Meet the President

My life on the little Greek island of Tilos mostly revolves around my dog, the sea, my garden, walks, swims, nature and my island neighbours, writing and editing books – which is how I like it and I feel grateful that is the case. I’d never really paid much attention before to the role of the president of the Hellenic Republic. And while I used to do formal meetings for my job a lifetime ago, now I prefer underwater meetings with moray eels and octopus…

But for a few days last week, the first item on my to-do list read: ‘Saturday 1.30, meet the president.’

It started when a message arrived on Thursday morning from Stathis in the mayor’s office. ‘The president of Greece is coming.’

‘I know!!’ I replied, excitedly. I’d heard rumour of it, though maybe for reasons of security I hadn’t seen any announcement, just a brief mention. The reason seemed to be our official status as Greece’s first ‘zero-waste’ island, an initiative that aims to recycle and re-use nearly all the island’s rubbish.

Privately funded by PolyGreen working in collaboration with the municipality, the scheme seemed very ambitious when first announced in a meeting in the square. But much happened last year to prepare, and over recent months young people employed by PolyGreen visited every home on the island to explain how it works. The element of education is important, bearing in mind that in Greece, ‘recycling’ bins are regularly filled with normal rubbish.

Now on Tilos bins have been removed, electric vehicles collect from each household several times a week, and everything is sorted to be shipped away for ‘circular waste management’.

But Stathis didn’t mention this. What he said was that the president of Greece was coming and wanted to meet me. Strange things happen sometimes, I’ve found, when you write books on a small island. Still, it seemed very odd. He asked me to come to the square on Saturday where the president would have a ‘relaxed conversation with citizens of the island’, which sounded more realistic, although not particularly ‘relaxed’ from my point of view.

It was a good pretext for learning something about the president of the Greece a.k.a. the Hellenic Republic, however. The role of Proedros tis Ellinikis Dimokratias was established in 1975 when Greece became a presidential parliamentary democracy; elected by parliament but with mostly ceremonial powers, the president is the official head of state and the commander-in-chief of the Greek armed forces. Katerina Sakellaropoulou, a lawyer and judge, became the first woman president of Greece in March 2020. Photos showed her sometimes looking appropriately fierce and sometimes with a kind, wry, rather cute smile.

Amazing! I was looking forward to seeing her on Tilos, and joked to Ian that maybe she could make me an honorary citizen of Greece, like Victoria Hislop…

On Saturday, I woke up listening to the waves, and the birds; the wind of the last few days had dropped and the sky was a deep blue. It was a beautiful day. Then I received another message from Stathis saying I was invited to join the president at her table. I was honoured but petrified and wanted to learn more. ‘We’ll talk in the square,’ he said.

I tried to continue my morning in the usual way. In the garden, I cleared some more of the winter weeds that grew while we were away in Romania, and planted some seeds. It was hot and we went for a swim – I tried to read a few pages but couldn’t concentrate. When we came back a farmer’s red truck was by the gate, and I bought some vegetables. Then I put on a dress and sandals in lieu of my usual shorts and boots, and drove off to meet the president.

Other people were going about their day in the usual way too, it seemed, until I approached the helipad and saw a Chinook recently landed, a few locals standing around it.

In Livadia, the post office in the square had got a fresh lick of paint, a peach colour with burgundy trim, and the scruffy old noticeboard on the harbour sported a new ‘zero waste’ sign. People were dressed up and bagging tables in the shade – which were covered in the usual way, alas, with plastic water bottles and plastic frappe cups…

Time ticked on, and the youngsters chosen to make a presentation wearing the full traditional dress of Tilos, long layers of embroidered wool, looked listless… Then dark cars drew up and, accompanied by a security man and important-looking personages in full military regalia, there was the petite figure of the president of Greece in a stylish white jacket. Everyone clapped as she strolled through the square greeting and talking to people.

Half an hour later, at Michaili’s Taverna, with butterflies in my stomach, I was ushered to a place at a long table next to our mayor Maria Kamma, and then the president of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou. I was even introduced to her, and although I was too nervous to say anything interesting at all, I was able to present her with a copy of my last book, Wild Abandon, and she was gracious enough to examine it, ask some questions and ask me to dedicate it to her. I’ve never dedicated one of my books to a president before. So if you own a copy, you’re in good company…

There were presentations of other, more official gifts, by our mayor Maria.

‘Exigiseh to elephantaki!’ - explain the little elephant! - hissed the lawyer of the municipality of Rhodes to Maria as she stood there with the unenviable task of gifting a cumbersome metal statue of a Tilos elephant.

