Seasons on Symi – Page 2

A Waiting Game

Symi is very quiet. A few Greek tourists. A handful of foreigners from ‘safe’ low risk destinations. Bored local teenagers whizzing up and down the road, sound systems blaring. Pensioners watering their vegetable plots and grandmothers taking an early morning swim. The temperature continues to rise and every afternoon there is a gentle migration to the sea to cool off. Locals play at being tourists as they have little or no work and nothing much to do. Very few places are open, and those that are, are generally empty. The cicadas chirp on regardless.

The harbour is devoid of day-trippers. There are no water taxis bustling in and out of Yialos. All dressed up and no where to go.

The Greek domestic airports opened to direct flights from other EU destinations and 13 third-party ones yesterday. This comes with all sorts of provisos and restrictions which you can find here. As you probably know, direct flights from the UK, the USA and Sweden are still forbidden due to the very high levels of infection in those countries. They may be major contributors to Greece’s usual annual tourist income, but the risks outweigh any possible benefit, particularly as a number of recent cases have been linked to people coming in from the USA and UK via various roundabout routes.

What seems to be more of a problem is that would be travellers from countries that ARE on the approved list are being messed about by various airlines. For instance, Danes booking with Spies for holidays in September, which is two months away, are having their flights cancelled on the grounds that there is insufficient demand. Well, if they still have two months in which to sell tickets and people are only just starting to make plans, why cancel flights now? That only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fear of making plans and then having them cancelled, often at short notice (vis a vis those who were booked on flights from London for 1 July who were only informed on 30 June that they were cancelled) and fighting to redeem vouchers and refunds from flights cancelled earlier in the year are certainly putting people off travelling, even if they have already had – and recovered from – the dreaded virus.

The Greek government has put all sorts of measures in place to make travel as safe as possible. Everyone travelling to Greece has to complete an on line Passenger Locator Form 48 hours before travelling, answering a lot of questions regarding where they have been for the past fortnight and who they have met as well as providing accurate details of where they will be staying on arrival in Greece. Based on this information they are issued with a QR code to present on landing. This determines whether they will be tested or not. Other passengers will be subject to random testing. There is more information about this on the links above. By the way, the penalties for providing incorrect information are hefty and if you haven’t completed the form and received the QR code, you aren’t allowed to fly anyway.

Quarantine hotels have been established in various towns around the country so anyone, whether Greek or foreign tourist, can be isolated if not sufficiently ill to require hospitalisation. On Symi the Chorio clinic is designated an isolation unit and anyone who falls ill with the virus will be helicoptered to Rhodes. (Apologies for the Facebook link, unfortunately this video was not uploaded onto the more widely accessible YouTube.)

Unfortunately the dearth of tourists on Symi has severe implications for the Symiots themselves. Apart from pensioners and those in the merchant navy or working for the banks, power station and so on, everyone else is dependent on tourist revenues of one sort or another to pay the bills and put food on the table. Whether it is foreign property owners or tourists staying in hotels and short stay accommodation, it is the money coming in from outside that keeps the island’s economy moving. Greece does not have a well-developed welfare state to help people over the hard times – historically the solution has been mass migration rather than state intervention – and the Covid-19 crisis has lasted far longer than the government had initially anticipated. If you are able to travel to Symi this year, even if it is for a few weeks much later in the year, please do. It is going to be a long wait for those who have had no income since October 2019 if they have to wait until the spring of 2021 before they start earning again and by that time many of your favourite haunts may well have shut down permanently.

Greece Welcomes the World?

blog 16 June 2020 a — The water taxis are ready and waiting.

blog 16 June 2020 e — Not quite ready for lunch customers just yet.

blog 16 June 2020 f — A work in progress – all the boats are back in the water and it is time to transform the littoral into a beach.

blog 16 June 2020 g — High water levels in Pedi as the solstice approaches.

With much fanfare and a Santorini sunset TV op, Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared the 2020 tourist season open. As is the norm this year, confusion prevails regarding who can travel and what is happening regarding Covid-19 testing and quarantine. With regulations changing daily and the difficulties the media are having in keeping up to date with the ever-changing landscape, the most reliable source of information on who can travel and what should be happening on arrival is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. This, of course, does not mean that the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health might not have other ideas but it is a good starting point.

