Cruising to Crete

/ Garrulous Gwendoline

Kalimera. Ti kánete? Eisai kala?

JUNE 1979

This must have been the first phrase I heard among my fellow passengers when I disembarked the charter plane in Athens, even though it would be a week or more before I began to use it myself in conversation. Greece was my next port of call after leaving my job at Michael’s Nook in the UK Lake District.

Greek is a tough language to learn, I can assure you of that, but the advantage of being an Aussie who has dropped into the landscape for a few months is that everyone asks you the same questions. You get to perfect the answers, and people are impressed you have grasped the language in a relatively short time, but secretly you know that you will be completely lost if the conversation takes a diversion. I only ever learned to read the capital letters, but that was enough to get me on the correct transport, and if in doubt, I had enough language to ask directions  . . . with a strong, identifying, Cretan accent.

Good morning. How are you? Are you okay? All that was ahead of me as I loitered on the front steps of the main post office in Syntagma Square in Athens. I had arranged to hook up with a girl I’d met in my travels the year before. We were to rendezvous here then take the ferry down to Crete to holiday together for a while. But she was a no show.

Or was I at the wrong post office? Or on the wrong day? Or had I misjudged the time? These are the thoughts that ran through my mind as the hours ticked by and I wondered about what to do next. Remember, in 1979, the only person who had a mobile phone was Maxwell Smart, and he had to take his shoe off every time he wanted to make a call.

Image result for maxwell smart shoe phone

I made my way down to Piraeus, figuring that I might have more chance of catching her up at the ferry terminal. I took an outdoor seat at a nearby cafe and scanned the crowds. Then I fell into conversation with a girl at the next table. Maria was on a few weeks holiday from her job in Germany. A kindred independent traveller, she’d come to Greece without any forward bookings. So it was natural that we boarded the ferry together, and threw our lot in with each other.

The ferry left Piraeus in the evening around 9pm, and it wasn’t necessary to book a cabin, nor even a seat. The weather in early June was already hot, so most of us freewheelers dossed on the deck, and settled down for a few hours sleep after the communal party of dancing and singing had petered out. It was my first introduction to Greek music; and to retsina. The first, I discovered, was as varied as the country itself, and each of the islands has its own signature. The second, I discovered, was quite palatable once it stopped tasting like kerosene, which in my experience took about two weeks 🙂

Aegean Sea 1979The ferry ploughed on through the night. When the sun rose I had a good look around. To this day I have never, ever, seen a waterway as magnificently blue as the Aegean Sea. It was stunning. Sadly, my photo is now faded and worn. But I wouldn’t have wasted a precious piece of film on this shot if I hadn’t been impressed! I’ve done a little computer fiddle to re-saturate the colour.

We docked in Heraklion. I’d still had no luck finding my friend, and enquiries at the destination terminal were fruitless. So Maria and I hired a taxi and asked the driver to take us to some of his favourite places and suggest cheap accommodation to us along the way.

We headed off east from Heraklion, calling into several coastal towns along the way, until we came to Aghios Nikolaos. We conferred as we watched the fishing fleet come in, and decided that little Stalis (Stalida),  mid-way between Hersonissos and Malia, would suit us down to the ground. So we asked the taxi driver to turn around and take us back there.

In June 1979, if you looked down on Stalis from a high vantage point, it looked like what you can see in the below photo. See the smudge of white buildings beside the sea in the centre of the photo? And the smattering of other white buildings on the other side of the road? That’s Stalis. And you can just make out the narrow road snaking along the coastline on the left of the photo. That led to Hersonissos.

Crete 1979 Looking down on to Stalis

Looking down on Stalis, Crete June 1979

According to the website “explorecrete.com“

Cretan tourism grew dramatically in the 1980s. This was when Stalis, too, became a popular holiday resort in east Crete. Until then it was simply the beach where the inhabitants of Mohos, the village on the mountain rising south of Stalis, spent their summer holidays. Intensive tourist development of the area has resulted in the three towns (Hersonissos, Stalis and Malia) merging into a single coastal resort about 10 km long, full of hotels and apartments. Especially if you take the coastal road from Stalis to Malia, it is impossible to see where one resort ends and the other begins.