‘Eh, vevaia, of course…’ she replied.

The president drank white wine with ice (‘the colder the better’, she said, because it was a hot day, though maybe she’d had bad island wine before…). The table was heaped with salads, courgette fritters, fried calamari, tiny shrimp and huge fresh fish… I’m not sure if the president didn’t like the tiny shrimp or is just an animal lover, but at one point I spied her feeding some to the cats.

I listened in to conversations. The CEO of PolyGreen, Athanasios Polychronopoulos, talked about the zero-waste programme to the president. ‘We have to change many minds,’ she said seriously. He explained how he had chosen to implement this initiative on Tilos because of the openness of its community to embrace change; there was talk of the first gay weddings in Greece and how the island had handled the Syrian refugee crisis.

There was also plenty of banter. The Regional Governor of the South Aegean ordered a plate of goat, and the owner of Eleni Beach Hotel smilingly declined to taste it because it was from the other village, Megalo Horio.

Sadly, my Greek felt rusty from my time in Romania and my nerves kept me quiet (honestly!), afraid to make some terrible faux pas. That said, when dessert arrived and the restaurant had run out of plates and spoons and decided to provide plastic ones instead, I felt I had to speak up and say no thanks to unnecessary plastic!

President Sakellaropoulou demonstrated great poise and knew how to say and do just the right thing. Before she left, she had some photos taken. She stood on the steps of the taverna after lunch with the ladies who’d provided it, and made sure everyone was in the picture. She even asked to have her photo taken with me, but I haven’t managed to get a copy of it.

And then she was gone, and I went and had a swim and relaxed.

And now the next things on my to-do list are the more usual work items, tax return and reading the proofs of my new book… But I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day I met the president.

 

Here are the wonderful official photos of the president visiting Halki and Tilos:

Επίσκεψη στη Χάλκη και την Τήλο – Προεδρία της Ελληνικής Δημοκρατίας (presidency.gr)

President – Presidency of the Hellenic Republic

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.

Wine and White Sand in Winter: The Kos Trip

It was mid-November, and I was nervous as I prepared to leave for Kos on the wine trip. Wine doesn't usually make me nervous, but I’d never driven a car onto a ferry before. 

One evening in Tilos I had been thinking about sourcing some good organic wine, preferably from a nearby island (as no-one sells it here). I used to order from Embona in Rhodes, but then I remembered I’d found good stuff on Kos. I did a little internet search and found not one but two organic wineries in the middle of the island. I tried emailing Mesariano and received a very helpful response in English listing the different wines and prices; they had no problem sending to another island but the shipping cost was a little steep. This gave me an idea…

A couple of years ago, I’d taken a flight that passed over the western part of Kos, and looked down to what looked like a long stretch of wild beach. It seemed somehow unlikely on an island known for embracing touristic development, but there was no sign of hotels or villas. It stuck in my mind that I’d like to take a closer look.

And so, I had two perfect excuses for a trip. Oh, and a third – my new tent needed testing! I just needed to overcome my fear of driving a car on and off a big ferry, so that I could get to the places with Lisa – since dogs aren’t allowed on buses there – and transport the wine.

‘Eineh evkolo,’ it’s easy, said Stelios in the ticket office as I mentioned it was my first time and asked if there was anything I should know. I was lucky in one respect, though: the ferry schedule had been disrupted by a strike, so the big Blue Star that would normally travel late on Friday night had been delayed until 2pm Saturday afternoon, and was less busy than usual, and certainly less busy than in summer or en route to Rhodes – less shouting and hand-waving to deal with and fewer vehicles to avoid as I drove on.

On deck, my anxiety turned to relief, I took pleasure in watching the rugged east coast of Tilos with its very few signs of habitation as we travelled north. There was sun as we docked at Nisyros, but it was already dusk when we arrived at Kos Town. Heading for Pantheon Apartments, a cheap and dog-friendly stopover, I got sucked into a vortex of narrow one-way streets and circled a roundabout three times. I realised I had no idea about parking rules, but since it was Saturday night I did like everyone else, and parked on the pavement in between a couple of trees.  

I took Lisa for a walk around the old harbour walls and a medieval gate. I’d been hoping to do shopping in town but everything was closed, so early Saturday evening saw me at a café-bar I’d noticed but never visited before: Scholarcheio. It seemed a good sign that they had little bottles of organic red from Petra Marinou, the second winery I’d found online. I ordered a lettuce-and-pear salad sprinkled with tiny raisins and a plate of local sausage which I shared with Lisa. The place was packed by the time I left, the waiter rushed off his feet.

In the grey early morning I drove west, away from the nearby shores of Turkey, parallel to the ridge of Dikeos mountain, which I see from my house in Tilos. I saw the turnoff to Pyli, where I’d spent a couple of weeks wandering while writing Wild Abandon. I passed a little vineyard where the people used palm branches over their fence to shield it from the road – as I’d now done around my garden. I stopped briefly to pick up a few supplies in Antimacheia. The road became quieter, the surroundings more rural as I neared the narrowest part of the island before Kefalos, and randomly picked a rough track to turn off and leave the car.

And there it was: the place I’d seen from above, a long stretch of pure, pale sand, with juniper-covered dunes and low, sandy hills behind and only a scattering of houses. Heaven! On a cloudy but warm Sunday in November, we had the stretch of beach to ourselves. The sand was clean, the sea clear, the sun trying to break through the clouds. With no sign of sheep or goats around, I let Lisa run, throwing a ball for her to chase. I took off my boots and we walked far along the beautiful, empty shore. As the morning wore on, we ran into a few locals: a woman who told me she’d stopped swimming for the year in October, a couple with a young child and two fishing rods stuck in the sand, another man with six fishing rods.

Beyond to the west, the headland of Kefalos at the far end of Kos rose up to four hundred metres and was deep green with trees. In the afternoon, I drove through the resort of Kampos and uphill to Kefalos village, under which a few caves in the rock were used for keeping chickens. I filled up my bottles with treated water at the Temak dispenser in the car park, and continued to see a little of the peninsula.

The sun came out as the road wound through hills and brought out all the colours of juniper and olive trees, heather and thyme bushes. I parked at Ayios Iannis Theologos and wandered along a track, enjoying a string of beaches with pure white sand and rippling blue sea, a breeze blowing from the north. There were farmers and the bells of goats and sheep.

Returning to the village, I picked up dinner, then I drove back down to the protected south-facing beach. Sunset was magnificent; it was a long, cool night, but Lisa and I were comfortable in the new tent, and it was wonderful to wake to sunrise and the gently lapping sea. It felt so peaceful and special to be there at that moment.

Before leaving this part of the island, I swam next to the ancient ruins on the edge of Kefalos-Kampos where years ago I swam out to the island. Then I wandered down another track and found Volcania winery surrounded by a beautiful, wild, open landscape. The sun was hot, someone was herding goats and their bells were ringing melodiously. In a farmyard with a few cows and chickens, a friendly man called his mother to show me around. Maria was around seventy and told me the area had all been farmland, divided up and given to the tsopanistes and agrotous, but then tourism came, and the work was easier, and most people gave up farming. She worked for twenty-five years for the local Club Med (!) and her husband kept the farm. I bought a few bottles of wine – it wasn’t certified organic but judging by the surroundings, it should be good – and wrenched myself away and to the road back east.

People were collecting olives and pruning their trees in the lovely countryside. I stopped and climbed a hill for a distant view of the impressive medieval fortress outside Antimacheia. There were tracks leading off in all directions and nothing at the end of them according to the map – I’d love to wander there some day.

When I saw a sign for Petra Marinou winery, I turned off the road and parked next to a coop of partridges and guinea fowl. The showroom was closed for the winter but the garage next door had a display. I picked up a few bottles of last year’s Chardonnay and Syrah for a good price as well as some new windscreen wipers and the man fitted them and agreed to check the radiator fluid for me. They’d have this year’s wine soon.

At last, I continued among now busy, fast traffic to Mesariano, finding it hidden behind a big Sklavenitis supermarket, pulled up in front of a beautiful marble Turkish fountain and was greeted by Nikos. It soon transpired that the perfect English in the emails was his son’s, so we spoke in Greek. Although he’d hoped to have plenty of time to show me around, he was busy with orders that morning as well as visitors at home – it was o nomos tou Merfi, he said: Murphy’s Law. I had a super-fast visit, and packed a few boxes of organic Cabernet and Merlot into the car.

Returning to Kos Town, I learned that most shops didn’t re-open on Monday afternoon. But what more did I need? I had a car full of wine, and had discovered some wonderful beaches. I ate again at the same place, where I arrived early and the waiter was making rakomelo and gave me a glass. I slept well, and early the next morning at the harbour I saw the orange sun rise from the sea. And what’s more, I was the only car getting on the Stavros ferry. ‘Tilos!’ shouted the crew to his mate. ‘Where do we put a car for Tilos?’

I wrote half this blog post while drinking a glass or two of the delicious Mesariano Grand Reserve (2017) two months later. I think I’ll need another trip there at some point. In the meantime, I've been finishing off my new book while doing more travels. Stay tuned...