viola's people watching blog
Our newly acquired thirst for rivers took us right up north to Oreistiada, a town set up in 1923 by Greek refugees from Adrianople during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The River Evros runs some 203 km, forming a natural border between the two countries. We hit the […]
We set off on the road to Stavroupolis, which is about some 27 km north west from the city of Xanthi, after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, one we would indulge in only on holidays… eggs sunny side up, cheese, bacon and toast, nice and buttery and dripping with […]
We have never been great planners, especially when making a quick summer getaway. Our young visitors had left and we had less than two weeks to take off somewhere and soak in new experiences. We felt the urgency to take flight and leave Crete before the autumn gusts rushed in […]
I’ve got a curry leaf tree in my back garden which I smuggled from my sister’s house in Malaysia all the way to this sunny isle of Crete. She had wrapped up this small fledgling of a plant and tucked it into my suitcase some ten years ago and now […]
` BORN FREE… AS FREE AS THE WIND BLOWS…BORN FREE TO FOLLOW YOUR HEART…’ I think the song captures the first few years of my life in Crete. When we started out in the old house where his grandparents used to live in, the skipper and I…I’m calling him that […]
This is a wonderful line from Beatrix Potter in The Tale Of Johnny Town Mouse. Annie and I used to read it together and break out in ripples of laughter. In that single line the whole picture unfolds, so succinctly, describing the presence of a cat in the house. I […]
Just the other day we were sitting in front of the TV watching some serial, when they interrupted the programme with an announcement, which went something like this…` Silver Alert! An elderly man has gone missing. Anyone who knows his whereabouts please contact….’ His photo and details flashed in front […]
Mid week, sometime in the late afternoon, when I was lounging around the house wondering whether to take on the all consuming job of soaking the roots of my orchids in water, the phone rang. It was my Kung Fu friend. She was in the neighbourhood and wanted pop in […]
We had our garden dug and prepared for the new planting season since the beginning of April. Normally, we would start planting before Easter. But this year the Greek Easter ambled in leisurely and coupled with the lockdown, we somehow couldn’t find the drive to plant early. Last Saturday, however, […]
` Ask my mother….I swear I did my homework…. I put it right here’….. He then starts throwing things out of his bag and searching in the outside pockets for his exercise book…. Ask his mother?…. ….NO…OO…. I’m not going down that road again. I could almost guess what she […]