More olives

We are still busy picking olives! We spent Wednesday picking by ourselves, the day was disappointing, only just over one sack, but it was from five trees that had been damaged when the footings for the house were dug. The weather was absolutely beautiful, warm sunshine with a pleasant breeze. (It’s so hard to have to spend a day picking olives)! In the evening we heard that the seven sacks, we had sent to be pressed, had given us almost three large tins, we calculated this to be about 27 litres of oil.

Thursday, the weather has changed; we wake up to see rain coming towards us over the sea. By lunch time the rain has cleared and a little sun allows us to go for a walk to visit some friends.

Friday, although the rain has not entirely gone it’s fine for us to continue picking today with the help of some friends. We manage to pick seven trees and fill just three sacks. We take them, together with the one picked on Wednesday, to a different olive press near to Agios Nikolaos. Our olives, once weighed 178 kilos, are put through the press immediately so we stand and wait just inside the building. After a few minutes the owner motions us to follow him through the building to his workroom at the back, he pulls out some chairs at a table and invites us to sit and wait.

As we sit I look at the tins we have for the oil and realise that we have made a mistake with the amount of oil we received from the earlier batches. The smaller tin definitely holds 5 litres, the larger tin that we assumed held double must hold more. Maybe 15 litres, probably 20 litres, therefore our olive pressing on Wednesday must have given us at least 40 litres or maybe a bit more. We suddenly feel that we are achieving something!

The owner of the press now comes back to the room where we are sitting and invites us to have a glass of wine; very pleasant. A few minutes later he rummages in a fridge and takes out a plate with a lump of feta cheese on it, places it on the table and adds a generous helping of olive oil. From a large wooden box at the end of the table he finds a loaf of bread, slices it and invites us to share this simple meal. Perfect! Again he searches the fridge, finds a tomato which is washed, sliced and added to the plate together with more oil. More wine is poured and he tells us how when the olive crop is heavy he will work all day and night. By this time there are many other people in the building waiting for their olives to be pressed. There are young, old, husbands and wives, they have brought bread with them and they come and dip it in the oil, it’s quite a social event.

Finally our oil has been processed and he fills our tins. Another surprise, he has to find another tin for us as we have more oil than we expected. This time we have a small tin and two large tins, one of which isn’t quite full; he has taken 8% of our oil in payment and it has cost us just 2 euros for the extra tin.

The Test Drive

Again we have been busy picking olives. Now we understand how to pick like the locals and not worry about all the leaves we have made some progress. We picked nine of our trees on Sunday with the help of our friends. The first five of these trees were reasonably heavily laden giving us four sacks. On Monday we only managed five trees by ourselves, giving a slightly disappointing one and a half sacks. We now have, including our friends, a total of seven sacks that will be pressed on Wednesday.

Today, Tuesday we went to Kalamata to test-drive a car. On the way we stopped at Kardamyli, as we now have the forms for customs relating to our personal effects that should arrive next week. The letter from the shipping agent asked us to take these forms to the police station to have our signature witnessed. We hoped that we would find the police officer in a good mood again!

What had gone wrong this morning? He was most unhelpful and wouldn’t even explain what we were required to fill in on the form, let alone witness our signature and sent us packing.

The test drive was quite an experience; Pano, took us out of town throwing the car first one way then the other. He threw the car round in a complete circle two or three times demonstrating the turning circle, then decided to do an emergency stop, a warning might have been nice. All the time speaking very loudly and enthusiastically in Greek whilst gesturing with his hands, of course ninety percent of this was totally incomprehensible to us, but that didn’t deter him! Not finished yet and I am already feeling queasy, Pano drives us to some wasteland which adjoins a small unused beach. Here he becomes world champion rally cross driver! We literally fly round and round the wasteland, in and out of the water, up and down the sand dunes, four-wheel drive off, now on, Ashley and I holding on for dear life. When we return to the dealership Panos’ helpful wife Paula laughs and apologises for not warning us. Pano had asked her to tell us the nature of the test drive but she got side tracked by a telephone call. We are impressed and decide to buy the car; it will be delivered 20 December.

When we had finished our business Paula offered to take us to offices in Kalamata were we could get our custom forms witnessed and signed. She kindly drove us back into town, first making a detour to the bank to withdraw the deposit, and we had the paper work completed in just a couple of minutes. How nice most people are!

Olive Picking

The gap in our diary is because we have been hard at work olive picking; at last we were able to try our hand. A friend has seven trees that she was ready to pick; and we have offered our help, it was a gentle start.