The current measures and lists only really apply to the situation from now to 30 June. 1 July is supposed to see a major opening up to broader international travel but this is highly dependent on how things go in Greece in the next two weeks and also what happens in countries like the USA and the UK where the disease figures are still high. Greece is treading a fine line between the tourist revenue it desperately needs and destroying brand Greece’s reputation as a safe destination if the virus starts to arrive in significant numbers from abroad.

Tourists themselves are also faced with an ethical dilemma – do I travel because I want to have my holiday and I put my own pleasure first or do I wait until next year in order to protect the health of my hosts? Many of Symi’s regular visitors, as well as property owners, are discussing this at some length on social media and the general feeling is to stay away until it really is safe to travel, not just because some bureaucrat says so.

Seasonal resort hotels, museums and brothels opened their doors from yesterday. Gyms have also been allowed to reopen. Once again, all sorts of new rules, regulations and protocols apply. The Pedi Beach Hotel has all its umbrellas set up at the new spacings. They had a few Greek guests over the weekend but I didn’t see anyone on my walk this morning, just a lone painter on an extension ladder.

Once again ‘wait and see’ is the motto of the day.

And in other news, temperatures on Symi are now around 30 degrees at midday, dropping to about 20 at night. After a few exceptionally clear days the heat haze is building up and Saharan sand is drifting up over Crete and the mainland, bringing high temperatures with it.

Keep safe everyone.

Not Much Happening on Symi this Spring

Well, here we are. Keeping track of the passage of time is easier by looking at the changing vegetation in the valley than by any variations in the day’s routines. The clocks have changed and the days grow longer. Trees unfurl their spring greenery and the goats and sheep gorge themselves on a banquet of corona daisies (yes, that really is their name) and purple-blue lupins. The air smells faintly of sun-warmed chamomile blossom and wild sage.

I don’t know what it is like in the harbour or Chorio as I have not been to either for a fortnight but down in Pedi we have random police patrols to check that everyone is behaving. The old boys still tend their fields and flocks – farmers, smallholders and apiarists are part of the essential workers and if this year’s tourist season is a total write-off they may be crucial to putting food on the table for many families. Permits have been devised to allow them to continue to function. There is also a special permit that allows legitimate animal welfare organisations throughout Greece to continue with animal feeding schemes.

Preventing people from wandering off to do their own thing is, however, proving to be more of a challenge. As the weather warms up a new prohibition has been brought in, preventing swimming, spear fishing, kayaking and various other water sports. This is not because the government is a bunch of spoilsports. It is because it is difficult enough to police the streets to restrict unnecessary journeys as it is without having to try to keep an eye on what people are up to along Greece’s incredibly convoluted shoreline and most of these activities are non-essential and tend to attract the company of others. Only commercial fishing boats are allowed to operate.

A third case of Covid-19 has been diagnosed in Rhodes – a young woman returning to her home on the island from the UK. Fortunately she was maintaining the required 14 days quarantine when she became ill.

The government is hinting at further movement restrictions and expanding on the SMS system so that it shows the time one returns, not just the time one sets off, for any one of the approved reasons for movement and limiting the number of times any one person may leave home in a day. This is likely to replace the Document B which those who don’t have Greek mobile phones tend to use. The SMS system does not work with foreign sim cards, as many expats who have not bothered to buy Greek sims are finding out.

Several villages around Kozani on the mainland have been put under severe quarantine restrictions due to an abnormally high level of contagion in the area and the local power station there has been closed down temporarily to protect the health of workers.

Keep safe, keep indoors – and keep out of the cookie jar!

Strange Times

Today’s photograph is of the thermal beach on Kos. If you dig a little pit in the sand it fills up with warm water from the thermal springs just below the surface. Put it on your wishlist for when things return to normal.

