A lemon tree of our own

No electricty + storm = eerie

At the weekend we had one of the nicest sunniest days in Crete for a while - it really felt like the first day of summer. Especially to one chap who decided to work on his all-over tan whilst I was walking into town. It was quite a contrast to the weather earlier in the week. Claire and I were in the Triple W internet cafe in town when it seemed that the heavens literally opened and we got the month's rainfall in 5 minutes. The road down to Halidon from the cafe became a torrent in seconds, and we...

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Greece comes to a respectful standstill

Much of Greece seems to have been at a standstill this week. And not because everyone is gathered around their computer screens gawping at the bits of the Zahopoulos sex DVD which have been amusingly posteded onto YouTube. Nor is it the weather that has been the main problem, although it has been atrocious. There has been snow on the mainland, causing traffic chaos, and Crete has been partially isolated, with flights in and out of Chania and Heraklion cancelled, and ferry sailing affected. The main cause of the standstill though has been national grief. After a long battle with...

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Greece in a 2010 World Cup draw - again

Tomorrow Greece will find out where and when they are playing their qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. They already know who they are playing - Israel, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova and Switzerland. It is a group that should almost certainly see Greece qualify for their first World Cup since USA 1994. However, the teams haven't been able to agree upon a fixture list, so FIFA will be drawing the games out at random in a conference room in Zagreb. The only other group unable to arrange their matches involves Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia, Spain and Turkey....

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A right bundle of laughs

Σταθης Ψαλτης is in town tonight and tomorrow. Judging by the poster, it looks like it would be quite a special night...

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Dirty dog, smelly boys, and revolting locals

We went to Kalyves on Friday for a little trip out, or to Kaleeveeees as I somehow managed to pronounce it when buying the tickets. There was the obligatory drop into the butcher there to pick up some British bacon and pork sausages, and then we had a stroll through town. We stopped for a coffee and to read the papers, before having a walk along the sea front, where we spotted one of the funniest, dirtiest looking dogs we've yet seen in Crete. He was quite a scruffy looking thing anyway, but it looked like someone had dipped him...

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Digging up the harbour front

We wrote that one of the first things we noticed when we got back to Chania was that the abandoned eyesore of a hotel had been pulled down from the old city walls as you approached the harbour from Nea Hora. Well, now they seem to be digging up the whole area around The Monument of the Hand. Judging by the looks of things, it is ΔΕΗ putting in some new electricity cabling and street lighting. We watched amused as the old lighting was taken down. I always assumed old street-lights got lifted out of the ground by a crane,...

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Green and black olives are the same - the proof!

There has been some debate in our household as to whether green and black olives were different varieties, or whether one was just a more ripened version of the other. Fount of all wisdom Wikipedia suggested the latter, but without proof we were still skeptical. Finally, just down the road from us, we saw the evidence we needed with our own eyes - green and black olives hanging next to each other on the same tree ;-)

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No news is...well...no news actually

It is quite easy to slip into a bit of a news and communication black-hole here in Crete. We do try and watch the news in Greek on the main channels, but as one letter recently put it in the Athens News, TV is full of "bimbos, breasts, buttocks and bollocks". Most of the news shows here seem to spend a couple of minutes on the latest scandal to afflict the ND government, and then devote the rest of the bulletin to some daytime TV hottie nearly falling out of her dress, or putting on weight, or being caught on...

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A rude awakening (again)

The earthquake the other day wasn't the first day we'd woken up with a bump recently. With it being winter here, we don't get up as early as we do in the summer. Claire usually gets up at 7-ish, and I usually slope out of the bedroom, Kraken-like, after 8:30, and usually before *cough* 10. Just before Christmas though, we had a sudden change of routine. We were both rudely awakened at about 6:45....when my side of the bed suddenly collapsed! [You can insert your own joke about too many mince pies in the run-up to Xmas here] Now, I'm...

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New Year's Eve at The Point

Like all of the festive season, New Year's Eve in Greece was a new experience for us, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. We decided to go down into town, grab a bite to eat, and see what happened. At first, to be honest, this seemed like it had been a terrible idea. At 8pm it was absolutely chucking it down without mercy, there was nobody around, and all the good restaurants were either closed, or booked out for group parties starting later in the evening. We had not planned ahead well. We ended up having dinner that...

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