Month: February 2024

Symi Greens

Spring has come early to Symi this year. The valley is luminous with daisies, wild cyclamens, cistus, asphodels, sorrel, almond blossom and lupins.

Spring has come early to Symi this year. The valley is luminous with daisies, wild cyclamens, cistus, asphodels, sorrel, almond blossom and lupins. As you can see, the dandelions and moss are taking over the Kali Strata.

A strong south-easterly weather front passed through on Monday, causing Dodecanese Seaways and Stavros boats to cancel their Monday routes. Dodecanese Seaways is running today, Wednesday, instead. The Stavros came through Symi on Tuesday but with an abridged route. It looks like more of the same on Friday. South-easterly storms are problematic because they trigger a heavy swell in Rhodes harbour, affecting docking, and many of the small island ports served by Dodecanese Seaways and the Stavros are not safe in any kind of bad weather. Torrential rain on Monday also temporarily closed Rhodes airport as the runway was flooded and visibility reduced to zero.

Today is the one year anniversary of the horrific train crash near Tempe in northern Greece, in which 57 people were killed. The victims included many young people returning home for the Carnival holidays. There is a countrywide civil service and transport strike today as part of the commemoration and to highlight the poor conditions in which state employees have been working for years. The air traffic controllers strike which was scheduled for today was deemed illegal by the Civil Aviation Authority so that has been cancelled but other disruptions are going ahead.

On a more cheerful note, next Thursday, 7 March is Tsiknopemti (Smokey Thursday) as well as Dodecanese Day, the day on which the Dodecanese islands were incorporated into the modern Greek state. As the former is celebrated with copious quantities of grilled meat and the latter by a public holiday with parades and folk dancing in Yialos, everyone is hoping for good weather and a great party.

An Island of Cats

Symi is very quiet at the moment. Some days it seems as though it is an island of cats, chickens and sheep rather than people, particularly on a ‘Blue Star’ day when it feels as though the whole population of Symi has gone shopping on Rhodes. The winter bus service is severely curtailed. Only 3 trips in the morning – at 8, 11 and 1 from Yialos – and then 6 in the evening. No where to go and not much to do outside the nest.

February is slipping past and spring is overtaking a winter that didn’t really happen this year. Oh, we have had rain and wind and ferry cancellations and flight disruptions but by and large we have had a very mild winter. Temperatures have seldom dipped below 12 degrees centigrade on Symi and on sunny days it can be as warm as 26 degrees centigrade. There are concerns in Crete and on the mainland as the mountain areas have not had enough snow to feed the streams and rivers, a problem that is affecting many European countries as snowfall diminishes and glaciers recede in the Alpine regions.

Symi is very quiet at the moment. Some days it seems as though it is an island of cats, chickens and sheep rather than people, particularly on a ‘Blue Star‘ day when it feels as though the whole population of Symi has gone shopping on Rhodes. The winter bus service is severely curtailed. Only 3 trips in the morning – at 8, 11 and 1 from Yialos – and then 6 in the evening. No where to go and not much to do outside the nest.

The main human activity is on the building sites. The new hotel in the southern corner of Pedi is nearing completion. Work is continuing on the new sewage processing plant at the bend in the road above the new port, as well as the new road from the port which will join the main one at that junction. It was announced in the Greek press yesterday that the continuation of the commercial port from Petalo towards the new port has been approved and is out to tender. Apparently this will also include a new slipway so that the slip by the customs shed by the bridge can be closed off. The overall plan is to further reduce heavy traffic around the head of the harbour.

Greek Easter is very late this year, on the first weekend in May. As western/Catholic Easter is very early, at the end of March, April is likely to be quieter than usual. There are the usual fraught speculations regarding ferry schedules and who is opening when and is it worth opening up when there are unlikely to be enough customers to cover costs and so on. As it is, far fewer places than usual stayed open this winter. The big push to digitise the Greek economy and clamp down on tax evasion has had the knock on effect of killing the old ad hoc winter ‘let’s open on Friday night and see who turns up’ trade as everyone has to operate ‘by the book’ these days and that is just far too expensive in tiny places like Symi.

On that subject, you will see far more POS devices when you visit Greece this year. Every kind of business, including freelancers and the self employed, now have to be able to accept all kinds of card payments. There is an understandable reluctance on this, despite heavy state pressure, as service charges on card transactions are so high. The POS device has to be connected to the till which has to be connected to Taxisnet, the Greek tax portal, in real time. We also have to accept IRIS payments which are through an app on your phone. To add to the fun, there is a government app you can download to your phone so if you think you have been issued with a dodgy receipt or that someone is evading their taxes, you can report them to the tax office and there are actually prizes for doing this.