A lot has happened since I last wrote. Travel restrictions have been brought in to prevent passengers travelling on ferries to the islands unless they are actually permanent residents on the islands. This was brought in to stop Athenians and others from the mainland bringing the disease into the islands. So far most confirmed cases are in Athens and northern Greece. The only confirmed case in the Dodecanese, a health worker at a clinic in Karpathos, was traced back to a visitor from Athens. As the islands don’t have serious medical facilities – on Symi for example we currently don’t even have a qualified doctor, only interns – it is important to maintain a cordon sanitaire. When travelling you have to show your passport, your residence card and also your tax certificate as this shows your official place of domicile whereas the residence card simply shows that you are either a temporary or permanent resident of Greece and the EU.

Another big change is that with effect from 6 a.m. yesterday, 23 March, we cannot leave our homes without authorisation and that is for a very limited range of criteria. The rest of the time we are to stay home. If we do go out it is singly or in pairs with a distance of 2 metres between us. When travelling by car only one passenger is permitted in addition to the driver. People going to work have to complete Form A if self employed or get their employer to fill it in and stamp it if they are employees. This is a one off form to be carried at all times, along with ID or passport and residence permit. Other activities fall under Form B which can be either a printed form, an SMS or a hand written piece of paper if there is no technology available and this has to be done for every single time one leaves the house. More details on the official government website link.

The number of customers permitted in supermarkets has been further restricted to one every 15 square metres. This doesn’t apply so much to Symi where the shops are small and people few but in Rhodes the big supermarkets have implemented a system using numbered cards. Based on the square meterage of the shop they have calculated how many customers they may have in the store at any given time. There is a staff member, suitably gloved and masked, at the door who hands out a card to each shopper until all the cards are gone. As each shopper leaves again they hand back the card which is duly sanitised and handed to the next person in line. Simple but effective and nothing fancy required to set up. Countries like the UK could implement this to reduce the locust-line stripping of supermarket shelves as well as reducing the progress of contagion. Street markets which are a common shopping venue in Greece are limited to only sell foodstuffs and the stalls have to be 5 metres apart.

Apart from ferries, there have also been major changes to flights with drastic reductions in the number of domestic flights and even bigger ones between Greece and EU/International destinations. Apart from repatriation flights and freight, there is little movement at the country’s airports.

On the home front, Symi is quieter even than it is in the depths of winter. The lambs and kids continue to frolic in the daisies. Solitary people walk their dogs as this is one of the approved activities. Parents endeavour to home-school their children and various on line classes are streamed. The churches are closed. Tomorrow is Greek Independence Day as well as the Annunciation. Normally this is marked by blazing braziers all round the harbour and leading up to Evangelismos church in Harani. This year locals will mark the event by putting lanterns on their balconies in the harbour and hanging out flags as all parades are cancelled.

The sunny mild spring weather is expected to break on Wednesday evening as the cold front currently over the Ionian, the mainland and the northern Aegean heads our way. We could be in for as much as four days of rain. Psychologically it is much easier to be indoors when it is wet and miserable outside so as long as this is not accompanied by floods this rainy spell is welcomed. Meanwhile we are all spending far too much time thinking about food. That is probably a universal thing as boredom drives us to the fridge. Fortunately I have always been a keen reader and thanks to Kobo and Kindle these days one need never run out of books. Apparently Netflix has reduced the resolution on its streaming service so that the European bandwidth does not collapse under the weight of so many subscribers.

Keep well, keep safe, keep sane and stay at home!

Life on Symi in Self-Isolation

Here we are on our little island, waist deep in daisies, chamomile fragrant under foot and the hillsides pungent with sage blossom. When I first came here in the mid-90s March was already a fairly busy time, with walking groups, photographers and artists revelling in the spring spectacle. This slowly faded away as the tourist season contracted and in recent years Symi has been quiet well into May. In that sense things don’t feel too different to last year or the year before. In others, however, the change is dramatic. No more shopping trips to Rhodes. No more sociable coffees in cafes. The old boys can no longer hang out at the cafeneions. They hang out in their vegetable gardens instead and if the tourist season fails totally a lot of people will be dependent on the family orchard and vegetable plot. The hairdressers, hardware stores, builders’ merchants and other stores are all closed. Only supermarkets, bakeries, pharmacies, the bank and the agricultural suppliers are allowed to remain open.

I was going to post yesterday but kept delaying as we were all waiting to find out if the speculation in the press that the international flights would be stopping with effect from Sunday would be confirmed. So far, however, this has not been made official.