So here is a photo from their website showing what the coastal strip looks like now . . .

stalis

Source: Explore Crete.com

Well, back in “my day” i.e. 1979, Stalis was still the summer home of the villagers from Mohos, and accommodation was simple, clean and cheap. Maria and I took a room in the Pension Marina and settled in for the next three weeks. Here’s a photo of me chilling out with Poppy, a lady who worked at the pension.

Pension Marina Stalis Crete 1979

Maria and I made a trip back to Heraklion to tour the Cretan capital and visit their archaeological museum, and we returned to Aghios Nikolaos to watch the day’s catch being traded directly off the wharf, and we went off on shopping expeditions to various nearby villages. Usually though, after each of us having come from a snowy winter, the lure of the sun was too much and we spent most days at the beach. It wasn’t long before my usual dark colour had returned.

Gwen on Crete 1979

The weather was hot, around 30-35’c (85-95’f), and dry. The lifestyle was relaxed. The food was fresh and wholesome. Most days we would eat a little bread with our coffee in the morning, then go through till the evening, when we would fill up on grilled meat and salads (we should have been losing weight, but no such luck). We’d linger over dinner and then go on to various entertainments, always finishing up at the local disco where we quickly made friends with the locals. And as the quote from explorecrete states, those locals were mostly from Mohos, a traditional farming village hidden up in the mountain. They came down for work in the tourist season, either living in simple two- or three-roomed whitewashed stone dwellings that stood in a line near the beach, or getting live-in accommodation at their workplace. The young men, as nimble as the mountain goats that were prolific on the slopes, went straight up and down the side of the mountain on their many trips to and from Mohos. Everyone else used the gravelled road that wound down the mountainside in a criss-cross graded descent.

The Disco O La La in Stalis was a treat. Again, it was in a simple white-washed building on the beach side of the main road. There was a bar at one end, booths lined the other walls, leaving space for a dance floor in the centre of the room. The ceiling was decorated with egg cartons. Old 45 records provided additional ceiling decoration. The music was fabulous and dancing energetic. Often, the men led the way, and even young boys had a turn at taking centre stage while the others clapped along. One of the most athletic dances involved a man dropping to the floor and picking up a shot glass in his teeth, tipping his head back and drinking the contents in a fluid motion (oh – that was an accidental pun – guess I’ll leave it in 🙂 )

As you can see from the photos, all the guys were lean and fit, but I have seen even portly middle-aged men perform the same dance move. Music and dance is in the Greek gene, and I felt very at home amongst it. Which is just as well, as I ended up staying on Crete for the next five months. More about that in the next post!

Disco O La La Crete 1979

Disco O La La, Stalis, Crete 1979

Disco O La La Crete 1979 (2)

Disco O La La, Stalis, Crete 1979

Maria on Crete 1979

Maria looking relaxed and happy on her Cretan summer holiday 1979

 

This is my last post for 2017. I am looking forward to all that 2018 may bring. The possibilities are endless, but I do know that it includes a trip to west coast USA and Canada for Bill and me. And I came across this saying today, which I choose to interpret as an omen for the second draft of my manuscript:

Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page. Write a good one.

 

Wishing you all a very Safe and Happy New Year, a may 2018 be kind to you.

 

30 thoughts on “Cruising to Crete”

  1. I missed this post, glad I saw it today. I’ve only been to Corfu for a day off a ship, the heat stood out to me, I’ve only got to sit in the sun for 30 mins and I burn. Just having a quiet hour after a couple of shows in Paris sitting out in the gorgeous weather before I go exploring later. All the locals are helping me with my French, as you say when people see you trying hard they encourage you to talk.

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    • Gosh, can’t believe I wrote that post back on almost New Years Eve. My life is flashing away before my eyes, LOL. I have written a few more posts on Crete since that introductory one, but still a few more to come. Been distracted with ship visits, writers’ festival, Easter show and so on. Never a dull moment in the life of a retiree.

      So glad to hear you are enjoying Paris. Unlike most, my first impression was not favourable, but on subsequent visits I came to love it. And do your best with the language. Try not to mix up La Gare with La Guerre as I once did. It makes the locals jittery 🙂

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  2. Pingback: Working & Playing on Crete, Summer 1979 | The Reluctant Retiree

  3. Lovely piece with great comparison of now and then photo. It looks like much of coastal Med that was once wild and sparsely populated and is now covered with tourism. I suppose that is what happens over four decades in times of rapid change with the coming of better living standards for the locals. Mass tourism is a mixed blessing, but I can’t complain too much as it has allowed me to visit some very interesting places. You certainly lived up to the reputation of intrepid world travellers (the popular label we assigned to visiting Australians we bumped into when I lived in London).

