White After-Christmas

It wasn't that cold in Molyvos that we had a white Christmas. But the flood of rains that poured down on the island after Christmas coloured the villages like Filia, Skalochoro, Anamotia, Argenos, Sykaminia and Agiasos fairy-tale white.

Just like in Turkey the top of the mountains are still white and when you drive up the landscape gets whiter the higher you come until you imagine yourself in the Swiss Alps. A few Greek people predicted a very cold winter, because of the many wasps this summer and the many chestnuts that made the trees so heavy they were bending down. Probally signs for a heavy winter.

Like I mentioned before, according to the Greeks winter here just starts in January and already now in December we have snow and an ice-cold nordeastern blowing. So what can we expect from the real approaching winter...

Thanks to the cold there are not so many people on the streets. And tonight, when the old year will end, many Greeks will be sitting close to the fire at a green clothed table, playing cards. Playing cards is very popular on Lesvos (and in many other parts of Greece) during the winter. Biriba is the most popular game here on Lesvos, a kind of canasta. Trying to pass all those long, cold and dark nights, on some tables big amounts of money will change hands. Playing cards is as well a New Years Eve tradition: playing away the old year and while gambling entering the New Year. This night they will not play for large sums of money, in order that the losers won't have a too bad start of the year.

On New years Eve it is Agios Vasilis that visits many Greek homes to bring presents. This is the Greek variation for Saint Nicolas and Santa Claus, who do not appear in Greece on the 5th and 25th of December. Agios Vasilis comes during New Years Eve and the children wait patiently for him to receive their presents.

In France there is a cake known as a Epiphany cake (galette des rois); a kind of cake where they hide a little sculpture of a king and the one who finds it will be crowned and be a king for one day (6th of January). In Greece this cake is the vasilopita that gets served on the 1st of January. There should be hidden a golden coin and many a Greek will have broken a tooth or two on this gold. I never found a golden coin in my vasilopita, but instead an entire almond or walnut, what brought me luck for the coming year. According to the tradition the father should cut the cake. The first piece goes to Christ (did some monasteries get so rich thanks to the golden coins out of the vasilopita's?), the second part is for the house and then the cake is divided between all the family members.

For another Greek tradition that brings luck for the New Year you need a pomegranate: after midnight, when you exchanged all your New year wishes you go outside with a glass of water that you pour out into three wind directions saying: "Kalimera, Agios Vasilikos." Then you take a stone that you use to smash a pomegranate inside the house, just next to the front door. You leave the smashed pomegranate for some days and the you throw the remains out over a field.

Well, those are enough Greek traditions to bring you luck for the new year. I wish you all a very happy 2009!

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Spring in December

You just have to listen to the weather forecast and all they talk about is: this autumn was one of the warmest ever and winter doesn't want to come. Although they say in Greece that real winter only starts in February and ends at the beginning of March, even for the Greeks it is too warm at the moment. The only rain fell at the beginning of November and the sun believes it's still summer.

It is such fantastic weather that even nature gets fooled. We spotted a wild pear tree blossoming pretty early and the anemones are busy popping their coloured heads above ground and chattering as if it was already spring. Acid clover flowers are also early this season. The grass under the olive trees is as green as a young spring tapestry, small goats call their mothers and even new born lambs step on tottery legs into the green green grass.

This makes the foxes very happy, you see them everywhere. This afternoon our dog Albino found the back of a little lamb, complete with two back legs, during a walk. He probably snatched it from a fox. Not a nice sight! I agree a bit with the Greeks: these foxes that murder those sweet tiny lambs should be punished.

Many times people tell us how many chickens or lambs they lost due to the foxes. Officially it is forbidden to hunt foxes because they are protected animals, but who is protecting the chickens and the lambs? Thanks to this protection the population of foxes is rising pretty quickly, as does the irritation of the Greeks about these red coloured animals. I love to see foxes, I don't even mind when they walk with me, but the view of such a tortured lamb is not a pretty sight.

Maybe it is also due to the beautiful weather that you see so many foxes parading around. We could have lunch each day outside in the sun. The small amount of restaurants still open each try to make the best mixed salad. Fine cut marouli (green leaf salad), dill, white cabbage and their own variation of chorta leaves and green spices. In restaurant Panayottis in Avlaki, we got fava served with large green leaves. They tasted pretty spicy and were a wonderful combination with the taste of fava (green pea purée). I thought I recognized the leaves from our field. No way! The leaves here are the same shape, but are more hairy and taste of nothing.

I couldn't even find them in my recently purchased book 'Ta Xopta' (chorta) written by Mirsini Lambraki. First of all the book is in Greek, a language I still can't read that well, and for all I looked at the pictures, it was not there.