What has been made official is that ALL hotels, not just the seasonal ones for tourists, have to close on Monday until at least the end of April. This was announced at the same time as a fiscal package to help the country get through the difficult times ahead. Something else that is official is that anyone arriving into the country now has to go into enforced 14 day quarantine. They have to fill in a form on arrival, detailing among other things where they will be staying and their phone number. Random checks and phone calls will then be made to ensure that they abide by the quarantine regulations. If they are found to be out and about when they should be at home, the fine is 5000 euros.

Meanwhile more and more islands are requesting that ferry connections be limited to the transport of goods only, in an effort to prevent the import of the virus from the mainland and beyond. Many Athenians are fleeing the big city to head to their country homes in rural areas and in the islands, bringing the virus with them. This appeal may be too late for the Dodecanese Island of Karpathos which reported its first case last night, a health worker at a clinic on the island. It is not clear how she became infected as this is one of the most remote islands and the closest diagnosed case so far is in Crete. Even Mount Athos, which is effectively a state within a state, is closing the gates to pilgrims.

The government is taking the self-isolation, quarantine and business closures very seriously and the police are arresting anyone violating the edicts.

Finally, some good news to come out of all this… While the requirement for dinky little individual soaps for hotels has dropped, Papoutsanis, Greece’s oldest soap maker, has had to increase production to cope with demand.

February Postcards from Symi

sdr

Symi is still deep in its winter sleep. Down in Pedi random goats and sheep browse the verges and cats seek out the warm places. The weather is variable and forecasts frequently wrong. Mild winds turn out to be gales and black clouds roll out from behind the Vigla on days that are supposed to be dry. Airers laden with damp jeans and wet socks will be cluttering our homes for a while longer. Temperatures can be anything from 6 to 16 degrees centigrade, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Today’s Blue Star Chios ran on time but Dodecanese Seaways has cancelled due to strong north winds and a deteriorating forecast.

Behind closed doors some businesses are preparing for the season. The Pedi Beach Hotel is revamping all its rooms. To Spitiko taverna in the harbour is also in the throes of a massive overhaul. The new road which will connect the bend in the road above the harbour with the new commercial port is making progress. This has been on the cards for some time and will facilitate the movement of heavy goods vehicles coming off the Blue Star up to the main road without going through Petalo.

The lease on the Nireus Hotel, which belongs to the Symi town hall, came up for auction at the beginning of the month as the original 25 year lease was up for review. The Rhodian company that manages the Pedi Beach Hotel won. So far there is a lot of gossip circulating as apparently this came as a surprise to the original lessees who had, it is said, assumed that this was merely a formality and that they would be rolled over for another 25. The Rhodian company offered the town council a far higher rental, 200 000 euros per annum according to the local press, and is undertaking to raise the hotel to 4 star standard. We are all waiting to see what happens this year as in theory the hotel should be opening for the season in April which is only weeks away.

Another piece of news that may have implications for Symi this summer is that the Dodecanese Seaways car ferry, the Panagia Skiadeni, has been sold. Will the new owners be operating the existing Rhodes Symi route or will the boat be going elsewhere and if so, who will fill the gap? As the Sebeco does not take vehicles or goods this leaves a big hole in the island’s summer supply line.

Carnival is in the air. Yesterday was Tsiknopempti – Smokey Thursday. The scheduled municipal BBQ event has been postponed to Sunday due to the wet and windy weather yesterday (surprise!). If you are on Symi this weekend, the BBQ in the Chorio square is scheduled to start at 15.00, weather permitting of course!

So, as you can see, although it all seems very quiet on Symi at the moment, there’s really quite a lot going on.

A Winter Weekend in Patmos (Part 6)

Early on Sunday morning Nicholas set off for another run, this time in the fields along the north side of the island that we had driven past the previous day. The pictures above tell their own story.

