About plants that can destroy armies

(rhododendron luteum)

In spring Lesvos is just one big public garden full of wild flowers, but I already said that once. Last week I wrote that the flower of flowers is the orchid, but the nicest spring-attraction here on the island — and each year I have to mention them — is the rivers of yellow rhododendrons that flow though the dark pine woods on the slopes of the mountains between Parakila, Anemotia and Vatoussa.

These flowers are not only beautiful to look at, but they smell like divine nectar. When you walk through the woods in the West their heavy, sweet scent is so heavy in the fresh pine forest air that you could easily become intoxicated. As long as you only devour them with your nose you’ll be all right, but don’t ever try to taste their honey.

Around 400 BC the two sons of Darius II of Babylon, Artaxerxes and Cyrus, got in a fight over who should inherit their father’s power after his death. Artaxerxes won and banished Cyrus to a remote part of Greece. There Cyrus gathered an army together and went back to Babylon to try and take power from his brother. He did not succeed, he was killed and his army defeated. Xenophon, a kind of war correspondent-historian who traveled with Cyrus, put the army back together and traveled back to where they came from. On the way they had to fight other enemies and in the country of Colchis they were attacked. They managed to break through a small division of soldiers and continued their way towards Trebizond in the district of Pontus. When they felt safe they stopped to rest and gather food. They found honey and ate plenty of it. That same night all soldiers — about ten thousand in all were left — became ill and behaved like they were drugged. It was lucky the Army of Colchis did not find them then, otherwise they all would have easily been killed. Centuries later scientists guessed that they probably ate from the yellow rhododendron luteum, also known as rhododendron Pontica because it’s in the Pontus area where they grow in profusion.

Honey can be dangerous if you buy it from a beekeeper that does not know the plants — there are many poisonous species which vary from slightly dangerous to very toxic. One of the best known, and very poisonous in Greek history is hemlock. It is famous thanks to the death of one of the greatest philosophers. In 399 BC Socrates was accused of neglecting the Gods who were ruling in his time and for speaking about ‘new gods’. He was judged to be a bad influence on youngsters and was given the choice of exile for life from Greece or death by drinking a cup of poison. Socrates chose the latter path and it is said that the poison he drank came from the plant we call hemlock.

Hemlock (Conium maculatum) looks a little like chervil and can grow up to two meters high. It is an inconspicuous plant in the Greek landscape. Its juice however contains nerve gas that in a small quantity can be fatal. So you better stay away from conium maculatum, or hemlock.

But tell that to the birds! They have no problem eating hemlock seeds and seem to like them without suffering any ill effects. However, there is a problem if the birds that eat hemlock seeds are themselves eaten — by humans. On Chios some people who ate partridges shot during a hunting expedition fell ill and after an investigation it was found that, yes, it was the seeds of the hemlock that caused their illness.

Whenever a volcano erupts and spews huge clouds of ash, stone and glass in the air that endanger airplanes, it is understandable that they have to be they grounded. So maybe you might think it might be forbidden to hunt birds on Chios in case they are toxic — so in that case, better to leave them in the air than bring them to ground, or the dinner table? But no, the people of Chios want the impossible. Like trying to catch the dangerous volcanic clouds up in the sky, they now want to destroy all the hemlock on their island.

Everybody who has been to Chios or any other Greek island knows that it would be an impossible task. Who would go and eradicate the plants on the islands and regions that are uninhabited? Would not the birds that fly there bring back hemlock seeds? And who could guarantee that no birds from Lesvos ever made a little trip to Chios, having consumed a swathe of hemlock seeds? Should the airspaces between the two islands be closed to bird traffic, or wouldn’t it be simpler to just but a ban on hunting them?

We must hope that no beekeeper falls in love with the magnificent yellow rhododendrons and puts his beehives close to their wonderful flowers to get that marvelous aroma in his honey. If that happened the people of Lesvos might then have to go off into the volcanic regions of the island—where the abundant crops of wild rhododendrons can be found— to pull up or destroy the flowers with weedicide. That would be a great loss of one of the most beautiful attractions of Lesvos in the spring.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010

Jumping rope with Fox Testicles Ice cream

(An Ophrys)

Every spring I am flabbergasted by the profusion of wild flowers that grow here on the island. It starts with the very colourful anemones, which sometimes come on as early as December. Then follow poppies, shaggy cistus, daffodils and soon all the fields, hills and mountain slopes are full of all kind of flowers. Tourists who come here only in summer will never have any idea what the dry earth they see brought forth before they arrived!.

