I was five and my mother left Greece with me in tow for Bergamo in Italy where her brother was in business. We lived there for two years until she met Norman Cooper. He was British and his sister was married to my mother’s brother. They fell in love, married in the UK, and after a two-year sojourn in his family home in Sussex, we immigrated to Montreal in Canada. In 2013 when I retired from my academic post I returned to Athens to reconnect with my roots and now I spend periods of time every year in Canada, the UK, and Athens.

The old National Library on Panepistimiou Street. The archives of the Library have now been moved to a new facility in Kallithea.

Who is Panos Akritas?

 Panos is a captain in the Hellenic Police (the Astynomia Elleniki) with its headquarters in the big police building on Alexandras Avenue across from the Panathinaikos football stadium. Akritas is the family name of a medieval Greek warrior who is the subject of a well-known epic poem from the 10^th century AD. The poem called Digenis Akritas Basileios tells of the heroic exploits of this warrior in defending the eastern borders of the Byzantine Empire against invaders from Central Asia. The folksongs that also tell of his exploits are called the Akritic ballads and are collected as the Akritika: Odes of the Byzantine Border-Guards. Akritas seemed like a good name for a modern day policeman, not defending the borders of an empire of course, but perhaps policing different kinds of borders. His first name came to me when I was having a coffee at the Dioscouri café in Plaka that overlooks the east side of the Agora. One of the streets nearby is called Odos Panos. When I saw the small blue street sign it was love at first sight.

A medieval depiction of Digenis Akritas in action

Are you a fan of any other crime/detective novels set in Greece? 

 I’ve read a couple of novels by Petros Markaris and several by the Anglo-Greek writer Anne Zouroudi. Both are very good. There are others, but I must confess I’m a big fan of the Italian crime fiction writers, the Neapolitan Maurizio de Giovanni, for example, or the Sicilian Andrea Camilleri, the British writer Michael Dibden whose crime novels are set in various cities in Italy, and the American Donna Leon who has Venice as background for her Commissario Brunetti novels.

What made you start writing crime fiction?

 Some years ago my wife thought I might like Camilleri’s Montalbano novels. I did, very much and I ended up binge-reading them. But Dibden was my immediate writerly inspiration. Although he’s British he manages to convey his Italian stories and characters in a remarkably vivid way. I also liked his take on Italian society and manners. I remember thinking I could do the same thing for Athens and although I’ve spent most of my adult life elsewhere, I was actually born there. 

What was the inspiration for your first novel, The Sting of the Wasp?

 One of the first things that struck me when I returned to Greece in 2013 was how the Greek Civil War from 1946-1950 was still present in so many ways, small monuments, history texts, people’s memories, and political discourse. Although Sting of the Wasp is not mainly about the civil war it was what got me thinking about the plot that eventually made up the substance of the novel.

Small monument near the police headquarters on Alexandras Avenue put up by the Greek anti-Nazi partisans and communists to remember the “December days” in 1944, which was a prelude to the Civil War that broke out a year later

What do you hope readers will find in your work? What is your favourite reader comment so far?

 I want to write about the real Greece, not the tourist brochure Greece. The city of Athens is a fascinating and complicated place and it seems to me that writing about its reality gives both Greeks and non-Greeks a more vivid picture of what’s it’s like. My favourite reader comment came from an American who read Sting of the Wasp and wrote to say that when he finally visited Athens my book had given him a better appreciation of the place.

Are you writing something new? If so, can you tell us anything about it?

 My new Panos Akritas mystery is called Three Sisters and it involves the murder of a renowned chef who owns a two Michelin star restaurant in wealthy Kifissia and is found stabbed to death with one of his own kitchen knives. All the evidence points to his youngest daughter Zoë. But Captain Akritas has his doubts. I think, more than anything else, it's a novel about appetite. Enough said.

In Dead Letter, Panos is dreaming of his Greek island holiday. Is that something you do?

 Yes, absolutely. I love the Ionian islands, Cephalonia, Zante, Corfu and so on. In the Aegean, I tend to stay away from the very touristy islands. I like Sifnos because of the food and great atmosphere. Folegrandos in the Cyclades is relaxed and not crowded. I’d love to visit Rhodes in the future and your island too, Jennifer, Tilos.

Thank you! And now for two excerpts from Dead Letter:

1: Pursued in the ruins of Rhamnous

  

After a few minutes he saw them. Four men in a line with MP7 type submachine guns, picking their way carefully up the slope. Here they come, he thought. He was on their left. If he stayed where he was, the point man would pass fifteen metres from his position. Too close. He needed to move. But where? Staying low, he moved at an angle further to their left. He kept the buckthorn bushes and stunted trees between him and his hunters. He found a hollow with some cover.

