Today's a Friday -- and we've been here in Crete a full 5 days. It's
still amazing to us that we're actually here and we still haven't
gotten tired of actually looking at each other every 3 minutes and
taking turns saying just this.
Our porch (or verandah, we still haven't fully agreed on what to call
it) is without question the nicest one of its kind that I've ever
seen, much less lived in. It has a spectacular view of the Aegean Sea
(see the photos from our previous post, all of which were taken from
the porch) and is both extremely close to the beach (a leizurely 10
minute walk) and completely screened off from its chaos and noise
(it's up on a hillside and accessed via a small, private
road). Densely surrounding the porch is lovely green foliage made up
of olive trees (fun statistic: population of Crete = 630,000; number
of visitors = 2.8 million; number of olive trees = 30 million), some
sort of palm-like tree and a whole bunch of flowering shrubs and
creepers and vines -- well, I don't know what they're called, as you
probably figured out already, but they look and smell amazing. What
with this little curtain-like garden and the terracotta-tiled, low
sloping roof design of the porch, we're completely shaded from the
sun, so it's pleasant to sit out here at all times of day and
night. As for furniture, there's a little hammock right at the edge of
the porch with a dazzling view of the sea through the shrubs, and a
table and three chairs which we use for eating and working. After we
realized that we would be spending 90% of our waking hours in this
porch, we also pulled out the couch in the living room and a small
glass-topped coffee table, so the porch is now a home in and of
itself. Honestly, almost all the time we've been home and not asleep,
we've been out on this porch. We eat, read, work, drink, and nap here;
on hot days, we've even "showered" in the little garden-strip skirting
the edge of the porch with the garden hose. I'm pretty taken with this
space, as this eye-roll-worthy, endless description probably makes
clear. But because I have a problem shutting up once I start, and
partly also because it deserves it, here are a few more photos -- of the porch, the view from down our house, and the beach itself. But isn't it better than listening to me talk? Watch and weep.
When we're not in the house, we've been at the beaches. As Tom
mentioned, the main Agia Pelagia beach, which is a short walk from our
place, is ridiculously loud and kitschy and consists mostly of
well-fed (the bellies! the "moobs"!) and hairy (enough to give the
famed "McFadden sweater" a run for its money!) male, and quite
extraordinarily fit and good-looking female, tourists, mostly from
various parts of Western Europe. German and British nationalities seem
to predominate but, as I learned the hard way yesterday, when a very
annoying child smacked me on the shoulder with a rubber ball and then
ran away muttering something distinctly Slavic-sounding, there are
Russian and other Eastern European tourists, too.
There aren't too many Greeks, though -- the locals tend to favor the
less crowded, more tucked away little beaches on the outskirts of the
town -- can't say I blame them. Whenever we visit a cafe on the main
beachside or a restaurant or supermarket, we are acutely aware that
the restaurant or supermarket is not actually Greek so much as a
prosperous, and not particularly educated, Western-European tourist's
conception of Greece: faux hieroglyphics, kitschy shot glasses, beach
towels with "CRETE!" printed on them, and authentic looking "local"
ware, you get the idea. If I were actually Greek, it would probably
piss me off -- I get the impression that our landlady, Despina,
doesn't like it at all, for instance. But because I am, at some level,
a naive tourist myself, I'm willing to be conned to a certain extent
and even, at times, find it charming.
Yesterday, we visited one of these beaches -- Psaromoura beach, and it
was fantastic (pesky, ball-throwing little boys notwithstanding):
white rocks and yellow sand, red, gray and brown pebbles and the green
blue sea. It's hard to remind ourselves that we have work to do --
beauty is demanding and requires that attention be paid to it and it
alone. But we're slowly, SLOWLY starting the process of getting down
to work. Already yesterday, I started gathering my books and papers
and today I had a skype meeting with my advisor (mini-dilemma prior to
meeting: is it rude to wear sun-glasses at a meeting with one's
advisor? God, that's the kind of "dilemma" I'd love to have more
often). Now we're back on the porch (after a bracing, cold hose-down
in the garden following our sweaty jaunt to the internet cafe in town
for said meeting). Once I'm done this sentence, I'll take a little nap
on the hammock and then, I plan to start thinking again about these
little pronouns and anaphors that I've gotten quite fond of over the
past few months, perhaps even despite myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment