Kejar ptp

Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts

The €10,000 donkey

I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Eric.

Yes, I do know that Eric is a donkey. In fact he's a Greek donkey. And it's not his real name, but he looked like an Eric to me and the name kinda stuck.

Eric lives in a field behind the apartment we rented in Ithaca. He's very friendly and he gets upset if you don't talk to him. A bit like Mrs D except she lives in a house...

Anyway, the point of this is that there is a donkey crisis in Greece. Apparently, there is a shortage. Partly this is due to the number of brides demanding that they ride to church on a donkey just like the girl in Mammi Mia. Honestly.

The other side to the problem is that Greek donkey milk is highly prized. Remember, Cleopatra used to bathe in it. Its milk has been used since antiquity as a cure of ailments, a substitute for breast milk and as an anti-ageing skin salve.

So the Greek government has hatched a plan. For every donkey you keep, they will pay you €10,000 a year. That's a lot of carrots in any currency. So Eric's owners get a big fat fee for him to stand in his field and beg off the passers by.

As benefits go, even Gordon never thought of this one...

A Postcard from Greece [4]

Back in May, I was extolling the virtues of Nionio's Taverna in Paxos. Well, I've found another one that's pretty bloody good too!

In the village of Kioni on Ithaca there are 5 tavernas, one mini market and quite a lot of yachts and their attendant yachties. They're a strange bunch, but some of them are quite sociable - apart from the snobs of course! You can tell who they are because they promenade up and down the waterfront in their boat shoes (and what exactly is the point of fucking up perfectly good casual shoes by running bits of string around them?) with their sweaters draped across their shoulders. Pissy poncey coloured sweaters of course!

We talked to a few - we're not proud - and once they know we are staying here and have been here for a while, they ask which is the best restaurant in town? This is how it works:-

The one at the end by the yatchs is OK but it catches all the wind, the service is indifferent and it's a bit pricey. We ate there once in 14 days.

Next is the one that all the flotillas seem to go to. Tables for 20 are the norm. I suspect that it is run by the brother or cousin of the guy running the flotilla! There are rumours that they buy in preprepared food to cope with the volume. I don't know if it's true, but the moussaka certainly tasted and looked like it!

At the furthest end of the waterfront there was a man spit roasting a pig. Every night. Very visually appealing, but the minute it comes off the spit it's gone! We had a couple of passable steaks in there one night. It was a bit pricey and we didn't bother going back. That leaves the two in the middle.

One always seemed empty. Someone told he had never had a decent meal in there, but we ate there one night and were quite satisfied. It had probably the cheapest wine on the block which was perfectly drinkable.

Mythos Taverna was the one for us. We ate there seven times. His meatballs are to kill for. Ditto his fried cheese. Light and delicate. They do a lemon casseroled chicken which melts in your mouth and a Greek chicken pie that is very solidly chicken. The veal in a brandy and orange sauce is fantastic. The pork steak fills your plate and is expertly grilled over charcoal. And the house wine to wash it down with? The best in town - especially the rose. I could rave about the place all week, it's that good. Last night the bill with a litre of wine was €28.

So why isn't he packed out? Beats me. All the people who ask us - and there have been quite a few - eat in the expensive one nearest to the boats. I guess that's yatchies for you. Style over content!

A Postcard from Greece [3]

Now that we are all one big federal country called the ~~Fourth Reich~~ European Union, I'm drawn to reflect on what makes us all so compatible...

After all, the Greeks and the Brits are all citizens of ~~Greater Germania~~ Europe, so we must have a lot in common.

For example, the Greeks didn't want to join the euro but no one asked them either! Ditto the European Constitution. So common ground there already. What else? Well, almost everything in this apartment is home made. Can we say that in Britain? The last rental place I stayed at in England everything was imported - mainly from China I seem to recall.

Smokers here are allowed to kill themselves if they want. No health warnings on their fag packets! They simply wouldn't tolerate it. Fruit and vegetables are odd shapes. No dictate here on the shape of strawberries or the size of tomatoes. They chuck 'em into boxes and you pick what you want. You won't find that in Tesco!

Hours and not regulated (well, not enforced anyway!) and you can take the kids in with you so they can get a lemonade while you sup your ale. And people are actually allowed to take responsibility for their own actions. How refreshing!

And all those directives from the ~~Reichstag~~ EU commission we are so quick to implement in the UK? The Greeks just ignore them. As one local told me "They can do what they like in Athens. It's not really relevant here."

So what we have in common with the Greeks? Bugger all - the lucky sods!

A Postcard from Greece [2]

As I lie here soaking up the sun, I reflect that this is the remotest corner of the great European empire. The end of the road on the almost last island in the chain. Just across the water is foreign. You know, not the EU.

This must be how the Roman legionnaires felt when they were posted to the last bastion of the Roman Empire - or as we know it - the Scottish border. Nothing but savages beyond this point...

It's so quiet and peaceful. But of course that's the point. As we all know, the Greek economy is fucked together with pretty much all of the rest of the Euro zone except Germany. They have their own agenda. So maybe that's why it's so quiet. Everyone else is in Turkey - with the foreigners!

The exchange rate has improved since I was here in May (€1.10 now €uro 1.16) but nowhere near where it used to be (€1.45) but any slight improvement has been offset by the latest Greek VAT increase. Your restaurant bill has increased to 11% VAT from 8% last time out and non foods - e.g. essentials like beer, wine, ouzo and metaxa -now carry a whopping 23% VAT. Even in the local currency, restaurant bills are also up. A meal for two will now set you back around €35 where it used to be about €25 year a few years back.

Still, a few good things that can still be found. The red wine I am drinking as I write this comes in a 5 litre plastic bottle and is surprisingly good for the equivalent of about £1.20 a bottle.

Cheers!...

A Postcard from Greece

OK - I'm back off holiday, but we all know that we get home before the postcards, so here's one I wrote earlier...

Last time I was in Greece, back in May, I'd not been here for a few years and was wondering exactly where the Greece I remembered - not quite of my youth because these days my memory isn't that good - had disappeared to!

Well, I'm pleased to report that it still exists although, as you would expect, it's a damn sight harder to find these days than it used to be. I'm resisting the temptation to tell you where I am because, frankly, I'd like to keep it to myself. Suffice it to say that it took a four hour flight, a 40 minute bus ride, 45 minutes in a boat and a half hour taxi ride to get here - and you know when you've arrived because the road doesn't go further than the village. Lovely!

We've got a simple appartment over a small shop painted as you expect in white with splashes of deep blue. There's a big terrace with a table, two comfy chairs and a pair of sunbeds.The mini market (there's only one!) is literally 50 yards away and the harbour front has five restaurants and a couple of coffee shops. It's exactly how I remember Greece twenty 20 years ago apart from the mobile phone mast and the Internet cafe.

But if that's the only modern incursions, then I can handle it!

Sod it! I'm off to Greece (again)

Yes, it's that time of year again. The kid's are going back to school so I can safely bugger off to Greece and take in some more sun and Metaxa.

Blogging will therefore be intermittent for a couple of weeks. Enjoy the break. I will!

It costs HOW MUCH !?!

Yesterday I reported on the view from the Taverna and how things have shot up in price here recently. Today, in my final report from the Greek front, I want to reflect on pricing in general here in Paxos. It's certainly not how I remember things...

My last Greek holiday was in a little fishing village on Samos - so generally comparable to here. There were two little supermarkets, half a dozen tavernas and not a lot else. Prices didn't vary a lot. A few cents here and there was about it. But how things have changed....

On our first day we went to the local shop for the essentials in life - Ouzo, Metaxa and a sixpack of Mythos beer. The Ouzo cost me just under €10, Metaxa €17.34 and the beer about €6.50. Purely in the interests of consumer research you understand, I replenished my stocks a few days later in a different shop. The price difference was about €6 on the same items. This variation would have been unheard of in Greece a couple of years ago!

Ditto that other essential of life - wine! After all "a meal without wine is like a summer without sunshine." After my earlier comments on the weather, I guess you can see this one coming : you can't buy a bottle of wine for less about €9 and that's the local stuff! On Samos I could get one for about half that. But never mind. The house wine at Onions was quite decent and he told where to buy it. So, problem solved -1.5 Litres of drinkable red wine in a plastic bottle for €3.50. Job done!

But I digress: Costs in general here have rocketed. Petrol is at €1.75 per litre - so stop whingeing and £1.20 'cos you don't know how well off you are! A large sliced loaf is over €3, a frozen cheese pizza will set you back €6, a packet of plain biscuits €1.30 and mince is over €9 a kilo. Reflect on that next time you're pushing your trolley round Tesco's!

So everything that used to be cheap is now expensive. Partly because this is due to the VAT increase from 8% to 10% on food. But, of course, if you translate these euro prices back to sterling it looks even worse. No wonder tourists off to Turkey instead!

So what did my friendly Taverna owner think of the Greek bailout package? He doesn't think it will do much good. When I told him that Alistair Darling agreed to contribute 10 odd billion to the pot to support the Euro, he nearly pissed himself laughing.

"But why?" He said."Britain is not in the Euro! That's crazy!" I think that summed the situation up nicely.

Margaret Thatcher would have asked for her money back...

The View from the Taverna

You can always tell a good place to eat. Walk into any town past all the quiet restaurants and join the queue for a table outside the one that's heaving!

We've had a number of excellent Greek meals at a Taverna in Lakka called Nionio's - or Onions as the Brits call it. It's been in business since 1945 and you can tell why. The food is excellent, the front man positively exudes charm and the prices are reasonable.

Anyway, enough of the plug. I got chatting to the guy who runs it. His English is a hell of a sight better than my Greek. So I asked him where the people were? He replied "They don't come this year." simple, but sussinct and to the point. "Why?", I persisted. "They don't got no money." Good point.

Digging a little deeper, I asked what he thought had gone wrong? "Is your government", he replied. "They take all your money. And the exchange rate," he continued, "it's no so good for you. But now you have new government, so we hope this will be a good thing."

I explained that we thought everything was a good thing compared to the dreaded Broon. He replied "Your man did not seem very bright to me." So there you have it in a nutshell...

We discussed the other Broon stuff - i.e. the Broon stuff Greece seemed to be in. He replied "Keep the pound. Worst thing we ever do is to join the Euro. Prices went up 300% overnight." I've never heard a figure that extreme before, but this is a small island off the beaten track, so who am I to argue?

(I discovered a few days later that the reason for this was that Greeks tended to think of a minimum price of 100 drachma and when the Euro was introduced the thought processes moved to a minimum price of €1. Hence the 300% increase!)

Onions is a great place to eat and the prices are keen, but you still won't eat dinner for two there for less than about €30. A few years ago you could eat well for about €20 - and the exchange rate was better.

On the bill I was handed there were two columns headed 8% and 18%. These reflect the VAT rates of food and others (specifically booze). The current rate is 10% and 21%. He explained to me that these receipts were recently printed and if he were to change them every time the VAT rate changed, it would cost a fortune in printing! The higher rate is to go up to 23% shortly...

It made me reflect on what could happen in the forthcoming emergency budget once the true extent of the mess Broon left the UK's finances in is finally revealed!

Where have all the people gone?

We have heard the news! The dreaded Broon is no more! I do a little dance and sink a beer in celebration!

This news has come by word-of-mouth as there no newspapers on Paxos. The local 'hotel' has satellite telly and apparently the BBC World Service appeared for the first 4 days and hasn't been seen since. No one seems to know exactly where it has gone...

Anyway, it must be true because last week I only got €1.09 for my good old British quid and today it has gone up to €1.14 so either the pound rallied on the news of the dreaded Broon's departure or the Greek Euro has gone even further down the crapper. Or maybe both?

Equally mysterious is the disappearance of all the tourists! Now I will grant you that Paxos is a little off the main tourist track, but the place is deserted. I've spoken to a few people who come here every year about this time, and they confirm it; the place really is deserted. Several businesses that are normally open now either haven't bothered yet or have gone bust. You only need to look in the bars and tavernas at night and see the worried look on the owners' faces to know that all is far from well.

Not sure there is any one reason for this. Admittedly the Eurozone has become expensive for UK visitors. Last time I was here, I was getting not far short of €1.50. Also, people have less money since the credit crunch so I guess they are either not travelling at all or are going to non-euro countries. Whatever the reason, they certainly are not coming here!

The upside of this was highlighted by a man I met in a bar last night - please note that there are no sacrifices I am not prepared to undertake in my pursuit of a story! He was due to go to the USA in April but had his holiday cancelled by the dreaded ash cloud. Having taken a full refund, he booked himself into a "basic but clean" small local hotel within easy walking distance of the waterfront, courtesy of Olympic holidays.

Amazingly, two weeks has cost him and his wife the princely sum of £425 - yes, two weeks two people. He rang Monarch Airlines to enquire the price of two return flights. They quoted £410. So given that for his £425 he has the same flight, transfers from Corfu and B&B in the hotel, that looks like a pretty good deal to me. Other people booked a while back and are doing the same. They are paying considerably more and they don't look very happy about it.

So the message seems to be a lack of tourists is hitting the Greeks hard and there are desperate last-minute deals on offer. Good for us. Not so good if you are a Greek businessman.

Tomorrow,the view from the Taverna....

Greek weather

As I left you yesterday, we had arrived safely on Corfu.

We are actually going to Paxos where, as my itinerary points out, we are due to collect our hire car five minutes before the plane lands on an entirely different island. Does anyone ever read these things before they send them out?

Anyway, we have survived the dreaded volcanic ash cloud and even the flight on Shitijet- just - so they take us to the nearest port and shove us on to a "sea taxi". This is a small high-speed motor vessel which takes 12 people and luggage - again, just. It is rather noisy and somewhat uncomfortable.

Off we go across to Paxos which takes about 90 minutes on a calm day. Thankfully, we get a calm day and only one passenger reaches for the vomit bag. All is well. We land, collect hire car, and head of for what turns out to be rather nice villa - although it is about a mile from anywhere.

As I write this, we have been here about a week. I have a great view across to the Greek mainland and have been watching for a while what happens when it's not a calm day! I'm praying for a calm day for the return trip to Corfu.

There is some debate here as to whether the prevailing wind is the Melteme or the Mistral. I simply refer to it as the bloody great force nine gale! It was sufficiently strong this morning for us to abandon a circular walk along a clifftop for fear of being blown onto the rocks below. We retraced our steps to the village where we didn't stop for a beer as it had started to rain.

So, my conclusion is that is that, when the sun is out, it is lovely. But the reasonably reliable weather I remember seems to have gone. This appears to be the case everywhere these days and Greece is far from unique. Irritating, but that's life. Global warming, my arse!

And it seems to change at short notice too. For the first few days we were sleeping with covers off the bed and sweating; but the last few nights we've curled up under a blanket. 20 minutes ago, the sea was rough, but now it looks quite calm again. It is overcast but give it 10 minutes and the sun will come out for an hour or so, then the gale will start again or it will rain or even both!

What's life coming to when you can't predict the weather in Greece?

(Just to add insult to injury, when we got off the plane at Gatwick yesterday it was 6° hotter here than it was in Paxos!)

The joys of package holidays

It's been a couple of years since we last had a holiday in Greece. Well, I'm pleased to report that despite the heralds of impending Euro doom, it's still here - it's just not like we remember it!

My review is, I must admit, a little coloured by the fact that tour company decided to bump us on to Shitijet - otherwise known as Thomson fly - at the last minute so my bright idea of booking a hotel with parking right next to the terminal at Gatquick went right out the window when they changed terminals on us!

And, in case you're wondering, the bright new interterminal monorail that was due to be opened for the start of the holiday season is now scheduled to open just as it comes to an end instead.

Our flight on Shitijet was further delayed by the fact that so many people had been bounced off Monarch (no explanation given!) that the pilot had no idea how many people were actually flying with him and, as I overheard the man on the gate say, that sort of info does affect the fuel load. As the captain remarked on takeoff, it helps if you actually have enough fuel for the entire trip rather than just part of it. Still, I suppose we could have swum the last bit...

So here we were, surrounded by screaming ankle biters who should have been in school ("But it costs more during school holidays, dunnit?" as one bloke was overheard to remark!). We refused to eat the most disgusting airline meal I have ever seen - and believe me I've seen quite a few; even cold sushi for breakfast on a flight back from Japan on one occasion. This so-called food looked like a reconstituted chicken shit spiced to hell to cover the taste, served lukewarm with cardboard massed potato which you could have used to repoint an industrial chimney.

Anyway, after a few hours retreat into the iPod we hit the runway in Corfu - rather fast and hard actually, but the wheels stayed on - so, as they say, any flight you walk away from is a good flight!

First leg done, then. More tomorrow....