The flower of flowers has to be the wild orchid, known to many specialists and collectors all over the world. It is not only the fragile beauty that makes the orchid into a collectors item for many people, it is also the fact that the flower is able to change itself, a quality that is unique in the modern world of plants.

For example, the fertilization biology of the Ophrys, the Bee-Orchid, is fascinating. Many kinds have developed a scent, a structure and colour pattern that mimics the female bee, wasp or beetle and this is how they attract the males of those same insects. The flower gets fertilized when the male tries to copulate with the flower...

On Lesvos there are about 60 to 100 different kinds of wild orchid, (opinions vary), and when you look at all the varieties you can understand just how a bee might make a mistake — because the differences are very hard to see. It is quite easy for a bee to accidentally visit an Ophrys that does not look at all like the right kind of female bee, but if the natural order of things proceed as they should, from this cross-fertilization a new variety or sub species is born.

Orchids don’t only drive bees crazy, but butterflies and their collectors too, as well as a group of people which believes an orchid is an aphrodisiac. The sexual implication is right there in the name because in Greek: orchis means testicle, and if you dig up an orchid you will find that it sprouts of two tiny bulbs (or tubers) which suspended from the stalk like a pair of balls.

It was Theophrastus (371–287 BC), the famous scientist from Lesvos, and often called the first botanist, that gave this eccentric flower the name of orchis. Some hundreds of years later a famous Greek doctor Pedanios Dioskoridis (40-90 n.Chr) wrote in his ‘De materia medica’ that Theophrastus was right to say the orchid could stimulate the sexual appetite of a man.

To that end the most important product of the orchid is called salep which comes from the Arab word for fox testicles, in Greek salepi. You dig up the bulbs, dry them in the sun until they are hard and then grate or rub them, until they turn into a fine flour. One of the secrets of the French chocolate maker and Royal warrant holder Sulpice Debauve, who had several famous chocolate shops in Paris around the beginning of the 19th century, was that he used salep in his chocolate.

Salep is also the name of a once famous drink which is made by heating milk and sugar with it until it becomes creamy and is served with a sprinkle of cinnamon. In the 17th and 18th century, before the hype for coffee and tea spread through Europe, the drink was really popular, especially in the Middle East and Turkey, and even England. For a long time in Greece and Turkey it was sold on the streets and in kafenions. People who could not afford coffee, would drink salep before starting work because it had a similar stimulating effect.

Nowadays it is said that maybe you can still find some street vendors with salep in the streets of Athens, but in general it has disappeared from Greek life, mainly because wild orchids are protected flowers in Europe, and making salep is prohibited. However, in Turkey its consumption continues as before, especially during winter, but also in summer Turks like to take dondurma with it, a kind of ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar and mastic mixed with salep until it becomes a gummy kind of mass. It is so thick and gooey it has to be eaten with a knife and fork and so elastic that you can tear it into long ropes you could use for skipping!

However the popularity of dondurma ice cream is a headache for nature conservationists. To make 1 kilo of salep you need at least a thousand orchid tubers! So can you imagine how many were needed in the days when Turkey exported hundreds tons of salep. Nowadays the trade is forbidden, but even though shepherds and other collectors warn that it’s getting ever harder to find the orchids, the Turks are still avid consumers of their dondurma, and are unlikely to give it up. However, it’s a real possibility that wild orchids will completely disappear from the Turkish landscape.

The major quality of salep is that it makes milk or water thicker. Probably, the salep sold nowadays contains only a small amount of orchid flour mixed in with cornstarch and vanilla. The orchid bulb has such a fragrant taste that it does not matter too much if you amplify it with cornstarch.

Dondurma ice cream does still exist in Greece — called Kaimaki Ice. To make it (and spare the orchids) here’s a recipe for Phoney Fox Testicle Ice Cream: using cornstarch, vanilla powder and some rose or orange-blossom water (and you need an ice cream machine).

3 cups of cream
3 cups of whole milk
1,25 cup of sugar
3 tbs. Cornstarch
1 tsp. rose or orange-blossom water
1 tsp. Vanilla powder
1/2 tsp. Mastic powder

Mix the cornstarch with some milk. Heat the other milk with the sugar and then add the mixed cornstarch and the other ingredients. Stir everything while it cooks until it becomes like a cream. Let the substance cool off and make ice with it in the ice cream machine.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010

Iron and concrete

(The new parking place at Molyvos)

Most of the time Easter means the beginning of the summer season here on the island. This year however, Greek Easter - the same date this year as the Catholic and Anglican Easter - is so early that it will really won’t be the beginning of summer. Normally most hotels try to be open by Easter: they do the gardens, refresh the rooms and tourists are all welcome. But this year only a few hotels are ready to open for Easter. Not many Greek visitors are coming because of the financial crisis. The municipalities try hard to get their roads and amenities ready for Easter, but for them this year it’s also too early.