With a little guidance from the builder of our friends’ house, we started work on the trees. A Greek neighbour was picking just over the fence next to us so we all felt a little self-conscious if were doing the job correctly. There was much discussion between the husband and wife team, many smiles and a few words of help, concerning the number of leaves that we could leave in the sacks with the picked olives. It turned out that out of the seven trees only four of them had olives, so by mid afternoon we had finished and felt we had achieved something. Then we realised that five of us had managed to pick four trees, while next door the husband and wife team must have cleared at least a dozen trees. We hoped that with a bit more experience our picking rate would improve.

The next day we started on another friends, they have a dozen trees, so more experience to come. At least working in the warm sunshine is far better than being behind a desk from 9-5. Sorry to all of those we left behind, just couldn’t resist that!!

At the end of two days we have a total of two and a half sacks, not a lot for two days work for five people. We all decide we should get them pressed while fresh, really meaning we would like a break. About 5.30 whilst returning home we passed an olive press, we stopped and asked if they were open, there were two men working there moving sacks of olives. They didn't know if they were open??!!, but if we went back at 10.30 in the morning they might be (this particular press takes 10% in payment). We drove a bit further down and noticed another press, we stop as there is a light on, our friend knocks and asks if they are open. We have never seen any activity at this press, and there is no sign of any bags of olives waiting to be pressed. There are three or four Albanian guys sitting round a table eating a plateful of potatoes whilst watching television, there's a couple of beds. Come back in half an hour they say, now we are worried, will they start up the works just for our two and a half bags, will they charge us a high percentage for a small quantity maybe 50% or even 75%? We have a good laugh about it and decide not to risk two hard days work, we'll see what tomorrow brings. Later a friend passed and said that the whole place was lit up, we hoped they hadn’t fired up the machinery in anticipation of our return.

Friday, all five of us go to the press, it’s a big day and we are all excited. Immediately we arrive we feel a little self-conscious, most of the pallets are holding upwards of eight bags. We put our two and a half bags to the side and wait and wait and wait. Whilst we were waiting we had a look around the press and laughed our heads off when we saw the contents of the hopper. There were half as many leaves as olives! We had painstakingly removed almost every leaf from our olives, which had added hours and was the most difficult part of the picking.

Eventually our bags were taken and weighed, 95 kilos, not bad, then they were tipped into a hopper and the process of extracting the oil begins. This process took longer than we imagined as the extraction machinery is more sophisticated than we thought. Each of the four sections of the process can be isolated and each able to hold a separate batch, so we had to wait while other batches completed. Finally our oil trickled out, we had 10 litres. Not a lot for all the efforts, but we all went home to sample it for lunch. “Itan poli nostimo” That was delicious!

Today, Saturday, we steamed ahead, having learned an important lesson. Now we are experts, we finished the remaining six trees before lunch. Tomorrow we start picking our own olives, only about 40 trees to go!

Walking

We have had two more glorious days. Yesterday we went to our friends’ house, the electrics have just been installed and it is getting close to completion a very exciting time for them with so much to do at this late stage. Having picked their kitchen, bathroom, tiles and light fittings they have now to choose their appliances, cooker, fridge, washing machine etc. While we were there we all picked their eating olives from the tree in their garden so that they could prepare them for eating.

Later we walked up from the house and along the kalderimi, donkey track; up towards Kastania, it turned out more of a hike than a walk. The path soon turned into an overgrown track and we struggled up and on, in our shorts and walking sandals, scratching our legs on the vegetation as we climbed. We looked out over Stoupa and the surrounding area admiring the beautiful views and enjoying the clean fresh air and tranquillity. We passed two shepherds tending their sheep; one seated on a wall dreamily watching the sheep the other appearing to be having a sleep on the hillside. What a hard life!

Today we went to Kalamata, mainly to look around the dealerships for a car, but of course we did other things while we were there, like having lunch in one of the many street cafes and watching the world go by. There was music playing in the street and we noticed several flags flying, there were also a lot of youngsters about, maybe today is a Greek holiday. We came home quite tired with plenty of car brochures; tonight we must do our homework and make a decision, made slightly more difficult as of course the brochures are in Greek.

Kitty news

The two kittens were on the bed when I awoke all snuggled in the bedclothes. As soon as I get up they start wailing like banshees for their breakfast. The little tortoiseshell, Dolly, was quite poorly when we first started feeding them and would only eat very slowly and really could not be bothered, has come on leaps and bounds. When I go anywhere close to the sink or fridge she gets so frantic for food that she jumps up and clings on my leg meowing and making such a fuss. Lula, the mother, has really taken umbrage now that the kittens are so strong and fighting for attention. She hardly bothers to come anymore, when she does she hisses and spits when either of them dares to go near her. The sun is shinning today and I think this is the hottest day since we arrived, I actually felt the sun burning my skin and although I fought against it, I finally gave in and went in for a siesta.