However, it mentioned a lot of other strange things I never would have thought were edible: wild leek (never saw them), the leaves and flowers of the malve, the flowers of the yellow asphodelos, leaves of a fern (pteridium aquilinum), the bulbs of the wild blue grapes, the green of chrysants (chrysantheum coronarium), the leaves of the lupin flowers. You wonder why you still go to the supermarket...

The weather is too good to do a lot of cooking in the kitchen. I know that there is still a lot to experiment with in the Greek kitchen, especially regarding all those wild vegetables. But spring has not arrived yet, even though some plants think so.

It is only just December and the Christmas madness has begun. The special lights are in the streets, the big crib has been dusted off and set up and the first Christmas gathering has happened. Last Saturday the whole of international Molyvos came together at the crib: Greeks, Dutch, Belgian, German, Danish, English, French, Bulgarian, Albanian and Russian. (I probably forgot a nationality).

Schoolchildren and adults sang their favourite international Christmas song out loud. The Germans made sure there was roast sausage with sauerkraut and there were tables loaded with lots of lovely cakes, cookies and other sweets, most of them made by the mothers of the schoolchildren. The people were so quick to take them that you thought that for weeks they only ate chorta and mushrooms. Within two hours everything was finished and the party as well.

So here also Christmas time has started. But you'd better not expect a white Christmas here on the island. Although, you never know what surprises the weather can have in store.

Copyright © Smitaki 2006

Chimonas

It is COLD here on Lesvos! It is not a nice autumn here; all too suddenly the summer finished, giving way to wintry weather. You may think that's pretty normal for October. Not here. In October on Lesvos there should be plenty of warm autumn sunshine so that the countryside will be brightly coloured. In the daytime you should have the time to say goodbye to the hot sun while picking up chestnuts and enjoying lunch outside. In the evenings you should sit outside enjoying a soft night by a fire. Now slate grey skies cloak the island and a cold and sharp northern wind howls over the mountains and through the valleys. I must admit that we were waiting for black clouds. But the idea was that they should bring rain and not just fly over the island. Why else would we want dark clouds?

The island is still very dry, unlike the rest of the country, where floods and other watery disasters are daily news. The few drops which have fallen on Lesvos were just enough to grow some meagre grass and for the autumn crocuses to sprout, but the environment here needs a lot more water.

Yesterday we were surprised by a sunny day with nearly no wind. We took the opportunity to go for a ride, because the weather forecast was not good for the next few days. We went to Palios, where even in summer small pools are filled with water where frogs and turtles have a merry life and where the unique Ruddy Shelducks have their home. They were not there this time, because the pools were nearly empty. Some of them still had just a little bit of water while others were like an African landscape with the dried earth full of cracks. Very sad.

The strawberry trees though didn't look too bothered by the drought. The round strawberry balls they carry as fruit were already cherry red and tasted lovely. The sea was soft and warm from the sun. Today I cannot imagine that yesterday I swam in the blue waters of the Bay of Palios, looking out to the mysterious White Islands (Nissi Aspro), shining brightly against the background of the Turkish mainland. At the end of the afternoon the beautiful weather suddenly stopped, as if the good weather was a mistake. The wind got up, speeding up during the night. Today it is a stormy grey day and it is that cold that you steal looks at the mountains, wondering if some snow may already have fallen...

The municipal elections also didn't bring any sunshine. In Molyvos, just like 4 years ago, they were won by the parties of the present Mayor Lefteris Vogiatzis and that of Stelios Karadonis. This Sunday the elections will not be so exciting; I think the most interesting parties are already out of it.

In Petra it was more exciting. First here is the report of Karin Haake about the first night, when the Speakers Corner was set up in the main square in Petra: "A huge movie screen was set up and was attached with ropes to the wooden electricity masts at the other side of the street. A first check was done, the microphones and cameras etc. were checked. While the promoters, the official representatives from the church and the army and the public were watching and waiting on the nearby terraces the unexpected happened: A tourist bus came from the direction of Anaxos not expecting any problems. The driver, who did not see what was happening (there were no warnings at all), continued as usual. So all the spectators watched while the bus, which was pretty high, drove through and took all the ropes with it. You saw in slow motion, like a house of cards collapsing, the fall of the movie screen, the spotlights which crashed and the cameras which fell to the ground. Then, as though on purpose, a few minutes of silence... And then the big drama unfolded: men waving their arms in the air, shaking their heads, some nearly lying on the floor in despair, shouting and screaming. The bus was already gone, the driver probably pretending not to have noticed. One policeman joined the chaos, but there was nothing left to be done. Harsh Greek discussions started and within half an hour they started rebuilding, so that the speeches could start just on time."