I have to report that the municipality of Molyvos has not been lucky in this respect, especially with the road to Eftalou which suffered so much storm damage during winter. Sometimes you will see a bulldozer or truck shuffling rocks on to the road, but that hasn’t helped much. Last week our notorious west wind started blowing again so it looks like the municipality has one of the 12 labours of Herakles to perform, because waves have again pounded the boulevard and, will, I am sure, have undone some of the repair work.

The municipality seems to be a bit luckier with their work on a new parking lot, although that won’t be ready before Easter either. The town of Molyvos is a protected area and at the foot of its hill, just behind the school there used to be a beautiful parking space, a kind of field with olive trees where everybody could park their car. I thought it functioned very well but the municipality had different ideas, so the whole area is to be covered with concrete, and they are even building a huge wall in order to make a higher field as well as a parking space. Until now they have kept the olive trees, but you have to ask yourself why are they spending so much money on a parking place in such a time of crisis?

The municipality of Lisvori has no money left to realize all their projects. And so the refurbishing of the Hot Springs has also come to a halt. The mayor however has kept to his word about parking facilities so now the huge concrete apron in front of the two hot springs is covered with tiles. But the hotel and the baths have been left as they were: the improvements to the baths are not finished because the Archeological Service stopped the work because it did not have the permits.

The municipality of Petra is also taking part in the competition to see which town can make the island uglier. The new priest of the famous Maria Glikofilousa church on the rock that towers above the little seaside village has decided to make it easier for the many pilgrims that come every year to climb its 114 steps: along the path that winds over the rocks to the church he has placed a huge and ugly fence. Maybe you might think: everybody his own taste. But Petra’s beautiful eye catching Byzantine relic hardly deserves to have the kind of fence you normally see around a building site. Come Easter the thousands of cameras that will be pointed at the rock and its church will not be capturing images of family members proudly climbing all the stairs; all that will be seen will be the fences!

But at least the priest of the Maria Glikofilousa Church will be ready to receive churchgoers on the Saturday to Sunday night when most Greeks will attend the Easter midnight mass. But the parking lot at Molyvos and the coastal road in Eftalou will not be ready and will probably be the causes of some entertaining chaos.

Every year we wonder if everything will be ready for the summer season by the middle of April. And every year again we are surprised that many Greeks succeed in fulfilling their version of those labours of Herakles. However, this year, I am sure the above named projects will not be ready.

A plate of delicious poisonous chorta

(picture: svirnies)

Spring has arrived on the island together with oceans of flowers. The Greeks have put their chairs and tables outside: summer can start.

But the Greeks love to live outside in winter too. Whenever the temperature allows it, a Greek always prefers to sip his coffee or drink his ouzo outside. On a nice sunny Sunday Greeks do not all take off into nature, like in Holland. Most people only go into the wild to find something they can take. Like in autumn, men go mushroom hunting in the woods. In the winter and spring it is mostly women that go into the fields to gather wild greens and vegetables (chorta).

Chorta time starts in January but only in March do the very delicious shoots of the otherwise prickly wild asparagus bush appear — yes, wild asparagus! Sometimes they appear far away from the bush itself, so when you are staring at the main plant hoping to see shoots, one may be right in front of your nose swaying gently in the breeze.

Looking for asparagus is as much fun as gathering mushrooms, but you really have to look hard to find the new shoots. The first year that we went gathering them, as well asasparagus shoots as thin as knitting needles, we found some nearly as thick as your finger. We proudly showed them to a neighbour who called out: “Those are not ‘sparangia’, but ‘svirnies’!”. Pff!—another new word for our Greek vocabulary (and another kind of asparagus).

This year we discovered that these same svirnies—called avronies on Crete and in Turkey stifno—were the young shoots of the tamus communis, a climber with heart shaped leaves. But I really got a fright when I read that they are poisonous! A few weeks ago a friend of us gathered a big bunch of them and together with more friends we enjoyed eating them as a salad. Well, we all survived. As I did when I gathered a few more myself last week, with no damage done to my health. I read on the internet that we had probably eaten the tamus cretica, maybe it’s an edible kind? On another website a scientist annnounced that there is no such plant as tamus cretica, only dioscorea communis, which is also poisonous. How confusing!

