We have the biggest balls!

I was once on the island of Sifnos for about a month - Sifniots are renowned as incredible cooks. My guide book at the time urged me to hike across the mountain paths to a small village where I would find the most incredible taverna serving astonishing food. This particular place was very famous for its tyrobalakia, advised the book, and other small croquettes made from zucchini, eggplant, sausage - you name it. The guide book was right.

Mouth watering after my hike, I sashayed in to the packed taverna - alone (as always) and hopefully asked the owner - a dashing young man - if he had any cheese balls on the menu today. "We have ALL the balls," sez he! "The biggest and best on the island!" A mortified hush fell over the crowd. He blushed, I sniggered, and the crowd burst into hysterical laughter. The night went to hell after that with fantastic food, buckets of barrel wine, toasts to the largest balls and new friends.

So here is another one of my favourite recipes - with adaptations for North American cooks. Delicious as an appetizer, deadly to the waistline.


Tyrobalakia (Cheese balls)


Ingredients
250g anthotyro (ricotta-style cheese)
250g feta (piquant-style, grated)
250g kefalotyri or pecorino romano (grated)
2 eggs
3-4 tbsp flour
Ground pepper to taste
Sesame seeds
Extra virgin olive oil

Method
Mix all the ingredients together except for the sesame seeds. Add enough flour to ensure the mixture is pliable but not dry. With hands greased in olive oil, ply the cheese mixture into small balls.
Roll the balls into the sesame seeds so the balls are completely coated. Fry in olive oil and serve. The cheese balls can be prepared up to 24 hours in advance, stored in the fridge and fried when ready to serve.

It's in the mail. Maybe

Her majesty is a grand old gal, but her postal service is a bit dodgy sometimes.

I finally DID manage to get all my paperwork (so far) signed, stamped, authorized, notarized, disinfected, inspected, sealed, laminated, framed, stamped again, and signed off by the Mounties, several lawyers, a notary, a commissioner of oaths, a nice lady at the Greek consulate in Montreal and New Brunswick's Lieutenant Governor (I am not making this up - really - the LG had to sign off too).

So the next step is to mail the whole mess of documents to my lawyer in Crete - the talented Dr. Marios. He then gets them all translated by an OFFICIAL (of course) translator recognized by the Greek government (naturally). I'm not sure how many rogue wildcatting Greek translators are skulking about ready to do evil deeds to government documents, but apparently this process weeds them out.

In good faith, I mailed a batch by means of something called an "international package." Cost me 57 bucks but got there in 4 days. The next batch went "expedited" - cost me 34 bucks and has yet to arrive 2 weeks later. The third batch went by regular international air mail - small package - cost me 7 bucks - it also is somewhere in Her Majesty's post office waiting to whisked to Greece. Three different post offices; three different recommendations for the best way to mail; three different prices and three different mail clerks who never heard of either of the first two ways to send the package. Hmmmm. Who needs reality TV when you have a post office providing such great edge-of-your-seat kind of entertainment.

The bad news is that if Her Majesty manages to lose any of these letters, I have to start all over again.

Dudley Doright Done Me Wrong!

Still here? Good lord, you must be a sucker for the boring minutiae of government paperwork! Or a kindly relative. Or a creditor. Hmmmmmm....

I started my paperwork to purchase my tiny piece of Crete in May. It is now October. Oh those wacky Greeks and their bureaucracy, you say. Uhm, no - this 6 month delay in getting the paper I needed to START the purchase process was caused by my very own Canadian government. See, the first order of business in preparing to apply for permission to buy is the need for a criminal record check from our beloved Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Six months this took - fee for getting fingerprinted (O my, THAT was an interesting experience!); fee for requesting the record check. Since my life is depressingly dull, I have no criminal record that would make me pop up instantly on any data base. Back when I was 9 years old and boosting chocolate bars, they apparently didn't record my life of crime. So, yes, six months for Dudley Doright to get off his Royal arse and give me the stinking piece of paper that says I'm a good girl (at least as far as they are concerned - all you exes out there - shaddup!)

So, now the paperwork has been assembled that basically identifies me as (A) a Canadian and (B) Saintly.

