Taleporistan, a country in the south-east of Europe sometimes known as Greece. Ταλαιπωρία [taleporia] is a word one learns comparatively early when living in Greece. It means hassle or hassle plus, the shite we all have to deal with when queuing in banks, government offices, hospitals, or merely trying to survive the day in Greece.... Continue Reading →
23/002 Life in Northern Greece
Hyperbole is a Greek word. And we have heard plenty of it recently regarding the detained Eva Kaili. First of all, her party (PASOK) disowned her instead of suspending her pending the results of the investigation. Not content with this guilty-until-proven-innocent manoeuvre, the leader of PASOK, Nikos Androulakis, levelled the ridiculous accusation that Kaili was... Continue Reading →
23/001 Life in Northern Greece
5th January 2023: It continues to be a mild winter. I drove to Halkidiki yesterday. It was sunny until I reached Toroni. I went there to check our house. One of the most important jobs is to make sure the drains on the balconies aren’t blocked. The house was OK, fortunately. A harsh winter combined... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 25/2022
Ah! The romantic smell of wood-burning fires permeates the village. Except it is anything but romantic. It’s the smell of fuel poverty. Over the past four or five years, Greeks have been abandoning heating diesel in favour of gas central heating, but this winter heating oil is cheaper than gas. Of course, it is not... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 24/2022
18th Nov. The good news is that I succeeded in getting through the 17th Nov without reading a Greek newspaper or watching Greek TV. For me the 17th is a horrible, depressing day. It is supposed to celebrate and commemorate the student uprising against the junta at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973. For an event... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 23/2022
Continuing from where I left off in LinNG 22/22, it must be said that sometimes in Greece there is no relief - even in death. Martha Karagianni, who died a couple of weeks ago, specifically requested to be cremated. My understanding is that her solicitor has her written request. Her cremation is/was being blocked by... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 22/22
Neighbours – can’t live with them but can definitely thrive without them. Greeks tend to be very family oriented. In the 20-odd years I have been in this block of flats, I have never been invited to a neighbour’s flat. In fairness, I haven’t invited any of them either. But that seems to be the... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 21/22
In an earlier post I said summer had arrived on schedule. It now looks as if autumn is trying to match its predecessor on punctuality. The second day of September witnessed a fall in temperature and severe rainstorms. Today (4th September) the weather is beautiful but noticeably cooler. In the wee hours of this morning... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 20/22
Wednesday, August 24th, 11am. The storm is showing no signs of moving on. Since 8:30am we have had heavy rain, thunder and lightning, one lightning strike being so powerful that it has knocked out our electricity and mobile networks. My bother-in-law sent me this text recently: “The rain falls in the Northern mountains of Ethiopia.... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 19/2022
She’s alive. He didn't kill her. He may not have even managed to blind her. The ex-husband attacked her with caustic acid. He was stressed out with the debts she was accruing. After a spate of three femicides in the past month, this was one more act of wanton violence. In my last post I... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 18/2022
The good weather means festivals. My village has just had one, which I missed because I was present at another one in Epirus. The feast of Αγία Παρασκευή is celebrated on 26th July. Paraskevi was a second century saint who survived being boiled in oil and thrown in a snake pit. She was less fortunate... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 17/2022
Nature wins. This pavement was clear until a few days of wet weather made it impassable! In the country, the sentencing of public figures and their subsequent release has been an issue over the past week. This embittered article https://www.sdna.gr/politiko-deltio/ellada/984694_o-korkoneas-eleytheros-o-lignadis-eleytheros-o-filippidis-spiti-toy talks about two well-known public figures and a convicted security officer. Lignadis, head of the... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 16/2022
In LinNG 14/2022 I mentioned the deaths of two people who drove off the harbour wall in Nei Epivates. They were a mother and son. A couple of years ago, the woman's daughter committed suicide. Her husband later died of a broken heart. Although they were receiving counselling, the widow and her son did not... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 15/2022
Driving standards in Greece are reasonably good and predictable. Things can go wrong because of the poor condition and build-quality of the roads as well as the weather. In the rain cars can concertina into each other mainly due to poor drainage and shit tyres. On salaries of €700 a month, replacing a set of... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 14/2022
The village is full of life as day trippers make their way from the city to the beach, bars and restaurants. Given fuel prices, I imagine people are unwilling to wander further afield into Halkidiki especially if it is only for the day. I searched “Fuel Poverty Greece” online and, unsurprisingly, there is no shortage... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 13/2022
In all the years I have been associated with Glasgow, I am only aware of one change of street name. In 1986 St. George’s Place became Nelson Mandela Place. In Greece, changing the name of a street is quite a common occurrence. I first witnessed it shortly after PASOK’s first victory in October 1981. Οδός... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 12/2022
Roads are a reminder that Greece has not recovered from its economic collapse in 2010. A few months ago, I posted a picture of a sink hole in Ethinikis Antistasis St. Recently, I’ve been using the bus more often, and I can honestly say the bad roads combined with most buses’ poor suspension can put... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 11/2022
Sithonia is the name of the second leg of Halkidiki. The first one is called Cassandra, named not after the ill-fated Cassandra but after Cassander, a king of Macedonia, contemporary of Alexander the Great, and one of the four “successors” who divided Alexander’s territorial gains among themselves. The road from Thessaloniki to Moudania (on Cassandra)... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 10/2022
I promised murder and mayhem at the end of my last post. In GW 11/2022 I referred to Roula Pispirigou (Ρούλα Πισπιρίγκου) who is accused of murdering her oldest daughter. She is also under suspicion for murdering her two younger daughters and, possibly, her landlady. The forensic evidence points to her guilt but, as in... Continue Reading →
Life in Northern Greece 09/2022
1st April 2022 “The winter it has passed And the summer’s come at last” April greeted us with a sharp increase in temperature. The seafront has sprung into life. In a nearby restaurant, Αλμυρίκι (Tamarisk) people were cleaning inside and painting outside. The same was true of the last restaurant on our stretch, Γοργόνα (Mermaid).... Continue Reading →