I best leave it to the botanists to give the plants these funny names. The fact is, though, in Greece we eat not only asparagus but as well their lookalikes: svirnies or avronies.

It is better to get to know what plants look like, rather than remembering their various different names, as these may vary from region to region. Like I finally found what plant the Greeks call kardamo. I had always thought it was the wild version of the famous spice used in the Indian kitchen: cardamom.

The Greeks use that same cardamom in some of their dishes, but it does not grow in Greece. It is known from linear B tablets that it was traded by the ancient as ‘cardomomom’ (as it was known then), an expensive spicy seed that could make you rich.

But when Greek women gathering chorta come home with kardamo, it’s not the spicy heavily scented seed, but a green plant whose leaves can be eaten. It would be great to start trading in kardamo because (like cardamom seeds) they do have a pretty special and delicious taste: strong and spicey, a very nice addition to your salad.

The plant looks and tastes a bit like field cress, which has the Latin name kardamine. That may explain why the Greeks call it kardamo. The problem is that it looks alike but not exactly. Maybe it’s a new cress species: Lesvorian cress or cardamine lesvorine?

Well, I certainly do not want to start a discussion among botanists who can argue for years about new species and their names. Kardamo is just a nice spicey green herb that makes a Greek salad more tasty. It grows like sparangia and svirnies (or avronies) at the beginning of spring. I’ve no idea what kardamo is but it must be a very health-giving plant, otherwise the Greeks wouldn’t eat it. The same is true for the svirnies. And we all know how healthy asparagus is: full of vitamin C and antioxidants. Bon appetit!

A letter to the mayor of Molyvos

photo:GrisGris (cat to the right), in memoriam

Eftalou, 14 March 2010

To Mister Karadonis, the Mayor of Molyvos

We have known Eftalou well now for seven years and have always known Adonis and his many dogs. However, since Adonis is now ill and does not live here anymore, there is nobody to look after and control them — and there are about fifteen. We have noticed that since last summer the dogs have become more and more aggressive and they no longer stay close to the ‘house’ where Adonis lived (in the shed across the road and on the beach opposite the Hotel Panselinos. They now roam into the fields (where vegetables are growing), into the gardens of the Hotel, and as far as the meadows across from the Pizzeria. They are a major nuisance.

On Saturday morning I was woken up at 7.30 by several of these dogs barking and running around our house. When I opened my bedroom window, I saw several of them attacking one of my cats. I ran downstairs to chase them away but I was too late to save the cat, she died in my arms. So now Adonis’ dogs are murdering my cats. I can assure you that it was a really shocking sight to see one of them killed in this way.

On Saturday night several dogs came again to the house, twice, and on Sunday morning at 5 am I rushed out of my bed to chase them away again and then had to do the same thing at 8.00 am!!!!!

A friend once saw these dogs kill a little dog on the street and another time she witnessed them killing a cat, also on the street (the small dogs and cats seem to have disappeared from Adonis’ place).

Even if I were the only person who was being bothered by this pack of dogs (but I am not) you will immediately understand that this is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue.

Last summer several tourists were afraid to walk along the road past Adonis’ place and there are people who are even afraid to pass there by bike or motorbike. One incident last summer involved a female tourist who wanted to get from Eftalou back to Molyvos, but she was so afraid of the dogs that she had to go back to hotel Bella Vista in order to phone for a taxi to pick her up and take her past the dogs!

And it is not only tourists who are afraid. Because of the dogs a lot of Molyvos people will not walk to Eftalou any more. I understand that Adonis wants to keep his dogs and it will break his heart when they are gone. But I think that he and his family will have to take the responsibility of keeping them in an orderly manner. It cannot be allowed that Adonis’ dogs are able to terrorize a main thoroughfare of your community, but that is what is happening now. (TB: Who will bear the responsibility if a person suffers serious injury, or worse? I for one could not have a clear conscience if I had not brought it to your attention.) You as mayor, should do something about this problem: these dogs must be removed from Eftalou.

With friendly greetings,

Smitaki

The world shakes

(Picture: the castle of Mytilini)

It is no news that the Greek economy is shaking. That the Greek earth is also shaking is also true. It goes with the series of earthquakes we recently had around the world: Haïti, Chile, then last Monday, the eastern part of Turkey, and a small shock around the Greek city of Patras (4.2 on the Richter scale) and the next day a shock of 4.3 around the northern Sporades.

