Lesvians against lesbians

This week 3 inhabitants of Lesvos started a process to protect the name Lesbian. Lesbian is the name for people who come from Lesvos, but it's also the name for a specific group of women. The publisher Dimitri Lambrou has had enough of the misuse of the name and wants to get a ban on the name lesbian being used by the 'Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece'.

You'd think that all this fuss is just to get some publicity. Because how in heaven can you fight against a name that for decades has found its place in the world? Dimitri Lambrou declares that when he gets his right in Greece, he will fight the case internationally. Which will be great fun, because then he will get the whole of the lesbian world (and here I mean women who love women) against him. They're getting ready for it, reading about his case in Greece. Just google Dimitri Lambrou and you'll see what those women want to do to him! Mr. Lambrou is in serious need of some bodyguards if he doesn't want to get hurt.

You would say that Mr. Lambrou doesn't have a case. First of all the inhabitants of the island of Lesvos are more often called Lesviots or Lesvonians (see: http://www.anglo-hellenic.com/vacancies/lesvos.htm) And secondly, thanks to the new alphabet and translation rules an inhabitant of the island is not called a Lesbian, but a Lesvian. Just like the island is no longer called Lesbos, but Lesvos. Because the second letter of the new Greek alphabet β is not beta anymore but vita! That is what I learned at my Greek classes.

And that is not such a great burden, but a very nice change whenever you surf on the internet. When you type Lesbos, you get thousands of sites that have nothing to do with the island, because they are meant for these special women. However when you type Lesvos, you get all the information you want on all kinds of sites about the island of Lesvos.

Greeks really have problems with names. Just look at the political dispute about the name FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). The fight between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia about which name this quite young country (it was founded in 1993) may use has taken years now.

Mr. Lambrou could also have researched why the island of Lesvos has two names. There are many Greeks who call the island Mytilini, the same name as its capital. You see this name on maps and even in the old times references to this island used the name Mytilini (Mytilene). It would be the most simple solution for the island to be officially named Mytilini. Then you would not have to go to court and the inhabitants would just be called Mytilenians.

And by the way, not only the island has two names. The little town of Molyvos also has two. Greeks mostly talk about Mithymna and this name is written on many road signs. Many a tourist will get lost because they could not find the name Molyvos...

But the lesbians also do not have right on their side. They named each other after the island because Sappho once lived here. According to them, Sappho was the first lesbian. However, when you carefully read everything that is written about this great poetess, you will never find any proof of Sappho being a lesbian. Most stories about Sappho point in the opposite direction: it is said she had a daughter and Sappho jumped from a rock because of her love for a man. So why, women love? Is that only because of her poems that glorify not only men but also women like the goddess of Aphrodite?

Mr. Lambrou has a point saying that the name lesbian hurts the inhabitants of Lesvos because a reason not to visit the island is that many tourists still think that Lesvos is an island exclusively for lesbians. Most of the tourists here on the island are from both sexes. And of course we may have a slightly higher amount of female visitors, but most of 'those' ladies go to the west to Eresos, where it's claimed that Sappho was born. The island is so big, that no one can be offended by that.

So, Mr. Lambrou, you'd better look into the translation rules for the use of the letter β (vita) and you should find out what name officially belongs to this island.

But, ladies lesbians, you also should think over your name: nobody ever proved that Sappho was a member of your club (and why aren't you called sapponians?). And then, the horrible things you say on the internet don't suit you. Not against this poor Mr. Lambrou who at least started a very interesting debate, nor against this beautiful island that gave you your name.

Readers: beware of the name Lesbos!

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Loud Speakers

I bet there are no village criers anymore in Europe. But they still exist, only now they are electronic criers. Here on the island, in each village they have an electronic village crier: everywhere there are loud-speakers that regularly announce important messages from the municipality. They announce for example when the electricity or the water will be cut because of repairs, they announce when there is a municipality meeting or when and where festivities will take place. But with this system you can also try to find your lost dog and people are even summoned to remove their car when they are parked in the wrong place (wich makes you the laughing stock of the town!).