Then I had to send it to Greek consulate in Montreal for 6 copies of everything AND little paper stamps and arcane notations on each copy to prove that the Greek consulate agrees that these are in fact, indeed, documents issued by the Canadian government. There was a fee for this, of course. In fact, they charge by the page. I am $125 poorer. Plus the courier costs and the pre-paid return envelope. There are no free rides.

So now, the paperwork rests with my lawyer in Crete. A very stylish hyperactive guy who speaks faster than the speed of stink. Let's hope his lawyering skills are as slick. He now has to assemble all my documents and their various copies and stamps and authorizations and find the topographical maps of the property, find the engineer and architect and contractor and probably Spiros down at the fish market to sign off on the whole mess and then send it to the Minister of Defense in Athens for his approval. My lawyer happily assures me that this will only take eight months. That's 8 (eight) months. It will be interesting to see if the Greek government can beat the 6 months it took for the Mounties to give me my piece of paper.

And THEN...... I can write a check and buy a piece of land that would fit comfortably in a corner of my driveway here in Canada.

Can't accuse ME of being an impulse shopper!!! God, I need and ouzo..... stay tuned.

Local celebrity!

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/liveit/article/1072622

Welcome to Byzantium!

When people talk about too much complicated bureaucracy, they call it "byzantine." I always thought it referred to a period in history and the realm of Byzantium, or the area of the Roman empire during the Middle Ages, centred around Constantinople (modern Istanbul). But I now know it was invented to describe the complicated process for a foreigner to buy land in Greece.

I am a devout hellenophile so the nobler part of me is glad that the Greek government keeps such tight control on foreign ownership. But the larger more selfish part of me that longs to have roots in Greece wants to scream - HEY - Papandreou! It's ME! Nancy! Lighten up on the paperwork, will ya!"

For those of you interested (for reasons that escape me) on the convolutions of a non-EU citzen buying Greek property - here we go:

My first step was to get a Greek lawyer who will act as my power of attorney.

Next, everything in Greece apparently has to be notarized. Several times, several ways, in several versions, often. Get used to it. There is a lot of pomp and circumstance and the occupation of notary is pretty lucrative and pretty busy. It involves a LOT of documents, official looking rubber stamps, waiting in hot sweaty lobbies and dealing with earnest clerks.

Then - I had to open a Greek bank account. Easy peasy - got the lawyer to do that. OH! But first, I need a Greek tax number. Lawyer again. Notarized the passport, times six. I am not making that up. Six copies.

Now then.... let's buy some land.

BUT FIRST.... I need my national police (in my case the Mounties and Dudley Doright) to provide a criminal record check to the Greek Ministry of Defence. Since I boringly have a pristine criminal record, this takes about four months. And money - I had to get finger and palm printed (fee) and then send the mess off to Ottawa (another fee).

Then - because apparently the RCMP's word is not good enough, I have to write a statement that says, like Nixon, "I YAM NOT A CROOK." And, naturally get it notarized (fee) and translated (fee) by a translator approved by the Greek Embassy or Ministry.

I need an original copy of my birth certificate (fee) translated (fee), and then .... hey wake up! We've only just started!!! Stay with me.... I also include my personal biography and information on my parents and where they were born, information on my finances, and a brief essay on why I want to buy property in Greece. I have resisted the urge to write on the form - "why to have frequent licentious bacchanals of course!"

I then send the whole works off the Greek Embassy in Canada. It has to be translated you see. And then notarized. And THEN, I can send it to my Greek lawyer and HE sends it on to the Minister of Defense, who apparently has nothing better to do. Oh, and the lawyer has to get the land surveyed, get the specifics on the parcel of land, a topography map all of that certified, notarized and god knows what else. They also need to prove I am not near either a sensitive military zone or a protected natural area.

Still with me? Good.

Now, the hard part begins. I am told that the Minister keeps the application in his IN basket for about 8 months before stamping it approved.

So - minimum of 12 months. I could, I suppose speed the process up with a few bribes - but I'd rather not. So much for impulse shopping.

I am now on the second month of waiting for the RCMP to give me a clean criminal check. It's a little unsettling waiting for it.... trying to recall if I ever got busted for shoplifting a chocolate bar as s 10 year old or have an unpaid parking ticket. Or worse - identity theft - maybe somebody masquerading as me has been pulling off bank heists and jacking deer! Egad!

