A day in the west

HAD A great trip by coach to the west of the Island today. Had a chance to visit Arkadi Museum, the amazing church built into the rocks at Patsos, then it was timein the very tourist area of Rethymno before a extra treat, stopping on the way home to Fodele, birthplace of the great El Greco.

  Arkadi has great history  stretching back to the wars with the Turks, when, rather than surrender, the patriotic Greeks blew themselves up. The building where that happened has never been re-built, in tribute to their history.

 

I was here first - so drink-up!

THERE  is a phrase - beware Greeks bearing gifts. Well let us tell you, if a Greek is bearing gifts, of any kind, thank them and enjoy.

  An example. We have cafes (kefenion) in our village - three to be exact. All through the winter, and certainly as soon as the sun it out, we go to have a drink and we cannot count the number of times that we cannot pay for them. It took a while to understand the system. The Greeks there first take the attitude - I was first so I will pay for the drink. This is fine if you actually know the person. You say ευχαριστώy (thank you) and εβίβα (cheers). But more often than not you will not know the person, often only after they have left. Of course we now understand and try our best to fall into into line with this culture.

  Then there is the bakers opposite. An example of their system. We went in for a custard like dessert to go with some fruit tonight. They did not have any, instead we took a couple of small fruit pies. The bag then had five put inside, plus two more different pies, cheese & chocolate - cost - a euro, but the cheese/chocolate were gifts!!
  We still find it strange, but happily accept the friendship. We have been in the village for nearly eight years, although our conversation Greek is not too good, we appear to be understood. We have always made the effort to integrate, but we see others who live here, even have businesses here and they do not even try, which is a great shame.

Red Arrows back over Crete

FOLLOWING a two plane crash over the skies of Kastelli airfield in Crete back in March 2010, the Red Arrows acrobatic flying team are back in the area, and were in training, including being heard and seen over Heraklion today as we were shopping in the town.

  We saw them, first in formation, and then in what appeared to be a low level exercise, before they roared off. The team are currently based at  RAF Akrotiri on the island of Cyprus for nine weeks of intensive training.This deployment is called  Exercise SPRINGHAWK and it is a very important step in the team’s workup training in preparation for this year’s display season.

  There are some very important reasons for the Red Arrows to go to Cyprus and it will certainly be no holiday. The most important reason for this exercise is the guaranteed good weather which they just don’t get at their home-base of RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. Also, the Akrotiri peninsula allows the pilots to practice over a large number of different types of display sites all with different characteristics. 

   The most popular display site that they use is called ‘The Cliffs’. It is flown over the sea and the flying conditions are always perfect with no turbulence (or in pilot speak ‘bumps’) for them to worry about. In contrast, ‘Golf’ dispersal is flown over part of the airfield and by lunchtime is very bumpy as the sun warms up the land creating convection. 

  Although the pilots don’t normally enjoy this site, it is extremely valuable flying and simulates a typical UK summer overland site on a breezy day. ‘The Wreck’ is another different site, again over-sea but it always has a strong on-crowd wind for the team to get used to. This type of wind is common during the summer and can be challenging to master. All these sites are within the RAF Akrotiri Sovereign Base Area and are literally, on the doorstep. This allows the pilots to rehearse three times every day, five days a week and gives them the opportunity to concentrate totally on the flying.

Titanic time-line, fantastic details

IF you, like me, have always marvelled at the story of the Titantic, you will be fascinated with this article from the Daily Mail. Follow link for unseen and unbelievable photos and  story. Copy and paste into your browser, use the Daily Mail line.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2112456/Titanic-pictures-Extraordinary-sonar-images-map-shipwreck-ocean-floor.html

Shall we go, or shall we stay?

MANY are still trying to find an answer to the crisis in Greece. Despite many fiscal measures the country is still on the brink, and the question remains, will the country return to the Drachma, and if so, at what cost?

  A barrage of gloomy official statements and stories dominated newspaper headlines on New Year’s Eve, seeking to exorcise the spectre of Greece’s return to the drachma, although few offered solutions.

  Prime Minister Lucas Papademos warned: “We must continue our effort to avert a disorderly, catastrophic default and remain in the euro.” The premier’s remarks were echoed by Bank of Greece governor Yiorgos Provopoulos in a TV interview.

  “A possible return to the drachma would be equivalent to real hell, at least for the first few years outside the eurozone,” the country’s leading banker told Skai TV.

  The country sank deeper into an economic slump and missed all of its fiscal adjustment targets in 2011, making the danger of a disorderly default by March - when a 15bn euro bond is due for redemption - more likely, unless at least 90 percent of private bondholders participate in a voluntary writedown of Greek debt by 50 percent. The plan was agreed at the EU summit on October 26/27 along with a second bailout plan.

  But after two months of negotiations on the so-called private sector involvement (PSI), no more than six out of ten eligible investors have signalled their willingness to take the cost of the proposed haircut in the nominal value of their bonds, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  Greece’s outgoing representative at the IMF, Panayiotis Roumeliotis, said the country could not afford an unsuccessful outcome in talks on the new bailout without risking a collapse of its aid programme.

  “If the new funding is not secured in time, anything can happen, including a default, which could open the way for Greece’s exit from the eurozone,” said Roumeliotis.

  The spectre of returning to the drachma was also raised in a speech on January 2 by Vasilis Rapanos, chairman of the Hellenic Bank Association and president of the National Bank of Greece.

  “We shall either stay in the euro if we all cut down on our standard of living, or depart from the euro, turning the clock back several decades,” Papanos said in his keynote speech during a New Year celebration at the Athens Stock Exchange.

  Rekindling the fear of an exit from the eurozone seems to touch a popular chord, since opinion polls indicate support for the euro. In a Kappa Research poll for To Vima published at New Year’s weekend, more than 77 percent of Greeks want the coalition government to do all it takes to ensure the country stays in the eurozone.

  Government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis, a former editor of To Vima, gave prominence to the euro-or-drachma alternative as key to national policy: “This is indeed the dilemma ahead of  us,” Kapsis told reporters when asked about the avalanche of drachma scaremongering. 

 “There is no reason to cause panic by saying we will return to the drachma. We can avoid it with serious and systematic work. But we should not take it for granted that we have escaped the danger,” he added.