We don't live in the village so we have no idea when it is forbidden to water your plants because there is not enough water, or at what time a concert will take place, which has been organised in the summer. That's good, because when I'm in the village and the village crier starts yelling messages I always get scared to death!

People living in the villages are used to it. For them it's a good way to stay tuned to what's happening in the village. But for people who are still not used to this electronic voice, the Holy Week which ends with Easter, was an ordeal, because the village crier is also used by the Church.

Masses in the Orthodox Church are very relaxed and look more like a social gathering than a Holy gathering. While the priest is saying the mass, the church-goers have only one ear and one eye cocked to the priest. The other eye and ear is for their fellow worshippers. They shake hands, they chat and they try to control their children, who are running and playing hide-and-seek between the legs of the adults. They all walk in and out of the church as if they were attending a reception.

What a difference to a catholic mass! I was raised a catholic and as a child I hated to go to church, where I had to attend an event that I didn't understand and where I had to keep quiet for at least an hour.

It's much easier for Greek children, because during the Orthodox celebrations they can run around with their friends. And for the adults it's also nicer. That's why most Greeks attend a mass at Easter: to meet friends and family and to exchange Easter greetings.

On Holy Saturday the Holy Light is flown in from Jerusalem to Athens, and from there to all other destinations and when this Holy Light arrives in the church around 23:00 the midnight mass can begin. A lot of people only go to church to be there at the height of the mass, around midnight, when the papas starts distributing the Holy Light to the church-goers who all brought a candle for the purpose. Then the church bells start ringing and fireworks are crackling in the night sky.

Christos Anexi (Christ has risen) is what you say to each other (though what a strange wish!). Then people hurry home to finally eat the long missed meat. They start with the majeritsa soup, made of the organs of the lamb that will later follow as a roasted or stuffed dish from the oven, served after the soup or the next day.

This Easter night I went to a friend in Petra who has a marvellous view of the beautiful church on the rock of Petra. And, very important that night, she has an open fire. Because although during the last few weeks the temperatures has tried more than once to reach 30°C, at Easter the winter cold seemed to have returned.

When the mass started, the chanting voice of the papas sounded through the loudspeakers and into the cozy warm living room. How luxuriously can you attend mass? At midnight the bells started ringing and hundreds of firecrackers were thrown from the huge rock. For some minutes fire works painted the sky with thousands of colourful stars, which made me feel like I was on a canal in Amsterdam on New Years Night. Happy Easter!

Between the firecrackers people started to descend slowly from the church, careful to keep their flames alive until they got home. But the priest kept on going with the mass. I thought that at midnight everybody went home for an Easter meal. But not the papas, he even had company from a second priest and together they chanted for another full hour. For whom, I asked myself...

This was not the only mass that was brought to you by the loudspeakers. All during the Holy Week before Easter masses were celebrated early in the morning or late at night. And you could attend all of them via the village crier! There was no escape: in the villages all important masses are served at home.

The Holy Fire from Jerusalem is called a miracle. But the weather can also be called a miracle, because it's starting to look like a tradition that the weather forecast for Easter is always bad. (by the way, there are no weather forecasts cried through the loudspeakers). Cold and rain, nice forecasts when you organised a souvla (roasted lamb over a fire). But on Sunday morning suddenly there was the sun and the blue sky. The fire under the lamb was not rained out and the guests were warmed by the sun. If that wasn't an Easter miracle...

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Tulips from Lesvos

As a child you collected cigar-bands, sugar-bags or stamps. Growing older the collectors boxes and albums were put into a cupboard and forgotten. Only getting much older people get to an age to restart collecting things...

The birdwatchers and botanists who visit Lesvos are in fact also collectors. Instead of albums with printed places where they have to place their stamps, they follow the books of scientists that have written where things have to flower, grow of fly.

Last week I wrote that here on Lesvos there are some 46 varieties of dragonflies and some 320 varieties of birds. The number of plants here on the island is estimated at about 1,400 to 1,500. A real job to find and document them all.

Last week I went for a walk with two botanists who had met each other only that same day. I soon saw my mistake: going for a walk with one botanist is nice and very interesting. Going for a walk with 2 botanists is a disaster: they put their noses into the long grasses and you can wait as long as you want, but for them no more walking. Their debating about names, sorts, forms and colours has no end.