When the men had passed, he set off towards what he assumed were Kato Souli and Schinias. “Not sure where the fuck I’m going,” he murmured to himself. He was sweating profusely as the sun’s rays came at him like an attack of razor blades.

When he reached the church, he rested. It was past noon, so the east side gave some relief from the sun. Problem was he couldn’t spot his pursuers from there. As time passed, he lost all sense of their movements. He listened for sounds but the cicadas were putting up such a racket that he might as well be deaf. Why wouldn’t they search the vicinity of the church? Of course they would. He realised that they would not think he was in the church. Killing him would be too easy there. But would they have to check just to make sure? They’d certainly come around to his side eventually. Before that happened, he would have to move. But where? Straight ahead and slightly to his left there was thick underbrush, large boulders and small gnarled trees. They wouldn’t give much cover but it was better than cowering by the church wall awaiting his executioners. If they were smart they’d come round both ends, hoping to trap him in the middle. He knew he had to move. Now.

He sprinted straight for the underbrush and dived in before anyone rounded the corners. He hid himself in the bushes as well as he could and watched the church wall where he’d been resting. He didn’t have long to wait. The four men split up and two suddenly appeared at each end of the wall, guns in firing position. They looked around at the surrounding shrubs and trees. One said something and the four walked carefully to the front of the church. It looked to Akritas that they entered. This was his moment to escape. He broke cover and was at least a hundred and fifty metres from the church when the four men emerged, glanced around, and waited. They hadn’t seen him. Akritas was hidden among shrubs and rocks. He let out his breath when he saw them confer and head off in a different direction, guns ready. He rose crouching and began to creep crab-like away from the church towards the east.

After an hour, he came across what looked like an ancient marble wall set in the hillside. He looked around. It was obviously an archaeological site, although it was clearly not being excavated, had not been excavated for several years. “Fucking Euro crisis,” he said out loud to a stunted cypress tree nearby. The heat’s getting to me. I’m talking to the fucking trees. “Rhamnous,” he said under his breath, the acropolis of Rhamnous.

2: The bonds of friendship

The next night, Katarina, her sister, Greg and Katia, Valia and Akritas reserved a big table at Rythmos Stage, a club in Ilioupoli, a south Athens suburb. They heard a Cretan band, Chainides, play the superb and inspiring music of that ancient island with wonderfully wry political commentary by the leader, Dimitris Apostolakis, who also did duty on the Cretan lyre. They played until past two in the morning to a packed house. It was a foot-stomping good time. It was defiant, funny, sad, and the entire audience realised somewhere around one o’clock they all shared something in common. Not only a love of their country’s music, or the joyful fellowship of comrades even if it was only for a few hours, or even everyone getting tipsy together on the wine, the beer and the Cutty Sark, not only those things, but something more important. Katarina mentioned it in her thoughtful way as they drove back to the centre. They were a people and they all shared a common fate. It was the truth of what it means to be a nation. The poignancy was not lost on them after six long years of the debt crisis.

As they drove into the centre, the six friends were not ready for the evening to end. It was now about three in the morning. As it was the end of July, the night was warm and many people were still out talking, drinking and just happily walking about. Living joyfully was not yet a dead letter among the Greeks even in a dark time. Akritas suggested the St George terrace in Plateia Karytsi for a nightcap. It would be quiet there under the walls of the big church. When they arrived, the bar was closing, but the very small café next door was still open. Akritas and Greg pulled a couple of tables together so that the friends could all sit as one. The walls of the church reminded him of St Paul and his crisis of faith. That moment is one we all must face in our different ways. Even a nation must face doubt when it loses faith in itself. But perhaps only for a short time.

Dead Letter

Sting of the Wasp

Raki and Fish

Raki and fish... Sounds almost as good as octopus and ouzo, doesn't it? 

'All my life, in whatever city I visit, I've always found myself in search of fish markets,' writes Tan Morgul in the Beirut chapter of this luscious book. Tan, a journalist from Istanbul, is the writer and Stratis Vogiatzis, from the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean, is the photographer. Together, over several months in the winter of 2013, they travelled to 11 cities around the Mediterranean sampling variations on the simple and exquisite combination of raki and fish, and they put together this book that is a feast for the eyes. It resonates with 'the sound of the waves and the smell of the sea'. 

It's not just a cookbook, and not just a travel book, but an opinionated and lively exploration of the Mediterranean passion for seafood, capturing a snapshot of the geography, the mythology, the poetry, the stories of each place. It opens in Istanbul, where 'fish is caught not with net or rod, but with raki' according to Ara Guler - and last night I travelled with them through Beirut and Alexandria... 