In the meantime, I can dreamily look at my Greek home decorating mags, moon over architects plans and figure out what I need to sell to afford this folly.

Stay tuned. More paperwork to follow.

Number one on the bucket list

Like a dog looking for a place to pee, I’ve circled and circled to find just the exact right spot to buy my little slice of Greek island paradise. I’ve been looking for over a decade. And this year, I think I might have finally found the right place.

Why Greece, you might say. And – good god with their economy in shambles – why now?

Can you see me shrug? Can you see my goofy smile? Can you see the stars in my eyes? My only answer is why not? The time has never been better. Here’s a tip – Greece’s economy is always a basket case, they have perpetual labour unrest and the Canadian dollar goes up and down like a whore’s drawers. So, what the hell – if you read any of my first 30 or so posts you’ll know my mantra – you’re a long time dead. Act, because inaction is decay. And I have no intention of rotting on the vine, my friends.

Over the next year, I’ll be blogging about just what one poor (and I mean POOR) foreigner has to go through to acquire property in Greece. The bureaucracy is byzantine and I will need your moral support in navigating it. Fortunately I have the quick witted and unflappable Andreas to help me find my bearings and Marios to help me deal with their legal quagmire.


I may chicken out before I plant my first olive tree. But I am indeed going to try this adventure. If I didn’t, I would hate myself for not at least trying.

So, stick around as I chart my course to become landed gentry in my version of paradise.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Well, my middle-age-crazy winter in Greece has come to an end. I am back in Canada now. Back to the sanctuary of my beloved house and gardens, back to the slobbery kisses and bum waggles of my unfaithful dog Daisy and back in the loving embrace of my dearest friends. Oh yeah, and back to work on Monday.

It truly was 90 days of sunshine for me this winter, both meteorologically and spiritually.

This winter odyssey had two goals: one was to see if I could do my job off-site, using technology; the other goal was to see if I could do some mending inside and out. Work went really well – I was able to deliver my projects well before deadline and there wasn’t one hitch with the technology. Not one. (thank you Mac gods!) I’m not sure how my boss feels about this – he likes being able to wander down the hall put his feet up on my desk and brainstorm about the next project - however, we Skyped, iChatted and emailed and, as I said, work got done, projects got completed and stuff filed and applied for on time.

As for the personal mending part, well, there was some progress there too. I resolved a lot of goals and directions for the next 50 years of my life, put away some past hurts, grieved for my recently deceased older brother, ancient old auntie and of course my beloved dad – gone too soon and so hugely missed. My health still is annoyingly out of whack. But it was important for my soul to get away from the poking and prodding of doctors for a little while. I was able to forget all that for three blessed months. And that, my friends, was worth the trip.

Best part of being home? In order of importance:
1. Snuggling with my dog Daisy and looking into her soulful eyes and hearing her laugh (yes, Labs laugh! I am not making this up).
2. Lunch and gossipy gabs with my friends.
3. Cold skim milk.
4. No constant threat of yet another 24-hour labour strike of some sort.
5. North American plumbing (if you’ve been to Greece, I don’t need to explain this).
6. Australian wines (can’t get ‘em in Greece).
7. The smell of the woods around my house.
8. The pleasure of feeling fresh grass under my bare feet.
9. Coffee on my back patio watching the fawns eat my flowers.
10. Walking along my beach playing Frisbee with my Daisy dawg.

Things I already desperately miss from Greece? In order of importance:
1. The absolutely wonderful friends I made while in Crete. I can’t believe I won’t see you for a year! Thank god for Skype.
2. Retsina and barrel wines from the villages
3. Greek cheeses and 10%m.f yogurt
4. The smell of mama’s cooking and being able to pick a fat juicy orange off the tree
5. The joyous exuberance of daily Greek life
6. Knowing that I walk in the footsteps of the gods and on the very same stones that Plato and Aristotle's sandals trod
7. My perfect beach at Agios Prokopias


8. The astonishing variety and lushness of Greek spring flowers
9. The bustle of Athens and shopping on Kokolotroni and Ermou Streets
10. Owning a seat in a café for the entire day for the price on one measly coffee.

So, thanks faithful readers, for coming along for the ride with me this winter. I won’t close the blog down just yet, but won’t be posting as often.