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    • I always intended to return to Stalis, and to join up with another tourist who became a life-long friend. Now I’ve seen that photo, and my friend has passed away, I don’t think I’ll ever return to that particular spot. I agree however, we have to face the economic benefits for the locals (although it comes at a high social price for them), as I do intend to address the subject of the income inequality that I encountered there in one or another of the future posts.
      Aussies love to travel, and the fact of being so far away meant that in those days we stayed away longer and stretched our budget thin. There was a well-worn path to England overland from Singapore and travelling through Afghanistan, etc. I meant to get there that way but in the end took a plane 🙂 In all my travels, the only place I felt I was carving new ground, in comparison to my fellow Aussies, was when I ended up in Yugoslavia later in 1979.

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  4. I’m damned if I know why we went to France instead of Greece and environs I’m not overly fond of the French, and Greek food is to die for, I learnt a lot from George the Chef, (did I ever finish that?)
    .
    I’m a lover of Homers tales,

    Read/have books galore on ancient Greece, and what little I know of France is that we’d always been at war with them.

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    • France would have seemed so much more accessible to people living in England, which also explains the war rivalry? And the food more recognisable. I’ll never forget talking to some English people returning from two weeks in Portugal complaining that they couldn’t get decent fish and chips there 🙂

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        • Why travel if you want everything to be the same as at home – right? It used to have me scratching my head. I think they only went for the sun.
          And despite the abundance of wholesome fresh food we have in Australia, the only veg I can get my English visitors to eat is peas, corn and carrot. And if that comes frozen or out of a tin, they are even happier. Makes my blood boil!

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          • I’m a Pom and love my veges, fresh; the WO is harder to please then I am, love me pumperkin boiled baked or mashed, me cabbage and cauli taters an beans gone off of carrots since mislaying somethink; could almost pass as a dinki di bushie

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          • Yeah, you’re half oz on account of being relatively young when you got here. Mashed carrots are yummy, something about the mashing releases sweetness. I only discovered that when I got braces in my fifties. Cauli fritters are fabulous. What about brussel sprouts sauteed with bacon and pine nuts? And I’m on a zucchini slice thing at the moment as making soft food my brother can tolerate. (“IT’S” BACK)

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          • Brussels sprouts are only worth getting in the winter month same as parsernips, the rest of the year they’re rubbish, they don’t keep well in storage like some vegies, Love Savoy cabbage use it when making my Greek coleslaw that George the Greek taught me If my son hears I’ve made ir he’ll come over and scoff the lot, Well up until the last time, he stood there watching me make it and now makes it himself to the delight of his partner a lass that hails from Macedonia, who’d never heard of it and loves it too, Strange really as Macedonia has much in common with the Greeks.

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          • As much as I know of Macedonians and Greeks (which is quite a lot relatively speaking), just because the countries look close on the map does not mean they like to think of themselves as having anything in common. The language is completely distinct for starters. Anyway, moving on – I wouldn’t mind that coleslaw recipe. I make a great salad with Chinese cabbage that everyone loves, but it’s not exactly healthy. As for fruit and veg, I try my best to buy only in season, and I have an ancient recipe book that helps me that. These days, with what supermarkets are doing to our food chain, it getting harder to know!

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          • drop me a line at hotmail.com and I’ll send you a recipe of sorts for Georges Greek coleslaw.
            My sons girl friend partner whatever is from Macedonia; she seems to think I know more of it’s history than she does.

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          • I’m now eating bigger and better meals, there’s still a few things that I can’t stomach, probably cos I aint got one, like carrots the white of the egg but I’m getting better by the day, just get fed up cooking now, don’t get the enjoyment out of slaving away over a hot stove like I used to 😥

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          • Unfortunately for my brother the tumour has returned. Like you, he has no stomach. They used it in the Ivor Lewis technique op. They assessed him for a stent and decided against it. So everything is narrowing and hard to get food to go down.

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