More of the routine

The day started very windy but by 11am had died down and the rain had started, what do you do when the weather’s like this and you are in an apartment. If our belongings were here we could cook, read our Greek lessons and many other things that we are unable to do present. At least there was hot water this morning I am guessing that Vaggelis turned on the immersion for us. When we read up on this area I remember reading that there were in the region of 360 days of sunshine a year, I think someone must have had their rose coloured glasses on. Oh well at least it’s still mild; we will go for our walk.

Routine

We seem to being getting into a routine each day now of walking, shopping and checking on our house. Today another windy day we go down to Agios Nikolaos to see how our house is coming along. Vaggelis is there and Ashley discusses with him the positioning of the windows in the sitting area and kitchen. We don’t back till after 3pm as we detoured to check on a friends’ house and the daily stop at the supermarket for fresh rolls for lunch.

Grey Skies

The day started as the last ended grey and very windy but surprisingly warmer than you would think by just looking out of the windows, I told Ashley it’s warmer out than in, because of the drafts. Vaggelis has some wood that he said we could use so if it continues like this we will consider lighting a fire.

A day mostly indoors sorting out some of our paperwork and for Ashley to do some work with the computer. At least Dolly, our smallest kitten, appreciates the weather she has been able to spend all day indoors carefully watching any movement we make towards the fridge or a cupboard. Once within a couple of feet of the fridge, the animal that was seconds ago fast asleep on the bed is now weaving between your legs making strange croaky noises. Perhaps the cats here also speak a version of Greek?

Kalamata

With a lift from our friends we were able to visit Kalamata today. The journey is about 40km and takes roughly an hour by car. As we passed through Kardamyli we stopped at the police station to see if the residency permit was now signed. As I walked into the police station I was greeted by a smiling police officer who quickly searched his desk and presented me with my document. Bureaucracy, not a problem!

We continued our journey to Kalamata where we were shown various places that might be of help to us in the coming months. A tile shop, a shop that sells kitchen worktops, another that sells door handles and so on.

As we walked into the bank we saw the under manager, a young lady who we had seen last October and again in May this year, she speaks very good English. We wanted to know if a transfer from England had been received, so many foreign banks having a reputation for ‘loosing’ a transfer for weeks on end. She recognised us immediately and as we sat down to speak to her, she told us that there had been a transfer of funds into our account at the end of last month. This was without reference to any documents, computers or any papers from us. She then proceeded to answer the questions we had and assisted us with the use of the account. If you walked into an English bank for the third time would you be able to see anyone senior without an appointment? Would they recognise you and without reference be able to tell you information about your account?

Next priority for us was to get a Greek SIM card for our mobile phone, now we are able to communicate again. Lunch was in the main square outside one of the many modern restaurants, a quick and very tasty sandwich.

Now a visit to a couple of the large but cheap stores out of the main town, one similar to B&Q, Homebase, Focus but with a more diverse range of goods, the other a low cost supermarket. The majority of people here seem to shop in Kalamata as most things you are able to get at a fraction of the price they are locally.

Arriving home around 5pm and unloading the bags from our friends’ car our builder arrived and joined us for a cup of tea. We intended to go to his house later in the evening, to go over the plans of our house, but just after he left a storm brewed. The electric went off and all we could do was sit tight as the wind played havoc with the outside world.

There is an emergency exit light in the apartment that gives a dim light when the electricity goes off, so Ashley decided to give me the job of entering all our friends’ numbers into the phone to stop me being bored. Having done so, the mobile quickly ran out of credit as I sent text messages to our friends with our new mobile number.

Here the reality kicks in, the house is cold and draughty, even in bed we are cold and I am missing home comforts. How could I forget and of course there is now no hot water, Such Fun!

Bureaucracy.

Today we had the kind help of some friends who drove us to Kardamyli police station for the forms required for a residency permit. A residency permit is nothing more than a document that says as a foreign national you are living in Greece and have an address where you can be found. As a foreign national you cannot buy a car without this!

Having heard that another person was having problems getting a permit, as the police station no longer had copies of the necessary forms, we were slightly worried. Also, we were told one officer in the station, who speaks good English, could sometimes be more accommodating than others. One person had the problem of needing photocopies of their passport and being told to obtain these. When they pointed out the photocopier on a nearby desk they were told this was not working. They managed to find somewhere in the village to get the copies and returning to the station were bemused to watch the forms they filled in being copied in this machine by the officer. We came prepared having heard this story with our photocopies ready.