So yesterday I went for a walk with only one botanist, which still demands some patience, because now it is high season not only for the birdwatchers, but also for the botanists. The island is booming with flowers and on each walk you will find different ones and all are to be photographed and documented. This time we went from Lafionas (close to Petra) to Klapados, a village deserted since the Turks that lived there were chased out in 1920 (rumour says they were all killed). The houses are now taken over by nature.

Standing at the foot of a little waterfall where a huge dark purple Arum (Arum dioscoridis) flowered, I regretted not having stayed home. While I waited for the botanist I followed a tortoise that strolled across the path, I looked for unknown flowers and I tried to identify the different songs of the birds that performed a deafening concert in the mountains. A little later however I didn't at all regret coming for a walk with the botanist: I saw tulips!

I must admit that I am still a Dutch woman who is crazy about tulips. Of course it is now well known that tulips didn't originally come from Holland. They come from somewhere in Central Asia. But it's the Dutch that cultivated the tulips since the 16th century and made all the colourful and fancy varieties that you now see all over the world.

In the 16th century the Austrian ambassador to Turkey took some tulips to his friend Carolus Clusius, who worked in the Royal garden of Vienna. A little later Clusius became professor at the university of Leiden (Holland) and took the tulips with him. He was crazy about tulips and started cultivating them, with beautiful new coloured ones as a result. In 1592 he published a book about tulips, the first book ever written on tulips. The years between 1630 and 1637 are known as the Dutch tulip mania. Tulip bulbs were hyped on the exchange market. A tulip bulb in those years was even more expensive than a house on a canal in Amsterdam! When the speculation crashed, many a merchant went bankrupt.

When you see the wild tulips here (the Aegean Tulip, Tulipa aegenensis), you wonder how come that these simple flowers have such a rich history. If you don't pay close attention you can easily confuse them with the red poppies or the red anemones that are also still flowering.

Here on the island the tulips grow on the higher mountain slopes (I would guess above 500 metres). Last year I though that when you wanted to see them, you had to climb Olympos or Lepetimnos all the way, a journey I made once and never again because of my fear of heights and when finally reaching the tulips, they were fenced in and far from the fences. On the road to Klapados, they were so near I could touch them. It took a great effort not to pick them, they are protected.

After the Arum and the tulip we got another surprise: a very strange flower, which looked like the Star of Bethlehem, but each flower had a large ball between its leaves. A flower with balls so to speak. I first thought that it might be chick peas, the balls had that shape and I must admit that I've still never seen the chick pea plant. But a botanist knows where to look and after consulting different books on plants in the Aegean area we got the name: a fruit bearing Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum sphaerocarpum), a rare form because they do not bear fruit every year. What happened to make them bear fruit is a big question...

So I'm not going to bother you with the names of all the other flowers we encountered. We walked through knee high colourful flowering meadows where bees were buzzing frantically and the sweet smell of honey made you think you had just entered the workplace of a beekeeper. (be careful: last week a woman was hospitalised after she was stung many times by bees while passing some beehives).

We passed forest boundaries where bright yellow Oriental Spring Sunflowers (Doronicum columnae) lit up amongst the dark undergrowth, we saw the mysterious Viagra (Dracunculus vulgaris) which had just opened its enormous flower, we smelled all those odours, we saw so many colours and finally I couldn't resist picking a bunch of bright blue cornflowers to take home.

Collecting is fun, especially when you have some 1500 plants to discover. But sometimes you get dizzy from the idea that you have to find them on such a big island. You have to be at the right place at the right time, because plants have their own calendar for when to appear. We have a few more weeks to go in this crazy world of flowers and then we are facing the drying out landscapes. Sometimes you wish it could always be spring...

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Under the Sahara

We live in a strange world... We don't live in the Sahara, but we live under the Sahara! For a few days clouds of sand have covered the sun and the blue sky. I'm not sure if the high temperatures are due to this Sahara sand. But it's certain that I had to dig deep into my closet to find some summer clothes. At 28°C even a light sweater is too hot.