Small shocks are no news in Greece. Since I have lived here I’ve felt a couple. But nothing like the quake that shook the world for two minutes in Chile – a bit different from waking up because you think somebody has been shaking your bed.

If you want to experience how a big earthquake might feel, you can go to the Natural History Museum of the Lesvos Petrified Forest in Sigri, where they have a special room that simulates earthquakes. This place is much visited by school parties where pupils are instructed what to do in the event of an earthquake.

Children are taught that they should hide under their school desks. Normally your first instinct might be to run outside, but all earthquake advice sites on the internet say you should do otherwise: when you are inside, stay inside! Hide under a solid table, stay away from doors, windows and outside walls. If you are in bed, stay there, and pull a pillow over your head to protect it. I wonder why you should not hide under your bed... but I am pleased to hear that my instincts were right: the first time I felt an earthquake I was asleep in bed, and woke up, turned around and thought “yeah, that’s it” and quickly went back to sleep. The only thing I did not do was pull a pillow over my head. Now having seen the horrible images of the earthquakes in Chile and Haïti, I think that next time I’d be better to stay awake, and hide under a pair of pillows instead of one.

Lesvos is also is an area where there is a real threat of earthquakes. The island lies in the area where the Hellenic curve touches the African plate, above the island is the Edremit–Skiros fault, off the southern coast is the beginning of the Lesvos–Psara fault and on the island itself there are many small faults. So the earth under our feet is not all that quiet.

The history of the island tells of many destructive earthquakes. Whole cities and villages have perished. Pyrrha is said to have disappeared into the Gulf of Kaloni. If it was not an enemy who destroyed the city, it was the earth itself which did the job.

The last ‘big’ earthquake was in 1984, but it did no significant damage. The last really destructive earthquake was in 1867. It not only caused enormous damage and thousands of deaths, it hit Turkish cities like Smyrna (now Izmir), Konstantinopel (Istanbul) and Gallipoli. It was the second time that Mytilini and Smyrna were destroyed by the same disaster. In 151 AD the two cities already were completely razed by a single earthquake.

According to an article in the Malta Times in the year 1867 in Smyrna the first shock of about 30 seconds was felt in the evening of the March 7th. It was followed by a much heavier shock, and again the next day another heavy shock struck. People fled into the fields and to the harbour in order to be safe on the sea. They probably did not know that a tsunami could follow an earthquake.

In the same article there was a letter from an eyewitness who saw the earthquake in Mytilini on Lesvos. He describes how the weather over the days before the quake had been uncomfortably warm due to a south wind and that on March 8th at six o’clock in the morning he was on his way to the office of the Austrian Lloyd’s, when he felt the first shock that lasted 12 to 19 seconds and which was followed by a much heavier second shock. When he looked to the harbour, it was like an underwater explosion had taken place, with foaming water coming up from below the surface.

“I saw all the surrounding buildings dancing like drunken men, and solid blocks of masonry, out of which the piers are constructed, tumbling like houses of cards. The office of the Austrian Lloyd’s and nearly all the buildings which belong to the Custom-house, the Lighthouse, and the large oil mill, all gave way. In all the streets houses fell, burying their inhabitants beneath the ruins. The ancient and beautiful castle, the cathedral, the governor’s palace, the prisons, the mosques, and I believe all the consular residences are damaged, and for the most part are no better than a mass of ruins ... The lowest lying part of town suffered most. The earth literally opened and engulfed a number of buildings along the street which led from the seashore to the interior of the town, and which on Wednesday afternoon was the most frequented part of Mytilene but is now invaded by the sea, and covered by heaps of mud. More than one-half of our beautiful town, the most delightful and the gayest in the whole Levant, is nothing more than a desert heaped with ruins”.

Yesterday the grey clouded sky turned into an orange light, which gave off an eerie atmosphere. I did not think anything of it and just hung out my white laundry as normal. Only later I realised what a mistake that was. It is not the first time that clouds of orange sand from the Sahara have invaded Greece in springtime. The sand comes down in tiny drops of rain, colouring roads, windows. Just about everything, including my white washed clothes, turned orange. Ships did not leave port, some flights were delayed, the long bridge between the Peloponessos and western Greece was closed for some time and I had to redo my wash. Off course this was not really a disaster, but still I uttered some bad words against these frequent unpredictable moods and deeds of Nature.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010

The wonder of a crisis

(Plomari)

Already too much has been written about the financial crisis in Greece. I better not add any more but I will tell you about another crisis that resulted in something very beautiful. It is the story of the ancient capital of the south of Lesvos: Megalochori.