The coffee must have been good this morning as the officer had a smile and Ashley spent 15 minutes or so with him filling in the appropriate forms that were then copied 5 times and signed by both of us. What seemed like a simple process now struck a problem, we were then told that a senior officer had to countersign the documents. As he was not due back to the station for two hours we would have to return later to collect the permit.

We strolled up through the old town and back down to Kardamyli beach whiling away the time. Returning after the two hours the senior officer had still not returned and we were told “maybe” he would be available tomorrow.

The drive back to Stoupa allowed our friends to show us two quite beaches, Delphina and Fornea. When summer returns I’m sure we will be visiting these quite often.

Lazy Sunday.

Sunny skies, lazy relaxing day, just about managed some reading, went to the beach had a paddle followed by a walk to Kalogria beach, through olive groves and around back of Stoupa.

And Another!

The sky is a beautiful blue and today is going to be the warmest yet. Breakfast on the veranda with our cats, all of which now have names. Lula as you know the mother of the other two, we suspect, Tara the scatty, greedy one and Dolly the runt who is both quieter and almost identical to her mother, but with two good eyes.

Today it’s back to Ag Nik where we spent a couple of hours at the house measuring and checking various things. We walked back through the village enjoying the warm sun and the goodies we bought at the supermarket. It was late afternoon when we arrived back at the apartment where we found a note from our friends to say they would call later and we could go with them to their house, which should be finished by Christmas, all being well.

“Sosta” Another day gone.

Another beautiful day!

On waking this morning and looking out the door we saw Lula, the eldest of the three cats, asleep on the balcony and beside her a present for us. A small mouse she had managed to catch, no small feat for a one eyed cat carrying kittens. The sacrifice of a meal to show that we are now ‘family’ has not gone un-noticed.

We walked later up past the Frigano Restaurant complex to see how a friends’ house is progressing. We took a detour to say hello to some other friends, their house and garden now looks wonderful as it is now almost finished, but they still have one or two small outstanding jobs to be done. After a coffee and chat we continued our walk and took a few pictures to email so our friends’ in the UK can see for themselves how their house is coming along.

Evening detour to see if we can arrange an Internet connection, if you see this on Friday evening or Saturday morning then we were successful!

Well, yes we were able to connect to the net, but…..

We talked to Stephan at Zorbas Travel Agency about using his Internet connection and phone line from the office. It’s like the old days in the UK to get on the Internet, you have to buy time from an internet provider as well as pay for the phone call. A quick trip to the supermarket bought us an Internet card which gives 8 hours connection time. I managed to break the pictures in the gallery section, sorry, should be fixed when you see this. Also my attempt to send email fell at the first as I was forgetting that I was trying to send using my old Freeserve account. Can’t do that without dialling up using Freeserve, but of course the international call would be rather expensive. A few emails got out using Hotmail.

At last a beautiful day!

We got up to a beautiful blue sky, might as well enjoy it and take a hike! All the way to Kardamyli, it took approx one hour and twenty minutes to cover the 4 miles or 10 kilometres at a leisurely pace; no buses passed us. Kardamyli is a lovely village that has retained its charm and has a nice atmosphere, especially at this time of year after the tourists have all gone.

It turned out that the offices we were told about were the Mayors Offices. They were very helpful, phoning the police station to enquire about the forms that we need as non-Greek nationals to be able to buy a car. We now need to return on Monday morning after 9am with stacks of photocopies of passports and passport style photos. At least we had been warned and came pre-armed with many copies

We strolled around the village in no hurry to start the long walk back and checked out the local bakery for spinach pies. Delicious.

On our arrival back in Stoupa we decided to go and visit some friends who moved house yesterday. They called twice last night but said they were unable to get us to hear them despite shouting up at the windows. In the end they had pushed a map under our door.

What a busy life we lead!

Where did the day go?

Up late again! Today we walked to Agios Nikolaos to see our house; it took us approximately 45 minuets walking along the main road. The weather was overcast but warm enough to walk out in a tee shirt. We arrived to find Vaggelis and four others working the house looked wonderful and has coming on a treat. We are having a meeting with our engineer in the next few days to discuss the verandas and a few others things, most importantly we are thinking of swapping the kitchen and living rooms around. We walked back through the olive groove and met one of our neighbours who was picking his olives.

We have been told today there are offices in Kardamyli where they will help you with various problems that may occur. Tax forms, residency permits etc this could well solve a problem for us. I think tomorrow we will get the bus there, or maybe another good walk.