Not only Lesvos is carrying the weight of the African Sahara, but the whole of Greece and who knows what other places in Europe. In Athens people with respiratory problems have been advised to stay indoors.

Our friend and professor of dragonflies, Wolgang Lopau, is however excited by this clammy weather: will the African Schrabacken dragonfly (anax ephipigel) hitch a ride with the Sahara sand? Wolfgang Lopau travels as much as he can around Greece to visit the haunts of the dragonflies. His home is Lesvos, where you can find at least 46 varieties of dragonflies. That makes Lesvos the biggest dragonfliy island in Greece, as well as the best researched island in Greece.

That's why we were happy to take Lopau to one of our favourite places on the island, which he did not yet know. Certainly it's a place of interest to him because the loamy soil there means that there are a lot of little ponds, even during hot summers.

Palios is a region south of Mandamados, towards Mytilini. Already next to Clio by the road you will see a little lake that shows the loamy soil we're dealing with. This area stretches for kilometres down to the coast and it offers a landscape of low mastic trees, strawberry trees, wild lavender, Cistus bushes and little ponds where frogs, tortoises, ducks and dragonflies live.

Close to the little hamlet of Palios there were graves thousands of years old. But now we are not so sure if there are graves. The square holes cut out of stone do seem like the graves they found here in Molyvos. But there are scientists that say that they used to be hot air ovens where pieces of loam were baked in the sun. When you consider this loam rich region, this theory is fairly possible.

Anyhow, Lopau was very happy with so much water. I saw him thinking hard: what dragonflies were hiding under the water?

A dragonfly starts as an egg in the mud, just below the waterline or scattered over the water. From the egg comes a larva which has to shed its skin 7 times, which can take anything from a few months up to 5 years. During all that time the larva hides in the water. At the last shedding of skin it will crawl out of the water (around May) and then the dragonfly wriggles itself out of the larva and takes a first short flight to find a place in the sun to dry.

On this warm day in April we saw some early heather dragonflies (Sympetrum fonscolombii) that were encouraged by the hot weather to take to the air. Also a Libella depressa, which had just shed its last skin and flew out with glittering brand new wet wings to find a place in the sun to dry.

Dragonflies are like fairytale creatures, with their 4 fragile transparent wings and a usually brightly coloured body. They live by ponds or lakes, a very few of them daring to live close to running water. Whenever you are looking for dragonflies, you have to search for water. Which can be challenging in Greece. Lopau has learned to study the landscape. For example where there are oleanders there is usually water. However it's best to ask the locals. Most of them kind of know dragonflies. But when Lopau shows them his book full of pictures of dragonflies, they generally can point him to a secret hidden little pond.

The day we went to Palios the Sahara sand was still not there and the sun had the sky to itself. Although we knew it was too early for dragonflies, Lopau turned out to be a mine of information. For example, I have no knowledge at all of birds, although I live on an island famous for its birds. At this moment bird watchers are flocking to the island to look for the 320 species, (according to the birdwatchers bible 'Birding on the Greek Island of Lesvos' by Richard Brooks), that live or take a break during their migration on Lesvos.

Even though we were mainly looking down in order to find dragonflies and orchids (Palios was full of a few kinds of orchids), thanks to Lopau in a few hours we saw an impressive list of birds: a Black Stork (Ciconia Nigra), a Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna Ferruginea), a Cretzschmar's Bunting (Emberiza Caesia), a Crested Lark (Galerida Cristata), a Hooded Crow (Corvus Corone Sharpii), a Little Egret (Egretta Garzetta) and a Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe Hispanica).

Who makes these names?! Here is another list: Caloteryx Virgo Festina, Platycnemis Pennipes Pennipes, Ischnura Elegans Ebneri, Hemianax Ephippiger, Crocothemis Erythraea. They all live on Lesvos and are names for small creatures, welcome at the Dragonfly island. Another side of nature that makes Lesvos a very special island.

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

It is raining...

It's a pity for the tourists that arrive on the island, but it has now been raining for some 2 to 3 days. The first tourists are mainly birdwatchers. They will not get wet in their cars that most of them use to watch the birds, but the birds are hardly to be seen through the thick shower curtains of rain. One thing is funny: it is the birds that signal the end of a shower: as soon as the water stops falling from heaven, above the dripping sounds comes the carols of the birds.

