Kantina Eristos - Everything You Wanted to Know - Tilos, Greece

This week there’s been debate again about the legality of the free camping on Eristos beach, so it seems a good time to address Mark Hill’s questions about the kantina. Mark wrote:

"I want to know about this cantina! Seriously. I want to know everything about it. I want to know why you opened it. I want to know what it's made of. Where you bought it? I want to know what food you sell and where you get it and how much it costs and how you figured out how to cook it. I want to know who comes there to eat and when and why. Are they locals or tourists or a mix of both? That damned cantina fascinates the hell out of me!"

There’s been a kantina on Eristos beach every summer since around the year 2000. The first one, I think, was painted red and run by Stelios’s cousins. After that, it was Vangelis – otherwise known as Zorba – who ran the kantina, with his daughter Martina. I remember Vangelis telling me about it when I first met him, how he used to like meeting the people who visited the island. I think I only visited the kantina once when Martina ran it, during my first summer on Tilos in 2011; Vangelis was by then working with his son Nikos at his new restaurant in Livadia. I remember my first visit to the kantina well, as it wasn’t long after the first koupa dance in the village where I’d briefly first met Stelios; he was playing cards there with Apostolis when I strolled up in my bikini to order a toasted sandwich. A week or so later, I met Stelios again at the second koupa, and by September we were together.

When her father died in early 2012, Martina decided to sell the kantina, and she offered it to Stelios. Stelios spent his summers growing up on Eristos beach, partied there through his twenties when he invariably came back to the island for the summer, and he knows all the people who come to camp at Eristos every year. What he bought from Martina was the physical trailer along with all its fixtures and fittings – a fridge, a water tank, a tostiera etc. But there’s also much more expense and paperwork involved than you’d expect. You have to apply to the municipality for the grant to use the piece of land on the beach (which they could have granted to another applicant, but he was at an advantage as the municipality must favour permanent residents of the island who need work). He had to have a licence to sell food, and insurance (I’m not allowed to work there, but I run errands and of course get to hang out there and help clear the stones off the beach at the start of the summer...). He needed a tax number and cash register and accountant – all very expensive in Greece. But none of that would put Stelios off. He’d wanted to run that kantina for years.

There are also restrictions on the kind of food that can be sold. It’s a kantina, not a restaurant, so nothing can be served on a plate with cutlery – it has to be in sandwich form. There are three nearby tavernas, and he can’t offer food similar to theirs. So the kantina offers cheap fast food, drinks and ice creams. But the hamburgers are freshly made from good quality meat. Most people order ‘tost’ – a cheese and ham toasted sandwich with tomato – with a Greek coffee or a frappe in the mornings, maybe an omelette sandwich, and take away cold bottles of water or ice with them, and gradually as the day goes on people order burgers and village sausages and tuna salad sarnies with beer or wine.

Food is supplied by Antonis, who’s also deputy mayor and one of the stars of the Tilos football team. When you live on an island with only one boat a day during the summer, you need a reliable supplier. Cousin Popi also regularly gets roped in to picking up odd supplies from Rhodes – her luggage for the weekend suspiciously heavy with backgammon boards, extra pairs of shorts and plastic bags for making ice.

The kantina doesn’t serve traditional food, you wouldn’t want to eat it all the time – but importantly it’s cheap (sandwiches 2–3 euros, drinks under 2 euros), it’s quick and easy; there’s service with a smile, and a friendly, hippy sort of vibe.

The customers include locals –Marios and Apostolis and Antonis and Angelos – who come for the company, and people who are staying elsewhere at Eristos, or like American/New Zealanders Bob and Joanie have arrived on their yacht, or have come up on the bus from Livadia for the day. We currently have a couple of successful French authors who are doing a bit of work from the kantina during the days, brushing shoulders with Greek guys with tattoos and girls with dreadlocks. It’s a fantastic mix of nationalities, families and couples and groups of friends.

Most of the customers are from the free camping, though; the hundreds of people who set up their tents and canopies under the trees along the beach through July and August. Free camping is actually illegal in Greece, but Tilos, like a dozen other islands, allows it to happen. As our mayor, Maria Kamma-Aliferis, wrote in a Greek newspaper this week, the campers on Eristos have been coming for years (some twenty years or so) and contribute to the island, and they respect the place and clean up after themselves, and they’ve become friends of the island. They mostly bring business to the local shops and restaurants. But every year, the existence of the free camping is contended by one of the nearby hotels. So it’s a precarious thing.

Last week, two lovely English guys came to camp at Eristos, and bought my book along with the drinks and sandwiches from the kantina. They went up to the festival at Harkadio Cave on the Saturday night to watch the traditional dancing and they bought souvlakis from the stand we were running. And they said they'd only decided to come to Tilos because they read an article I'd written for Wanderlust about the camping on Eristos last year.

http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/blogs/my-life-as-an-expat/tales-from-the-kantina-eristos-beach-tilos-greece?page=all

Stelios loves running the kantina. It’s his life for a few months, and we don’t really have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around the kantina – pick up some oranges, pay the bakery, wash the hammock, bring some new music… And for many people, making new friends or meeting up with old
ones at the kantina really makes their summer holiday complete.