I am working on a new project that, as it develops, I will probably blog about. Stay tuned.

Thanks for keeping me company this winter.

From travelogue to introspection

I never promised you a travelogue. Hell, if you need travel advice, just call me and I'll map out your next trip. Today the travelogue I've created here on this blog descends (or ascends) to introspection. I am mere days away from returning home. Indulge me.

If you haven't yet seen the stage play or movie 'Shirley Valentine,' it's high time you did. Don't expect a travelogue - it's more a journey of self discovery - much like this one. There is a point in the story, where Shirley questions the point of returning home to her usual life of nothingness. I'm having that experience today. When I told my boss I was going to do this - he asked me if I would ever come back. "You have my hostage," I said.... for I left behind my Daisy and my house and my lovely friends. Ransom, booty, my only treasures... but it was enough to mollify him into knowing I would return to my job. Today, as I sit in the moonlight of my terrace eating mama's roasted artichokes, drinking her inestimable barrel wine... I wonder if it is enough.

I am tempted, as Shirley was, to bolt when I get to the airport. To throw myself on my own Kostas, demand a job in the taverna and just...... not go home.

"Who would miss me?" wonders Shirley - "really, who would notice if I didn't come back." I ask myself those same questions tonight.

Oh, of course I'll go back. I am, even though a woman, a man of my word.... one of my quirks is that I uphold my own sense of Victorian principles of being a gentleman - I am an honourable (wo)man of my word. For without honour we really have nothing. I will deliver my promise and sort out my own life once my obligations are met.

But tonight.... tonight..... the moon lowers over the portara... the stars are a bowl of magic inside a sapphire sky... and early tomorrow morning... I will have my Shirley Valentine moment, when I kiss Naxos goodbye and board that plane to Athens.

Homeward Bound. . .

This rare odyssey is winding down in the next week. I am still in Naxos, my beloved spiritual home, but preparing to leave for Athens and thence home to Canada. Spring has fully arrived here, with warm days, lush wildflowers, and the first trickle of tourists. I’ve even been in swimming, for the beaches in Naxos are truly the best in Greece. To swim off Agios Prokopias is to float inside an aquamarine jewel.

I am sad and oddly tired. I am anxious to return home to my friends who supported me so much in this endeavor and to my darling unfaithful dog Daisy. But I am loath to leave the only place in the world where I feel whole, sound and right.

I’ve started the rounds of fare-thee-well visits to my friends and neighbours here. It mostly involves drinks, meals, lots of hugs and kisses and promises to return. I drink in the emotion like a parched vampire, but it exhausts me and leaves me fighting tears much of the time. Mama has ramped up her daily gifts of hot home cooked meals, cakes, cookies and produce from the farm. Today I gave her a gift of some lovely artwork done by one of my new friends from Crete. She cried. I cried. And I promised to be back.

So, now I need to get my brain and soul off island life and back to the insanity that is Athens. A few days there to do some last minute power shopping and then home and reality.

But, man, what a ride!



“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”
Henry Miller

Apollonos bound

There is something slightly surreal about sitting at a seaside taverna on a small Greek island, watching the local fisherman bash a kalimari into mouth watering tenderness on a rock whilst listening to Aretha Franklin belt out R.E.S.P.E.C.T. on tinny speakers. I am in the tiny fishing village of Appolonas on the island of Naxos, approximately 100 miles from where you would be lost forever.

The road pretty much ends here. A bus of dubious mechanical health comes here once a day, after navigating hair raising switch back roads without benefit of guard rails but lavishly decorated with tiny heartbreaking roadside shrines to all who have failed to negotiate these twists and turns.

Appolonas’ main claim to fame is that this is where you can hike into the surrounding hillsides and see the giant sleeping kouros statues resting where they were abandoned by the carvers so many thousands of years ago – for reasons no one quite knows now.


But I’ve climbed the mountain paths and found the kouros many times in the past. Now I come just to drink in the mountains spilling down into the sea. And to drink a glass of wine in the country the grape was grown in while the kouros sleeps on.