Now the birdwatchers don't have to worry that their beloved marshlands are becoming dry, the places where most of the migrating birds are staying. So much water fell these last three days that the rivers are swollen and the marshlands are full.

Life on the island stopped for some days, because no Greek likes to go out during the rain. A perfect time to see how life is on other Greek islands. When you read for example 'Water in the Ouzo' by Cathy Lewin, or 'The Messenger of Athens' by Anne Zouroudi, you would say that life isn't so much different on the other islands.

'Water in the Ouzo' is set on the island of Kythera, which is south of the Peloponnese. The Dutch Cathy Lewin went there with her husband, a vet, to restore an old village house. The book is about all the problems that can befall you when you have a similar project in mind. The writer gives strong portraits of the workers and other people she encountered on the island. How to bribe in order to get your permissions, the strange working habits of some lazy Greek workers, nasty people who think they can fool you. It's all the same on Lesvos.

However life on a Greek island is best described by the Englishwoman Anne Zouroudi in 'The Messenger of Athens', a story that is set on the imaginary island of Thiminos. One day a fat man disembarks from the ferry and starts asking questions about the suicide of Irini, a woman living on Thiminos. It's not only the truth surrounding the death of Irini that is slowly revealed, but also how timid a small community can be. The writer herself lived on the Greek islands and she describes masterfully the gossiping, the power of the most important families in a small community and the habit of Greek men to have affairs.

Both women left the Greek islands, but certainly you can feel that both the ladies spent many years on the islands where they became vey well acquainted with village life. Cathy was already more distant from her Greek years. You can see that in the way she humours the colourful people she describes. Anne maybe had harder times. You feel a bitter sweetness beneath her words.

The German born Bertina Henrichs only knows the Greek islands from her holidays. But she wrote a book about a local chambermaid on the island of Naxos: 'The Chess-Player'. It is a beautiful crafted story about a local woman who risks her marriage because she develops a serious passion for playing chess.

And then for the people who don't have enough time for novels, there is also a volume of verses full of life from the Greek born Agni Fournaraki: 'Perceptions'. Like a modern Sappho she writes about life, love and nature in sweet, colourful, soft, thrilling, warming and quiet sentences. However, her poems are only in Greek and in Dutch. The volume is published with works of different artists and a CD where the poems can be listened to in Greek.

Looking at the water searching for a way on the road between the gardens, the drops drumming on the window-sill, it is a perfect moment to dwell on one of Agni Fournaraki’s poems:

"It is raining
a refreshing rain for my body,
thoughts, my spirit of love

It is raining
the drops slip and fall
above me
taking care of my worries

It is raining
a purifying rain,
a relief from being on the rack
alleviating"

From: Agni Fournaraki - Belevingen, Totemboek, (Holland).
Available at the Ianos bookstore in Athens and Thessaloniki: www.ianos.gr.

Cathy Lewin - Water bij de ouzo, Totemboek, (Holland)
Anne Zouroudi - The Messenger of Athens, Bloomsbury Publishing
Bertina Henrichs – The Chess Player, an article from Queen’s Quarterly

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

To sin during Lent

Since Lent has started the summer weather has slowly died away. Lower temperatures, some rain and some occassional storms are somewhat more normal for the time of year. Which you cannot say of nature, that did its best to bring plants into flower as quickly as possible and made all the greenery grow to great heights.

Seeing the fields with all the bright flowers you think it's May: besides the proud daffodils there are yellow chrysanthemums, white daisies, blue lupins, purple geraniums, pink carnations and lots of other flowers. Orchids peep out of the earth and thorny brooms colour the mountain slopes with their yellow flowers, as do the white blossom of the wild apple and pear trees.

The leaves of the wild vegetables (chorta) and herbs give the landscape a fresh green colour. It is spring and it is Lent (the Dutch name for spring: lente).

