The price of beer has gone up

Shockingly, I've been on the island less than a week, and already the price of beer has risen!

One of the things we have been trying to do is work out which items are cheaper in the supermarket and worth buying in bulk, and which it is OK to just keep picking up from the shop down the road. Cigarettes, for example, are stamped with the retail price on their government tax labels, so cost the same regulated price wherever you buy them. Beer is different however. When I got back from the supermarket yesterday I told Claire that the beer there was much cheaper, €0.69 a bottle rather than the €0.90 or €1 we had been paying in the little corner shops.

Well, when we got to the supermarket today for our big shop, I was horrified to find that Amstel was now €0.71 a bottle!

I quietly wonder to myself if it isn't just like the oil market in microcosm - they've seen a big guzzler arrive on the market scene threatening the status quo, and now the beer barons of Crete are going to raise the prices to choke my demand. Well, rest assured my price rising beer baron friends, it will take more than a mere €0.02 to stop me drinking your beer.