We learn the Turkish saying: 'If my own father came out of the sea, I'd eat him!' We learn about the fish themselves along the way, from monkish to sardines, as well as how they are eaten locally. We learn about serving roasted grouper with tahini sauce, and about marinating bonito (small tuna, called palamitha here on Tilos) in garlic, olive oil, onion, lemon juice and soy sauce. 

We learn about salads with slices of cured fish roe, dressed in thyme, onion, lemon, salt and olive oil - all things we can source locally here - and I'd love to try making a dish with dandelion greens sauteed with calamari in lemon and olive oil - perfect for winter on Tilos when all those things are fresh and in season. We learn about fish felafel, tabbouleh with tuna, hummus with fish confit - Beirut is big on pairing fish with grains and legumes. 

I was also fascinated to read that the word raki has its origins in the word 'araq', which means 'sweat' - the drops that collect as it emerges from the still. Arabs originated the tradition of distilling drinks in Lebanon.

The photographs are not only of food but of kitchens, of fishing boats under stormy skies in inky waves, of steam and ripe tomatoes and spices, of the wet paving stones of old markets, of expressions captured on faces.

Tan laments the damage inflicted on our seas by pollution, and the damage inflicted on the Mediterranean shores by bland development. Some of the places were experiencing economic crisis, political and social upheaval, even revolution, but as Tan writes, 'in these tense times... we went in search of a warm conversation'. This book is a wonderful celebration of Mediterranean culture and I can't wait to continue the journey through Tunis, Tangier, Lisbon, Barcelona, Marseille, Genoa, Dubrovnik, Athens.

The book can be ordered from Amazon.com but if you have problems please feel free to get in touch. You can find a small selection of Stratis' beautiful photographs along with an introduction to the book by Tan here: 
http://www.stratisvogiatzis.com/projects/mediterranean-sea-food-odyssey

Thanks to the guys for sending me a copy.

Artsy Rooms at the Pallas Athena

I was really in no fit state to be walking through the doors of a smart new boutique hotel. 

My flight from Sydney a month ago arrived in Athens at 6 a.m. I’d spent the most gruelling section pinned into a middle seat for more hours than I’m usually awake, my back protesting so much that I couldn’t sleep and the only thing that kept me going was watching seven episodes in a row of House of Cards. Thank you, Kevin Spacey, I love you.

The Etihad flight connected at Abu Dhabi, where I waited impatiently amid the masses for a missing boarding pass, and guzzled the most essential glass of wine I have ever had. I had no idea how much 40 Emirati dirham was, but frankly I would have paid it if it was 40 US dollars.

Aegean welcomed a handful of passengers on board their section of the journey with sweets and smiles and let us all lie down across three seats each, so at least I was feeling vaguely human in the morning as I took the Metro to Monastiraki station and, turning my back on the Acropolis, walked down one of the liveliest streets in the city, Athinas, passing the buzzing central markets.

A week earlier, I’d received a press release about the opening of the Grecotel Pallas Athena. What intrigued me was the design element. One of my favourite things about Athens, as you may know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, is the street art. The Pallas Athena, a five-star boutique hotel owned by the leading luxury hotel group in Greece, has 63 rooms/suites individually decorated by street artists. I was catching a ferry back to Tilos so I couldn’t stay, but I could drop in for breakfast.

Feeling somewhat self-conscious, I was welcomed into a cool lobby and my backpack was whisked out of sight as I was invited to make myself comfortable in the dining room/lounge with its airy terrace on the first floor. Refreshed with grapefruit juice and mini-pastries, I learned about the hotel concept, then had a tour around a few of the rooms.

The hotel opened in January 2014 as the newest boutique art hotel in central Athens, and has both chic art suites and whimsical graffiti guestrooms, featuring such artists as ‘b’ and ‘Dreyk the Pirate’. All the rooms were bright and uncluttered and comfy-looking. For single travellers or couples, they're stylish, playful and relaxing. For families, the spacious interconnecting rooms would be brilliant fun. There was even an octopus...

I felt I wouldn’t be doing a serious job of checking out the hotel if I didn’t sample the Eau de Grèce luxury bathroom products by Agreco Farms in Crete, where the hotel group originates. 

A body sculpture gel to ‘refine your silhouette, giving a more toned and firm appearance’, felt like just what I needed, after twenty-four hours of stuffing my face with airline food. Though first I’d need a bath.

Thanks to the Grecotel Pallas Athena for a delightful welcome. I should add that the hotel group was a leader in environmentally-friendly practice as early as 1991, which is a big plus point for me. And, checking out their website today, I see they still have some great room deals available. Well worth checking out for a city break, or if you're passing through to the islands... The Daskalantonakis Group also has super-plush places in Crete, Mykonos, Kos, Rhodes, Attica, the Peloponnese and Halkidiki.