Nowadays there are not so many Greeks that follow all the rules of the 40 days of Lent. Not all of them abstain from meat, milk products, eggs, fish and vegetable oil, like olive oil. So many days of such a meagre diet of only vegetables and seafood would be dull for the modern Greek. Many Greeks nowadays live according to a less strict Lent: they fast just on special days like at the start of Lent on Clean Monday or in the Holy Week, the last week of Lent, one week before Easter. (I suppose that most people know that in Greece Orthodox Easter is celebrated, which this year is on the 27th of April).

Lent or not, the succulent young leaves of chorta ask to be picked. I already mentioned once that I often eat chorta, not because of its taste, but because I know that it's healthy. I now discovered a sweet chorta, the taste of which reminds me of spinach: the Normal sow-thistle (zóchos). When you cook this thistle a little, cut it in small pieces and add some mayonnaise mixed with some yoghurt, you will have a wonderful and healthy dip sauce.

But my favourite free product from nature remains wild asparagus. You can even become obsessed with looking for them. See it as a search for Easter eggs. You have to learn to really look hard for the small stems, which often come out of the earth centimetres away from its thorny bush. And when you get into the game, it will be difficult not to stop at the next bush. When you go for a walk, this way you will never go far. But you will come home with a bunch of asparagus.

Greeks cook them and use them in an omelette. My favorite recipe remains to use them in a béchamel sauce, to accompany gambas, or small shrimps put into the sauce as well, to stir over pasta.

Greeks also use eggs to serve pastourma. It might not be the right subject to write about during Lent, but I rediscovered this dried meat during my recent stay on Rhodes. There a restaurant served a tasty omelette spiced with this meat.

Pastourma is a dish (actually it's a recipe for how to preserve meat), that comes from the Ottoman/Armenian kitchen, but it remained popular amongst the Greeks and is well known in the cuisine of the Middle East. It is said that it was even known in the Byzantine world.

It is also said that pastourma is made from camel meat. I used to wonder where the Greeks got camels from... But pastourma is just the name for air dried meat spiced with amongst other things cumin, spicy paprika, garlic and fenugreek. In Greece it is mostly, but also sheep, goat or pork can be dried this way.

The principle of drying is to remove all the water. First the meat is pressed, then covered with all the spices and dried in wind and air. I read a story about horsemen in Central Europe that used to have pieces of meat hanging in their saddle bags and while they were riding the horses, they pressed the meat with their legs.

However it is made nowadays, pastourma is a spicy piece of meat that you serve in thin slices as mezès, or you use it to spice other dishes. It gives a dish a typical pastourma flavour, like sweet spicy game meat.

Last week I tried two different dishes made with it: fresh beans with pastourma and roasted paprika, and quick fried dried figs, filled with soft white cheese, enveloped in a slice of pastourma and a sage leaf. Especially this last one was like an angel on your tongue: heavenly!

For all people that do not take Lent that seriously here are the recipes:

Fresh beans with roasted paprika and pastourma:
(amounts of ingredients to taste). Cook the beans and peel the roasted paprikas. Fry some thin slices of pastourma in some butter, add the beans and the paprika in pieces and add salt and pepper to taste. A lovely dish to serve with asparagus.

Fried dried figs with pastourma:
For 1 fig: cut the stem with a little sharp knife, make a small cut so that you can make a hollow. Fill this up with 1/3 of a tea spoon soft white cheese. Cover the opening with a slice of pastourma and cover the meat with a sage leaf. Fasten everything with a wooden tooth pick. Fry the fig quickly with the meat under in a little bit of oil until the meat is crispy.

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Rhodes

The best way to better appreciate the island where you live is to go to another island. Last week we went to Rhodes. Again I fell in love with the Old Town, but I was glad to come home today and rediscover the mountains, the flowers and the trees of Lesvos.

Rhodes is a magnificent town. Especially its Old Town, which in the 14th century was rebuilt by the crusaders on an even older city and which later was restored by the Italians, who ruled the island from 1912 until 1943. Since 1988 the Old Town of Rhodes has been on the UNESCO list of protected world heritage sites.