Hundreds of years ago the southern part of Lesvos was quite a wild area. It was a good place for people to retreat and hide. That is how small communities came and settled around a church. Then they built an olive press and that is how some of the villages in the south were founded. The biggest village became Megalochori and ruled the region for some time. These villages were hidden high in the mountains, far from the sea where the pirates regularly used to come to the island to steal, murder and destroy villages.

By the 19th century the pirates had gone, but the villages on the southern slopes of the Olympus found a new enemy, as dangerous and evil as the pirates: in the summers of 1841, 1842 and 1843 huge fires raged through the mountains of Olympus, burning entire villages and their orchards. Then in 1850 the Big Cold destroyed what was left, and most of the inhabitants moved down to the coast, to live at the seaside where fishermen and their families were making a living.

That is why houses were built around the mouth of the river Sedounda, as well as soap plants, olive presses, flour mills, ouzo factories and even ships were built to carry the trade further. Lots of seamen from all over Greece, like the Cyclads, Kythira, Psara and the Greek mainland were attracted to this new place. It was a good time to make a new start - the coast was safe again and the economy on the island was growing, thanks to the booming commerce with the Ottoman Empire, from Thessaloniki, Odessa to Antalya, which is why this new city called ‘River’ (potami in Greek, Flumare in Genuese*) had such a quick start.

When around 1922 the Lesvorian economy collapsed (together with the Ottoman Empire) Plomari was hit hard by the crisis. Most industries were closed and even now parts of modern Plomari seem to have been frozen in time: big patrician houses, mills and factories in ruins dominate the look of the city, silent witnesses of those good old times.

Even though times were bad, the harbour of Plomari as it is today, was opened in 1928 which meant fishing boats could continue their business and – more important - the ship yards from whence many famous sailing boats were launched.

Plomari always has been something of an exception on the island because for many years there were no good roads and it was difficult to get to. The port town led a more or less isolated life at the feet of the southern slopes of Olympus, depending on the sea for its communication with the outside world.

Nowadays Plomari is called the capital of ouzo, thanks to the excellent – and somewhat spicy – ouzo distilled by old Plomarian families like Varvayannis, Arvanitis and Pitsiladi who survived the crisis. So too did the olive oil which came from the new trees planted in the orchards after the terrible destruction wrought by the Big Cold. Recently more than one olive oil from Plomari won prices in international contests.

Thanks to modern roads a trip to the second biggest town of the island and the new capital of the south of Lesvos is not such an adventure these days, but still it’s a breathtaking tour around a landscape that used to be called the Switzerland of Lesvos. Hidden on the mountain slopes you still find idyllic villages that did not quite disappear after the fires, the Big Cold, the emigration to Plomari (or far away over sea). You will find the well hidden Neochori with its old olive press; Ambelico built into a steep slope, with its medieval quadrilateral tower in the middle, and at the bottom of the village, a church with a wonderful small museum of folkloric and religious artifacts. Then there is Akrasi built around a main square with a fabulous view of a deep ravine leading to the hamlet of Drota on the sea below, and the lively village of Paleochori where the baker still bakes his bread in a wood stove. Only the villages Milies and Kournella are nearly deserted.

So thanks to the crisis in the 19th century, caused by fires and a burst of extreme cold, Lesvos now has this wonderful Italian-like little town, built against the mountain with houses that tower higher and higher, as if trying to get a glimpse of the sea. In the labyrinth of small steep streets and stairs you will find old neo-classical houses in ruins, next to merry coloured restored houses that also climb towards the sky to prove Plomari managed to overcome the crisis. In the lower part of the town, along the Sedounda river, you will find old white chalked soap factories and the square under an enormous plane tree is a good place to have a coffee, unless you prefer to watch the Plomarians coming and going along the many terraces along the sea front.

And so you see that not only can you surive a crisis it can even bring new and beautiful things. Plomari has still not been discovered by masses of tourists and so it is a pearl of the south coast, where the Greeks will no doubt put their shoulders to the umpteenth crisis.

• Others say that the name of Plomari comes from the plant Euphorbia Charasias that grows in abundance around Plomari. The Greek word for this plant is Flomos. Old Plomarians remember that the little town used to be called Flomari, named after this plant, and which later became Plomari.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2010