This was only the start of the election hassles of Petra. Now they say that people in Skoutaros perpetrated fraud on the first Sunday of the elections, so they'll probably have to do it all over again.

Nothing new either with the secondary school teachers, who demanded a 45% rise in their salary and to get it went on strike just one week after school started in September. They're now on the 5th week of their strike and everybody is complaining. Not only mothers, who do not know what to do with their children, but also people who get annoyed by the children hanging around on the streets and being so bored that they harass passersby. While in Athens tough confrontations take place between the police and the striking teachers, supported by the parents, in Molyvos all complaints are about the teachers who fail the children so easily and for so long.

So nothing is new under the sun, which doesn't even shine here on the island. Everybody gets bad tempered and that is maybe why they forecast a cold winter. It is like the olives feel the same. They started colouring too soon and are already falling from the trees. This has nothing to do with the weather, but with insects which infect the olives. Because nearly everybody on the island now grows organic olives, they're no longer sprayed with pesticides. So the flies have the time of their lives attacking the olives and the olive presses will have to open a month earlier.

Or do the olives have a premonition about the weather and should we expect a hard winter? I will get out my winter clothes. Kalo Chimonas!

Copyright © Smitaki 2006

The Big Frost Kais

They say that the Dutch always talk about the weather. But look at the Greeks! While the Siberian winter sneaks into Europe from the East the Dutch News only continues to squabble over the failing politics while the Greek News cannot get enough of all the snowy images of the cold and the big snow that is drifting into the country. Although Greece is not as badly off as countries like Russia, Germany, Romania or Poland, the bitter cold and snowstorms are the talk of the day.

It is already a week that they are preparing us for the cold. A few days ago the website www.wunderground.com, which I think is one of the more reliable weather forecasts on the net, predicted -11°C for Lesvos. Which is pretty scary. I come from a cold land in the North, but for an island that is full of nature that can handle only a few bites of frost, that prediction might be pretty bad.

In the 19th century Lesvos was hit by three big catastrophes: in 1836 the island got hit by the plague and 25.000 people died. In 1867 there was a severe earthquake that badly damaged the life on the island. The third disaster was the Big Frost (Kais) that hit the island on the 12th of January in 1850 and caused a real disaster.

According to the writer Prodromos Anagnostou in his booklet 'Froso's Little Violets' a bitter cold set in on the eve of the 11th of January. The next day the people went as usual working on their fields. Suddenly the sky became pitch black and threatening. The people, although it was too early, went home feeling a disaster coming. As did the animals like goats, sheep and donkeys who were out on the fields. They foresaw the deep drop of the temperature and all went into the villages, stopping in front of the doors, begging to be let in.

Until then it had been a beautiful winter with mild temperatures and a lot of sun. The nature was ready to embrace the spring. The first almond blossoms merrily rocked themselves in the sun, the trees were full of juice for the buds and the new fruit. At midday the sea started smoking, two hours later the temperature fell to - 13-15°C! The ground hurled the new sawn grain and there could be heard a terrible noise: the barks of the trees were tearing open...

The cold destroyed all olive trees, all fruit trees and many other crops. A lot of animals died. After this there was famine on the island and no more work on the fields. A lot of people left the island searching for a new life. They left for Egypt, Smyrna (Izmir) and Constantinople (nowadays Istanbul). They built whole new villages in Anatolia.

It is difficult to imagine how Lesvos looked after this Big Cold. Barren trees, no flowers, no blossoms, no green... Nowadays we have the internet to prepare us for such big colds.

And they seem to enjoy doing that. The terrible cold from Russia that was ready to capture Europe got huge dimensions, as well as for Greece. The day after they predicted a -11°C, they somewhat raised the temperatures: it would be more days in a row -8°C, which is also pretty bad for the island. Finally they postponed the cold and raiseded some more the temperatures. Lucky us, because we really do not want to flee from this island after such a Big Frost...

Today the Siberian cold reached the island. A North eastern gale makes the temperature feel far below zero. The real temperature now, Tuesday morning the 24st of January, will be around zero. But you never know. Two years ago we also had a crazy drop in temperatures: in one hour the temperature of 10°C dropped to 10°C below zero, causing the death of several trees and other crops. The majestic eucalyptus trees are still recovering. Now the mountains slowly become white and the first showers of snow, caused by a mercilessness snowstorm, race over the fields. Is Lesvos going to survive this Russian Cold?

Copyright © Smitaki 2006