March is a very good month to visit the city of Rhodes. Most of the day the medieval streets are empty, so you can fully enjoy the narrow streets where people still live, beautiful arches that span the streets, colourful doors and pretty inner courtyards with mosaic floors, surprising squares and grave streets where the knights used to have their quarters, partially restored mosques and stout towers at the entrances in the city walls and the Palace of the Grand Mason.

You will meet the city walls everywhere you go, towering high above the houses. There are even two walls surrounding the city, except for on the coast. Between these city walls a lush green park now stretches, from where the impressive view of this medieval city shows how big it is. Also a walk on a jetty of the harbour can offer you a splendid view over the long walls where palm trees try to grow as high as the old watchtowers and the minarets. The Old Town doesn't look like a Greek city, more like a Moorish city, where the narrow streets promise cool shades, where the minarets point to God and where the leaves of the palm trees whisper in the warm wind.

These days the tranquility is only disrupted when a cruise ship sails into the harbour. Then the Old Town shakes itself awake, because they have to open shops, bars and restaurants for the lightly dressed tourists that invade the little streets. This makes the streets more lively and colourful in March nnd maybe also still in April. But I can imagine that visiting the Old Town of Rhodes on a high summer day will be a crime, because thousands of visitors will surely take away the magic of this beautifully restored city.

Rhodes is one of the oldest Greek tourist islands. As long as 25 years ago many huge hotels were there to accommodate the tourists. The increasing numbers of bars and restaurants in the Old Town prove that still more and more tourists come to Rhodes. This is even more apparent from the crazy pace of building new hotels, holiday villages and villa parks elsewhere on the island.

It was 25 years ago that I last visited Rhodes. I knew that it had changed in the intervening years, but I was really shocked by how much it had changed: all of the coast, where the famous city of Lindos is, has been fully built up. Small charming villages like Kouskinou have disappeared into new villa complexes; Faliraki, once such a lovely family beach village, has now been transformed into a huge amusement park like holiday village without any Walt Disney creatures.

Even the Baths at Kalithea are restored into such a glossy building that it's difficult to imagine that this famous spa was built in 1928 by the famous Italian architect Pietro Lombardi.

Lindos didn't seem to have changed. But when you know Molyvos, even Lindos loses some of its charm. Lindos maybe famous, but seeing the whitewashed village on the mountain under the medieval castle where some columns of an old Greek temple tower to the sky, I was not that enchanted anymore. Maybe because I was already a little sick of seeing all those tourist developments on the way to Lindos, I wondered is this Rhodes second biggest attraction?

I grumble about the new buildings here around Molyvos. But when I now compare this to Rhodes, you may even think that there is nothing new built in Molyvos. Now that I have seen how you can sell your island to the tourists or to investment companies that only go for the money, my love for Lesvos gets bigger and bigger. Here tourism still integrates into Greek life, on Rhodes it's the other way round.

When I told a Greek on Rhodes that I lived on Lesvos he said: 'Yeah, the island where life is 50 years behind'. However I heard that Rhodes has similar problems as Lesvos like with the rubbish and the increasing power demands. Driving through the mountains of Rhodes, you will see rubbish everywhere and just as on Lesvos, Rhodes also has big disputes about the site for a new electricity plant.

Today while we drove home from the airport, the landscape seemed so much richer. A green countryside with lots of different trees, beautiful traditional stone houses, sheep cots, steep mountain slopes and a coast full of secret bays. It may seem that life on Lesvos hasn't modernised, but time didn't stop here. It's just that here modern times don't make the people crazy. And they build here with more respect for the landscape. Even though Lesvos doesn't have such an impressive Old Town, nor such sweet white washed houses, nor such a beautiful aquamarine coloured sea, Lesvos still has its traditional villages, its unspoilt coast and so many quiet beaches, even in high season. The whole of the island still feels Greek and life isn't dominated by tourism. You may wonder why the whole island of Lesvos isn't yet on the UNESCO world heritage list. This would give the island more power to fight against such money makers as Savvaides (Rhodes) or that crazy English company that plan to ruin 2600 ha on Crete for a holiday resort with 5 holiday villages, 3 huge hotels and 2 golf courses. For sure you will be happy when you live on such an island!

Copyright © Smitaki 2008