(Did you know... Kantina has its own Facebook page, 'Kantina Eristos Tilos' - feel free to join!)

Tales from the Kantina - July at Eristos beach, Tilos

For those who think Eristos beach is for hippies, meet Nikos: a clean-cut, middle-aged mechanical engineer (now an out of work mechanical engineer, but that’s Greece in 2013). This is his second time in Tilos, and he comes for the tranquillity (Lisa, stop barking), the nature, somewhere peaceful to read a book. He learned English during three years of post-graduate studies in Ottawa; he says it’s rusty, but by the time we’ve discussed Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseas Elytis, the Antikythera Mechanism, Plato’s dialogue on etymology, theories on the Fifth Element… I’d beg to differ.

He’s been reading my book, and mentions that they now believe the Santorini volcano erupted earlier than previously thought; he says he likes the quotations at the beginning, and has translated the following lines from Elytis’ great work ‘To Axion Esti’ which he’s written down for me:

Then He spoke

And the sea was born

And in its midst he sowed small worlds…

Horses of stone with manes erect

And serene amphorae

And curved backs of dolphins…

Somehow, I’m not sure how, we get onto talking about the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek device like an analog computer built in 100 BC. It combined the Egyptian solar and Greek lunar calendars to forecast the stars in the sky for many years, thus being an invaluable aid to navigation. It was only the size of a book, and although its wooden exterior had rotted away when it was discovered by sponge divers a hundred years ago, its intricate metal parts were still intact. They don’t make computers like they used to, eh?

Until recently, no-one knew what the strange object was – until advance X-ray analysis was done in Britain. Nikos draws me diagrams to show how the various cogs and wheels measured the orbits of the planets. They already knew the sun was the centre of our solar system, something we were taught was discovered in the 16th century. Nikos says the Ancient Greeks had also built the steam engine in Alexandria around that time, but it was destroyed when the Romans invaded. 

‘Imagine,’ he says. ‘Three hundred years after the steam engine was re-discovered in England, there was the industrial revolution. If an industrial revolution had happened back then… Man could have conquered space in 300 AD.’ This launches us into a discussion on the merits and demerits of so-called progress.

But I shall leave you with a joke, which Nikos told me to add to my Greek jokes collection:

What’s the most efficient way to stop a Greek from talking?

Tie his hands behind his back.

We've had some beautiful times at the kantina recently - evenings with cool breezes, cold wine, warm company. Friends from Austria and Sweden are back, camping on the beach or staying in the nearby Nitsa Apartments or Eristos Beach Hotel. And there are new friends from Athens. Andreas, who has brought along some good music to play. Christina, who spent hours playing with Lisa. 

Kostas owned a wine shop in Athens for seven years and has just had to close it as the restaurants and bars he supplied were no longer able to pay their bills; he's now out of work. Stavroula has work as a junior school teacher, but she's finding it harder to explain to some of the children why the school has to provide lunch for them. The couple will camp on Eristos with a budget of 15 euros a day for as much of the summer as they can. Psychologically, says Stavroula, it's good just to feel the ground beneath your feet every day. The area of Athens where they live - Exarchia, where I used to go for nights out when I lived there - is losing its spirit these days. She hands a posy of thyme she's gathered to Christina. 

The other Kostas and Koula left last night on the big ship back to Athens, so unfortunately we'll have no more of Koula's amazing desserts. We'll miss seeing Kosta going out snorkelling every day, and Koula creating beautiful things out of tin cans. But she's painted this fabulous sign for the new shop at the entrance to Megalo Horio, for a women's co-operative selling local products, opening soon:

***

The latest on FALLING IN HONEY - please share it around if you can! Fab coverage in the Mail on Sunday's You magazine:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2360153/My-Greek-Odyssey-One-womans-rat-race-escape.html

Interview on Female First:
http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/books/falling-in-honey-299152.html

And a wonderful new cover for the US edition:

The Chicken and Egg Problem

There’s been debate here for a little while about why our chickens haven’t produced any eggs yet. I was researching online to see if there are things missing from the kotetsi, the coop. I wondered if they might be sick, as they’ve been losing feathers, especially one of them – but as Stelios advised, it is July and pretty hot. Then there was the other possibility…

Finally I bit the bullet and asked Grigori, who has a farm close by, if he wouldn’t mind, erm, coming to have a look at them when he has time. He stopped off while driving by and strode across the field.

He scanned the six of them quickly. ‘Jennifer, you’ve got five cockerels.’

That would be why we haven’t seen any eggs yet. It would also explain why they've been fighting. I went home and told Stelios his suspicions had been right. Apparently, when chickens are small it’s hard to tell if they’re male or female, and since ours are different breeds, they’re different sizes anyway.

‘But why’s the one hen not laid any eggs?’ asked Stelios.

‘Well, she’s probably quite tired…’ I guessed.

So, the only question next is – to borrow an old Young Ones line – who’s for the pot?

The Kantina is of course up and running and Lisa the Labrador cross is loving all the attention. When she’s not meeting new people, she’s doing important work digging holes.

And just when I thought a Tilos summer couldn’t get any better, having people coming up to me to say they’ve read my book and/or blog makes it super-special. A bit like one of Stelios’s hamburgers. So - thanks to everyone who's come up and said hello. You're the best.