After breakfast at the hotel we set off to visit the Church of the Apocalypse, the place where St John wrote his Divine Revelations around 95 AD. He lived in a cave which was turned into a church around 1000 years later and a monastery sprang up around it. We weren’t allowed to take photographs inside unfortunately. The church was quite small and about a third of the space was actually the rock formation of the ‘cave’. It must be merry hell in summer with the coach parties as I doubt there is space for more than 20 people at any given time, assuming that they are all standing up and facing the same way. Considering all the talk about climate change and the end of the world etcetera, I am surprised that the place isn’t heaving all year round but perhaps people have forgotten that everything to do with the concept of the Apocalypse started in a small cave on a remote Greek island nearly 2 000 years ago.

This time we were accompanied by the janitor who was busy vacuuming, polishing and mopping which rather detracted from the spirituality of the place. Not so much the odour of sanctity as the floral abundance of Fabuloso. He asked us where we were from. We told him we were from Symi and commented on the different way in which windows and shutters are handled between the two islands – on Symi shutters are outside and windows open inwards so the shutters have to be kept closed in the rain as otherwise they leak. (Shums notice stuff like that.) In Patmos it is the other way round. It turns out that the buildings in Patmos are so old that glass windows were added later – you only had shutters to keep out potential invaders or open spaces – which is why glass windows were added later, usually on the outside of the shutters which opened inwards, as in the photograph below. When we mentioned the limitations of the archaeologia, the state body that controls what people do to buildings in places like Symi, Patmos and Rhodes Old Town, he rolled his eyes and said, “We also have UNESCO!”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After our chat with the janitor, who was careful to lock up after us so no sneaking back inside to take unauthorised pictures, we headed back up the hill to Chora for a final walk around. Once again, we saw more companions with four legs than two. This time we were taking on a guided walk by a small, friendly but independent-minded dog (no excessive demonstrations of affection, thank you).

We are not quite finished yet. There are still some more good photos left to share with you so watch out for the next instalment.

Symi Life in the Winter

December in Greece is a merry go round of storms rolling in from the west, interrupted by incredible calms and fantastic visibility. So far this winter the neighbouring island of Rhodes has taken the brunt of the weather in the region with destructive downpours, gale force winds and hail. Symi has got off lightly so far with little significant damage. Long may it last. The next round is expected to reach us on Sunday evening with a southerly gale and 100% chance of rain, turning into a strong northerly wind and showers for Christmas day. Temperatures are expected to fall dramatically and there may be overnight ice at high altitudes.

Temperatures at the moment are in the low teens. It feels colder as there is heavy drenching dew every night and the houses are also dripping condensation inside, particularly the newer ones with cement and brick construction rather than thick stone walls. Peeling whitewash is still a more picturesque look than acrylic emulsion covered in black mould…

The schedule for the Blue Star Patmos has been rearranged to take into account the Christmas Day and New Year’s Day holidays. The usual Monday and Wednesday routes have been replaced by Sunday and Tuesday for the two holiday weeks. As the main shops are open for Sunday trading on the Sundays before Christmas and New Year, Symiots can take their chances with the weather for a spot of Sunday shopping at Lidl, M&S and Jumbo. The Dodecanese Seaways schedule is unaffected except possibly by the wind.

The municipality put up the official Christmas decorations a couple of weeks ago. I will post photos separately of the town nativity scene at the War Memorial. By and large Christmas is not the big commercial extravaganza that it has become in the west and the shops on Symi are fairly low key in comparison to what you may be used to. Big centres like Rhodes put on more of a show and Athens is like any other major European city over the festive season. On Symi a few imported chocolate Santa Clauses and boxes of Panetonne share supermarket shelf space with boxes of melamakaronia (honey and walnut cookies) and kourabiedes (Greek shortbread). Vassilopita, a kind of round cake with the date of the new year embossed on it and a coin hidden in it for luck, is traditionally cut on 1 January, St Basil’s Day. There is no traditional Christmas dinner menu here although turkeys have become available in recent years and the expat population has had sufficient influence to ensure the availability of fresh parsnips and Brussels sprouts in a couple of local grocers. The locals are more likely to tuck into pork for their Christmas meal and roast suckling pig has been the midwinter feast meat for generations in this part of the world.

A team of professional tree-fellers is working around Chorio and Pedi at the moment, lopping the many eucalyptus trees that line the roads. Planted mostly during the Italian occupation between the two World Wars, eucalyptus are not indigenous to the region and although fast growing cause a lot of problems with their brittle branches and loose bark. They have to be cut back to avoid branches falling on the power lines and roads in the winter storms. There is a program of planned tree planting going on in various areas including Pedi and around the Kastro, putting in slower growing native species that are better suited to the climate and terrain.