Must just mention here we now have three cats screaming and yowling and two of these we think are pregnant.

8:15pm and we have our first power cut. Looking out, the whole area is without power, not just Stoupa. Well that’s an early night for us, unable to read and my laptop battery is still in a terrible state, likely to last 10 minutes at best.

Yet another day goes by.

Leaving catches up with us

After the last few weeks, if not months, of planning, packing, panicking, letter writing, phone calls, more packing everything has caught up with us. Being able to relax for the first time meant that we did not wake up until 10:30am. We had some breakfast and then spent quite a long time sorting our belongings and organising the apartment to make it more like home than a holiday apartment.

After some lunch, it was very dull and kept spitting with rain we took a pleasant walk through the village, so different now without holidaymakers and with so many tavernas closed. We made our way to a new supermarket that had opened the day before to stock up on a few more essential items.

The uncertain nature of the weather stopped us from going to see for ourselves the progress that has been made on our house. As compensation, the weather provided us with one of the finest rainbows either of us had ever seen, but the nature of a rainbow prevented us from being able to take a good picture of it.

When the weather allows we will go to Kalamata on the bus to buy a Greek sim card for our mobile. We are unable to send text messages although we can receive them. So please keep sending, we will reply as soon as we can.

We are desperate to get a car, but we seem to be dependant on the police at Kardamyli were they issue the residency permit. Without a permit car purchase is impossible, and have been told they have no forms at present.

Our apartment must be a home because we already have a cat. According to a note on the wall her name could be Lula and she has the strangest husky miaow you have ever heard.

Here begins the first day of our new life.

We arrived at Athens airport, feeling the worse for wear, a little ahead of schedule, at about 4:10am local time, a flight of about 3 hours 15 minutes. It was pleasantly warm. We asked a young Greek girl, who turned out to be Cypriot, the way to Athens main bus station. She invited us follow her and share her trolley as she also intended taking a bus from the airport into the city to the main bus station. It was only after we purchased our bus tickets that we found the next bus would be over an hour. This meant we would miss our 6am connection to Kalamata. Our young friend suggested that we all share a taxi and asked for a refund on our bus tickets; fat chance! First of many nice surprises, "no problem" with the refund. We quickly found a taxi and the three of us continued our journey together; it took about 35-40 minutes and cost us 20 euros.

Athens bus station was very busy even at this early hour; we parted company with our friend and went to buy our tickets at the kiosk. Again the tickets were very reasonable costing €15.10 each for a journey, which took about 4 hours 40 minutes, including a "comfort" stop as the Americans say.

We arrived at Kalamata bus station at 10:40am and were a little disappointed to learn that the next bus to Stoupa would be a 1:15pm, by now we were very, very tired. Always ready to turn a disappointment to our advantage we crossed the road and had coffee and a snack, enjoying the world of Greece passing us by. While we sat drinking our coffee two passing dogs spotted us and decided we looked like potential dog owners. One a Diefenbaker look-alike - the dog who 'starred' in Due North - almost a Husky with cold piecing icy blue eyes, the other with an ancestry connected to a brand of beans. Two of the friendliest, smelliest canines you could meet curled up at our feet in an effort to be adopted.

There was a tremendous bang, the sky grew dark and the rain began to fall. When you have a thunderstorm in Greece the rain is heavier, the lightning more frequent, and the thunder louder than any you experience in England. We then thought we had found a car paintwork-testing site! Someone had parked his or her car just outside the bus station shelter where the enormous tin roof dipped in a 'v'. The result was water from many square meters of roof being funnelled into a waterfall that fell directly on the roof of the car. When the rain finally stopped and we crossed the road back to the bus station, the car roof looked as though it had been beaten in places with a hammer!

Laine managed using her limited knowledge of the Greek language to get the bus station staff to agree which bus would take us to Stoupa. The last leg of our journey took just over an hour and cost us only €2.30 each. It continued raining throughout our journey, which made it impossible to take in the magnificent views as the windows of the bus were covered in condensation.

On reaching Stoupa we alighted from the bus and struggled, tired and weary with our over weight luggage up the lane to our new home. Until May next year we have the use of a holiday apartment, the door was already open, as were the rooms within the house, linen on beds all cleaned and ready for our use. We threw down our bags grabbed our waterproofs and set off to find Vaggelis to thank him for all the help he had given us. We continued on to our friends to catch up on local news before setting off to the supermarket, to grab something to fill our empty stomachs, before retiring for the night.

Finally, the end of the first day of the rest of our lives
OR
How to get from England to Stoupa for just £40.50 each.