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The latest news & weather from Symi, reported by Adriana Shum from 'The Symi Visitor' office. Adriana's Greek Recipe of the Week>> FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28th 2003 The sun is out - and so are a fairy princess, a pirate, a convict, a gypsy girl, a psychedelic hippy, a wicked witch... It's carnival time and the Kali Strata was trailing streamers and deflating balloons this morning. We've had quite a week. Wendy finally got off the island on Wednesday, 3 days later than planned, so the March edition is now in the hands of the printers. At one point it looked as though we would have to commission a crashboat to take her over but in the end the wind dropped enough for the hydrofoil to be given permission to leave. In some ways the delay was fortuitious as it enabled the young man who supplies us with the Greek text from the Town Hall to give us his material. He had himself been stuck in Rhodes for a week due to the weather. As he is a school teacher he had a huge backlog of classes to make up over the weekend and the power cuts meant he couldn't type anything up until Sunday night, so it was all rather a fraught business. There was no time to translate anything in full for the March edition but the Town Hall column contains a summary of the main meeting covered in the Greek section and various items of a non-time sensitive nature will be carried over in future editions in translation when time and space permit. This is very much a new venture and all things considered there have been very few hiccups along the way and a great deal of enthusiasm. Meanwhile frequent powercuts still interrupt the day. The electrical infrastructure on the island is undergoing a major overhaul with the replacement of poles, upgrades of wiring and installation of additional transformers. If anyone has faxed us recently or left a message on the answering machine and not received any response, please email us as the fax machine has suffered in all the powercuts and its memory sometimes clears out when the power goes off. It's these little eccentricities that make life on a small island in winter so exciting! Have a good weekend! I'd give you another recipe but there's just been an announcement over the tannoy that the power is about to go off again and I want to send this out!!!
Regards,
The Symi Visitor
www.SymiVisitor.com FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21st 2003 Well, it isn't raining, the hydrofoil went to Rhodes today and came back. The Symi II went to Tilos today and came back and is now on the way to Rhodes so some sort of normality is asserting itself. We are busy getting the March edition ready for Wendy to take to the printer in Rhodes on Monday - with one eye on the weather! Much of Greece is still under heavy snow and it is certainly on the chilly side here. To cheer us up the Demos has put up carnival lights - clowns in bright colours - on the lamp posts around the harbour as it is, of course, carnival time in Greece. The shops are selling masks and fancy dress costumes and kites for Clean Monday.* Symi has been very very lucky so far this winter as although we have had many ferry disruptions we have had little damage and will soon be freshly painted and perky for the new season. Many of the Cyclades islands, on the other hand, were devastated by floods this week and have been put under a state of emergency. With roads washed away and houses collapsing it will take months of hard work and money to put things to rights in these hard hit places. There was an interesting bit of footage on Greek TV the other night, showing a flooded orchard on Naxos with a car stuck in the crown of a lemon tree! Have a warm weekend. I know where we'll be - hitting the keys at the Visitor office!
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17th 2003 Brrr. Yesterday was a gorgeous day for early risers - clear, calm and sunny. Lots of locals took advantage of the fine weather to walk in the Pedi valley and pick wild flowers - daisies, buttercups, purple anemones, cyclamen and yellow sorrel. We took advantage of the fine weather to turn over a few terraces, plant lots more broad beans as green manure and burn some particularly horrible invasive weeds. By afternoon it had clouded over again with the inevitable drop in temperatures and it rained all night. Today is squally and all boats are once again confined to port. Another major weather system is winding itself across Greece, bringing snow and heavy rain to many parts of the country. This is usually the main growing season in Greece and the farmers are having a bad time - flooded fields, orchards buried under snow and greenhouses collapsing in high winds, snow and hail. Deposed King Constantine and his family provided the media with a welcome bright spot amongst the unrelenting gloom of bad weather and Baghdad. The 'Royal family' paid a 24 hour visit to Greece at the weekend to visit family graves. Despite the fact that Greece is theoretically anti-monarchist and all possibility of reinstating the monarchy is vociferously denied, the media coverage was enthusiastic. A visit to the Acropolis and various sites as well as an unofficial celebratory party gave plenty of opportunity for journalists and the television cameras. One particular television channel managed to devote an hour and fifteen minutes out of a 2 hour bulletin to the event!
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14th 2003 A brisk northerly wind is whipping though the harbour, turning noses red and fingers blue. The hydrofoil finally received permission to pull out at noon - it has been tied up most of the week. The sun is shining and fat grey clouds are hurtling past - I wonder who is going to be rained on this time... Greece has had a pretty miserable week with snow, floods and the loss of a medical helicopter with all its crew in the sea off Samos. In Symi we had days of uninterrupted rain - on Tuesday/Wednesday we logged 80 millimetres which is a lot by anybody's standards! It is Valentine's Day. Generally a low key event in Greece, commercial overtones are starting to creep in. The lottery shop has some cards for sale, along with stuffed red satin hearts with Greek mottos, but it is very much pitched at the adolescent market. Out in the valley the buttercups are out and the poppies are on the increase. Small spiny trees known as Mediterranean medlars are covered with little white flowers. Later in the year they will produce tiny bitter fruits that look like tiny apples and are much loved by the donkeys.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10th 2003 The
cold spell has numbed many fingers
judging by the curses and clatter
of falling hods and trowels on the building sites on the Kali Strata this
morning. Having muffled my
way to work in virtually every garment I possess I was somewhat startled
to see an apparition in baggy pink shorts and clutching a bunch of
bananas, heading down the quay ahead of me - apparently this scantily clad
personage is a Dane visiting the island and the temperatures that set our
teeth chattering are a normal summer’s day in his neck of the woods. Pachos
has reopened and looks to all intents and purposes as it did before.
Some modifications have been done to the interior to bring it up to
modern licensing requirements so the place now has a WC but otherwise the
traditional ambience has not been disturbed.
An assortment of elderly locals were
nattering over their coffee there this morning just as they have
always done. General
supplies on the island are pretty
dire at present as the mail boat is laid up for its winter refit, the Symi
I and Symi II are still out of circulation, the Panormitis is now being
overhauled in Piraeus, the big boat schedule is hopelessly out of synch
due to endless gales in the Aegean and all we seem to have running at the
moment is the hydrofoil which can only go out in flat water and
takes limited freight at the best of times.
While we’re not quite in need of Red Cross food drops by
helicopter, fresh produce and perishables are definitely in short supply
and there are distinct advantages in having some good laying hens and a
patch of spinach in the garden. These
disruptions underline why the older generation of
Symiots keep their chickens and nanny goats and continue to plant
greens, beans and onions every winter no matter what. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7th 2003 A thunderstorm is zapping round the Vigla and hurling rain at the office windows. Waves are breaking on the customs slip and eddying round the bridge. It is definitely a good day to be in rather than out! According to the weather forecast we could see frost tonight as the wind is expected to change to the north with some velocity. A big ferry managed to dock this morning and rumour has it that the butcher will have fresh meat. Great fun. In the valleys and across the terraces spring is doing its best to continue as scheduled. Iridiscent indigo lupins echo the purple storm clouds and wet daisy petals plaster the stones. Sodden sheep huddle glumly in the shelter of the dripping bushes...
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Adriana Shum 2003 January 2003 News | 2002 News Archive | HOME |