Naxos sunsets

Volcano induced, ouzo enhanced

Today, the wine tasted like cherries

I’ve been in a bit of a funk this past week. Call it post-Pascha hangover, call it homesickness. Whatever. I haven’t really felt like doing much or socializing with my Naxian friends. The weather has been fine – gorgeous strong sunshine, but the winds on my north-facing aerie have been fierce and relentless the whole week. Perhaps their constant howl has added to my blue mood. I have less than three weeks before returning to Canada and about one more week here dedicated to work before I am officially in the “vacation” part of this odyssey.

So today to lift my spirits, I rented a car. A petite little orange thing that makes a Smart Car look like a bus. I suspect it is the only one on the island with an automatic transmission. There. Now you know. I can’t drive a stick – hanging my head in shame.

So once the rental formalities were observed - license, money, evidence of a heartbeat - I was good to go and I hit the open road. Map? Pfffft….. how can you get lost on an island? Just keep the sea out one window and keep turning in the same direction.

I visited my favourite parts of the island today – the golden beaches of Agios Prokopias, Agia Anna, Maragas and Plaka. Pretty much deserted of course this time of year … so I had miles of coast all to myself allowing me to commune with the sea, collect the obligatory handful of seashells, and ignore the two nutty Danes sunbathing in the nude behind an outcropping of rocks (it was 16C today, that’s why I say nutty). Drinking in the loveliness of this coast recalibrated my brain and settled my soul.

The tiny village of Agia Anna holds many tavernas, but one of my favourites is the huge Taverna Gorgona. The gorgon that owns it is genial with a dry sense of humour , bad knees, and a quirky but determined grasp of English. Her place commands the most important corner of the village, overlooking the crossroads, wharf and beach access. One can sit on her terrace, enjoy her excellent food and watch the boats bob in the marina. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

Today she brought me a generous slab of her moussaka, sizzling pommes frites (made the way god intended- in olive oil) and a special treat of her crispy spanakopites and tyropites as an appetizer. Since my intention was to dwaddle the afternoon away, I ordered wine. Wine can be a dodgy prospect in Greece – some of the local barrel wine can burn the hair out of the inside of your ears, and sometimes it is ambrosia and each mouthful is a gift from Dionysius. Today, I got lucky – for the gorgon’s wine was rich and fat and tasted of cherries. Bliss.

My mood lifted, my equilibrium was restored – not from the wine but from the total package of perfection of being in the right place at the right time, as the gods ordained. Endorphins cycling high from good food, sunshine, a friendly gorgon …. and a sea as blue as forever. And wine tasting of cherries.

Naxos Beaches

Strays adopting strays

I seem to have acquired a cat here in Naxos. I'm pretty sure I didn't adopt him, but he seems to have adopted me. He's relatively plump for a stray - which makes me question his fidelty (like most of the males in my life) and seems to be flea and mite free. He has tabby markings, angora like fur, and yowls with that unique Siamese type yowl - looks to me like a cross between a calico and a ..... well, a bison.

Like any good mannered Greek he is sensible enough to not show up too early in the morning. Rather, he comes to my terrace like clockwork in the late afternoon. Ouzo time.

I sit on my terrace every afternoon around 5-ish, with an icy ouzo at hand reading the day's newspapers while I watch the sun set He appears, yowls loudly until I give him a saucer of my fresh coffee cream and then we both sit in quiet reverence while the sun sinks into the sea from a sky painted in pinks and purples. I sense he is checking in on me each day to make sure I'm OK. A stray looking out for another stray.

I am a dog person. I speak dog. Fluently. I know not of cats. Never had one. I am not a cat person. Oh, I like them well enough, but I have dreadful allergies, cats being among the worst. Getting up close and personal with a cat can land me in hospital on a respirator. So, while appreciative of their charm, I am wary. Cats know this, of course, and tend to want to cuddle and nuzzle me. This one - who I have named Diogenes, is shameless. He weaves in and around my legs, nuzzles me and yowls until I have to scratch his head, whereupon he rolls on his back and shows me his tummy - wanton harlot (him not me)! I scratch, I pet, I nuzzle - then race inside for a full surgical scrub and a handful of allergy meds.

Once the sun sets and the purples and pinks have melted into the stunning royal navy blue of a Greek evening, he gives me a wise look, possibly a kitty wink, and tail held high - stalks off to his next rendezvous.

But he'll be back. Tomorrow, at ouzo time.

More Naxos pictures