Naxos pics

The weather is sublime here this week. The whole country is in high holiday mode for Pascha - Easter. Each day is special, with special rituals and food. More on that later....

Naxos

Hello! My name is Shirley Valentine. HI SHIRLEY! Ok, my name isn’t Shirley and there is no 12-step program for people who have my particular kind of addiction. Travel is my poison, my vice, my love. Travel to Greece in particular seems to have become the drug of choice.

I’ve been indulging myself by going to Greece for over 25 years now. It started when I got a scholarship to go study archaeology there. I KNOW! How cool is THAT!?! Ever since then, I’ve been lured back – to work, to play, to explore – to live the Greek version of la dolce vita… er, I’m sure Zorba has a phrase for that, but it escapes me at the moment.

Of the 1400 or so of Greek islands, I’ve managed to visit about 50 so far. I track them in a diary, much like birders do when they spot rare purple-footed boobies. If I have to be a geek of some sort, I suppose there are worse ones to be.

In the pre-9/11 days, I’ve been known to take off to Greece with a day’s notice….. GIMME A TICKET TO ANYWHERE BUT HERE! Once there, I’ve been know to sashay down to the port and grab the first likely looking tub to the island de jour…. “This looks like a fine boat – Ooooo look, they serve ouzo for breakfast…. So where are we headed exactly?”

I swear to god, this is precisely how I found the island that has now been my spiritual home for over 20 years now. I found a ship that was leaving, settled my ratty hobo bag at my feet, pulled out my ever-present corkscrew and bottle of retsina and only after opening it and taking a long pull, inquired of the ship’s purser where the heck we were headed. “Naxos,” he said. It was a serendipitous discovery.

Naxos – the largest and greenest in the Cycladic group of islands…. a thriving bustling island with mountains, farmlands and the best beaches in Greece. Tourism is important here, but second to agriculture and the commerce of the islands. I found this place purely by accident. I honestly settled on a ferry one whimsical day and only then inquired where we were bound. I was captivated by the sail past tiny islands and by the endless azure sea. Once on the port in Naxos town I was captured by a determined granny who insisted she had the finest rooms in town. She did. And so the love affair lasting more than two decades began.

A dash of Shediac, a dollop of Caraquet

The job I do back home in Fredericton requires my attention for about 20 or 30 hours a week. How to fill in the other hours on my idyllic Greek island? Well, I can’t live on free olives and the view alone, so I’ve hung my shingle out here to teach English, French and Italian to the locals. I can handle school age kids who’s parents are keen on private lessons or local business people who want better language skills for their tourist based business.

Between you and me? I’m secretly keen to take on a few French students. I grew up in Moncton you see, and my French has that unique accent. Not the toff Parisian accent of the swanky language academies. I harbour a secret delight in educating a generation of Greek kids to speak chiac. It’s my revenge, you might say.

See, I learned to speak Greek from a Japanese professor. 30 years later, I apparently still have a damnable but very distinct oriental accent when I gamely and earnestly try and inflict my Greek on the polite but mystified villagers.

I never knew I had an accent of course. But too many times I’ve left a shop or restaurant to be followed out the door by gales of laughter – it finally dawned on me. Dear god, I sound like a bad Jackie Chan movie and should come with my own subtitles.

So, yes, I’m quite looking forward to teaching little Nikolai and Despina the finer workings of Chiac. Beh OUI for sure!

A thousand words,,,,

.......'nuff said?

Walter Mitty goes hi-tech

We all have those Walter Mitty kind of dreams. On days when our office workload seems to overwhelm us with tedium and eye-glazing boredom, we stare out the window at the February snows and imagine a virtual office on a sun-kissed island.

The difference with me is that I’m actually doing it. This winter, with the reluctant blessings of my boss, I’m actually working from home. The only difference is that my virtual office at home is on a lovely Greek island, halfway around the world.

Why Greece? Well, the addiction to Greece started about 25 years ago (see first blog posts). I don’t really need to explain the lure of gorgeous vistas, a joyous welcoming people, history, architecture, music and fabulous food do I? What you might not realize is that Greece is a pretty hip country when it comes to modern communications. A perfect set up for a virtual office for a snow-crazed Canadian.

Because it is essentially an island nation, Greece is way ahead of Canada when it comes to internet capability and cellphone technology. It is a way of life – a common utility that islanders take for granted. In fact, the island I normally visit – Naxos – is completely wi-fi enabled. I can sit in my little apartment there that clings to the seawall and get a decent and fast connection – or make my branch office the little seaside taverna where I have my lunch. It’s a bit of a culture shock to see the black garbed granny waddling down the country road on her donkey, cellphone clapped to her ear, like any North American teenager. Yes, the new age of communications has utterly captivated the always chatty Greek population.

So - for all you techno geeks, here are the bare bones details. I write for a living mostly. I sit on my fat bum in an office and crank out reports, grant applications, write public relations copy and news items. To do that, I need a reliable computer, a good internet connection and, er, focus. Ahem. Well. I've now had a month of doing my job from 'away,' as we say in New Brunswick. And so far so good.

My apartment here in Chania Crete (the one in the 600 year old Venetian manor house) has superb wi-fi highspeed internet. I have Skype, iChat, Messenger, Yahoo and all my work files here. I have a reliable person back at the office to print off what I write and to lick the envelope. The 6 hour time difference isn't a challenge - the boss likes to work late. When he arrives at the office, I'm just settling in to watch the Greek version of Desperate Housewives. That gives me my mornings to dwaddle in cafes, go to the market, walk along the beach or do laundry and enjoy being part of a bustling community.

Mobile phones are virtually disposable here - they come cheap, you can get temporary accounts and if your mobile doesn't work (or 'Handy,' as I have heard the Brits call them) then there are phone cards for the payphones. Easy peasy.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I live in a 600 year old building. I look out my window across the tiny harbour carved out by the Venetians at a church built in 1265, a mosque built in the 1600s and, just beyond, to a hill that was the original Minoan settlement dating back thousands of years. My computer beeps and it is the boss on video camera discussing the day's mail.

Technology makes this possible. Astonishing in the cradle of civilization.