Z used to hate having his day/time organized - being a teacher his working day was dictated by bells so weekends and holidays had to have a sense of freedom. There are only so many new pencils and fancy stationery items you can acquire to soften the blow of getting back into scholastic harness – that applies for students and teachers alike.
Don’t get me
wrong, I loved my job and was privileged to acquire really interesting
educational experience, academic and administrative, at home and abroad. But, believe me, there is nothing like being retired,
having reclaimed your spirit, soul and identity as your own. Every September
Znme go on a sortie to celebrate not going back to school, with the additional
bonus that there are fewer people around and things are a little cheaper. All
good. 😊
So off we set for the Asymantro Hotel in the Sani area of the Kassandra peninsula of Halkidiki – about an hour away from our abode. The weather was great and on arrival we unpacked, changed and had our first sea swim of the season – magic! Normally we two can revert to speaking English when we want to speak in privacy. Here it as the reverse- we spoke Greek as that was the minority language here. In the car park of the 50 cars there only 5 had Greek number plates, the rest being predominantly Serbian and North Macedonian.
Sadly on our second day the weather broke which ended our swimming. But we did go to visit the Byzantine fortress in nearby Nea Fokea. We also stocked up on treats for ourselves - the supermarket in the hotel complex had mark-up prices of up to 200%! For example, a litre of oil selling elsewhere at 10-12 euros was between 22-25 there.
For me the
great joy is getting away from the routine we establish (even out of school :o)
and, above all, being catered for. The hotel was spacious and the buffet was
served on a series of islands rather than on long tables which made for easier
access and avoided anxious queuing, hopefully reducing the plate-piling
syndrome!! For every meal we enjoyed at least two dishes that were to our
liking: I really enjoyed the gyro, the stuffed peppers/tomatoes and beef with
orzo.
The sweets on offer included a delicious apple pie with a shortbread base and crumble topping as well as a wonderful cherry pasta flora. Certainly, we covertly collected scraps at the end of each meal - my handbag smelled like a food outlet! – as Z selected treats for his local feline friends who became accustomed to waiting outside the French window to ensure we hadn’t forgotten them.
There was one adverse experience: the constant miasma of their sewage system - that kind of mars things when you’re on your way to the restaurant for a meal. Greeks are now becoming aware that in some areas the volume of tourism has reached the stage where the infrastructure cannot cope. Water and electrical supplies and sewage systems are overstretched. A friend, who has a home further south on that peninsula, recently went to the local supermarket later in the afternoon to avoid the early morning queues. Her plan backfired when she found the shelves were empty of cheese, bread and wine – the very items on her Lidl list!
Talking of infrastructure issues reminds me of
going on holiday, being on a plane to
Egypt in the early 1980s.En toute I read
a Guardian article which described how the Cairo sewage system could no longer
adequately serve the city’s millions of residents and so every now and then,
due to the build up of toxic gases, a man-hole would explode, emanating these
gases as well as human slurry! :O The scary thing was that the local response
was to cement down the manhole. That left me wondering what it would be like to
be in the street of the last uncemented-down manhole in Cairo when it succumbed
to the pressure and that final eruption occurred!
Fortunately
we were far removed from such incidents and, despite the rainstorms, we enjoyed
our September celebration.
Και του χρόνου, as the Greeks say – let’s do the
same next year !