The bus is switching to its winter schedule with no evening service and a limited service on Sundays. There are very few people wanting to go anywhere as there is not much open and it is not unusual for the bus to be replaced by one of the hire cars if too few people turn up at the stop to make it worth running the big yellow bus.

Have a good weekend and I will put up some photographs of Symi Christmas decorations next week.

November Postcards from Symi

Katsaras 7 November 2019 last beach goers — A few late sunbathers on 7 November 2019.

Katsaras 7 November 2019 saving sand 2 — Nikos Katsaras supervises the winterisation of his beach.

Katsaras 7 November 2019 saving sand — The sand is heaped up at the back of the beach and then protected with sandbag defences so that as little as possible washes away in the winter storms. You can see those last sunbathers in the background.

Katsaras closed for Panormitis — Closed for Panormitis Day. Where else in the world could you get away with draping your stock with cloths to signify that you are shut?

Katsaras umbrella stand — A simple but effective way of preventing the umbrella bases from filling up with sand and stones during the winter. Each pipe has an upturned water bottle jammed in it.

Panormitis Wed 6 Nov 2019 a — The Wednesday of the Panormitis festival. The grandiose confectionery palace in my featured image at the start of this post is on the left of this photograph.

Pedi Beach Hotel 1 — Just checking that the last guests have left the Pedi Beach Hotel.

Pedi Beach Hotel 2 — The sunbeds, parasols and patio tables have all gone.

Pedi cats in the sun — The day after Panormitis, the only sunbathers left in Pedi were the four-footed variety.

The Panormitis Festival is now a week-long affair of stalls and fast-food outlets. Thousands of visitors came from Rhodes and further afield and apart from the Blue Star which is too big, all the other ferries serving Symi operated in and out of Panormitis for the duration. The actual religious event was Thursday evening and Friday morning but the quest for 1 euro squeezy dinosaurs and gold plastic tablecloths knows no such boundaries. Amidst the designer-rip-off handbags and the global Chinese tat there were also monks from Mount Athos selling blessed crucifixes on bits of cord, a stall selling some wonderful artisanal cooking tools including big terracotta casserole dishes and another selling some charming wooden gifts, handmade by a local carpenter and his wife. It would be lovely to see more of the latter and rather less of the former. In the interests of commerce part of the monastery garden has been concreted over to provide extra space for the food vendors and a large formal car park has been built at the head of the bay, before the entrance. A security firm directs the traffic into the car park. If you are catching a ferry and have to off-load luggage, you hand your driver’s license to the guard at the gate and he only gives it back to you when you leave. The carpet sellers and basket makers who used to be a feature of the entrance road have all disappeared – presumably no longer allowed as they would not have been paying ground rent being outside the gates. Apart from the Panorama cantina and the souvlaki stall manned by the Symi high school pupils, all the other food outlets were from Rhodes, including the Diva pancake, doughnut and ice cream bar.

The last boat leaves Panormitis today 12 November and from here on we are on the winter ferry time table for both the Blue Star and Dodecanese Seaways. I am leaving myself on the Dodecanese Pride this afternoon for a short trip to the UK. The Panagia Skiadeni has been moth-balled for the winter

After some glorious autumn weather more rain is on the cards, starting on Wednesday this week with a cycle of thunderstorms, showers, rainy days and occasional downpours. Let us not forget that it was on 13 November 2017 that Symi was hit by a cataclysmic weather event that changed the landscape in many places and caused hundreds of thousands of euros worth of damage. These days everyone is a bit twitchy when the long range forecast shows stormy weather ahead.

Down in Pedi both tavernas are now closed for the winter. Costas Mavroukos has closed his mini-market on the seafront and has moved around the corner into his old kiosk for the duration. The Katsaras mini-market stays open through the winter and sells hot coffee to the odd walker and fisherman. The bus service has scaled down considerably too. We won’t see much life down here again until April at the earliest. Time to hibernate!

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Category: Seasons on Symi