Patmos – and largely Greek – business hours are usually 9 to noon and 5 to 11 daily, except Sundays with some minor variations and exceptions (like cafes and supermarkets which stay open and banks, which stay open until the early afternoon and then close for the day). On Patmos, that first hour of the workday is kinda' iffy. But by 10, people are out and about, doing their daily errands and transactions, peaking around 11 am when Skala has its version of hustle and bustle.
If you look at driving as the act of getting from here to there, Patmos is the wrong place for you. At the best times of day, driving is sort of a slow negotiation in which everyone accounts for the erratic movements and personal idiosyncrasies of pedestrians, motorcycles, motor scooters, four-wheel ATVs, bicycles, dogs, cats, children pushing their younger siblings' strollers without the supervision of an adult, cars, small trucks, buses and the occasional goat. It's not India, by any means, but it is not the majority of Western countries where traffic is an affront to the goal of harmonized efficiency.
At 11 am in Skala, people park where parking doesn't seem to be legal de juris, but it completely de facto permissible. The rationale, from what I have gathered is that everyone has the right to be able to run into the bakery quickly to grab a loaf of bread – and if they need to stop by the cafe next door to visit with their neighbors and friends for an hour, well how can you take issue with that? But they'll be returning to their illegally parked car soon enough – so why create a hassle? And besides, is that what police officers should be doing with their time – punishing nice people simply getting bread and drinking coffee? Certainly not.
Because streets are narrow, pedestrians often share road space with vehicles, cars can't even fit into most of town and the largest, best laid roads in Patmos are tight and curvy – any sane person would prefer a nimble, easy-to-park, economical motorcycle or scooter. There are maybe 20 different small motor scooter and car rental agencies around Patmos – mostly renting scooters for 20-35 Euros a day.
"I miss the days of scooters," Emily says regularly.
Since she never drives, she doesn't know the half of it. Patmos isn't as taxing to drive as Bali, but then the drives are much shorter and infrequent. We generally have no rush, our kids are no longer in car seats and I can be patient waiting for five people, two motor scooters and a pair of dogs to cross my path before making my way to the Roundabout With No Rules in the front of town, by the ferry dock.
They key is to REALLY understand that this is not home. That's not always easy when people walk along in the middle of the street as if there wasn't a 2000 pound vehicle two ten from them, moving in their direction – or when someone signaling would really help the situation, such as at The Roundabout With No Rules.
In the end, part of the problem is that as an American family of five, we want more than our Greek compatriots. I'm driving a Hyundai I-30. It's the largest car any of the agencies offer – the roomy family sedan of Patmos where five American or Australian butts can sit semi-comfortably, as opposed to the Hyundai I-10 or Fiat Panda which can accommodate five European or Asian butts. Our I30 has bout 35,000 km (21,750 miles) and is in great shape, a few years old. Like all cars here, it's a manual transmission (which is why Emily can't drive it) and aside from air conditioning, power windows and a USB port (which doesn't work), it lacks most of the amenities you would return a car for lacking in an American car rental: rear cameras, bluetooth, automatic transmission, power seats, photo tinting rearview and side mirror, a computer of any kind, or even the ability to pop the trunk. No Hertz Gold Club member would stand for this.
But in Patmos, we're rolling large – so large, if the one public bus on the island is coming the opposite direction on a windy road, I move as far right as I can and hold my breath. Any bigger a car and it really wouldn't be safe. I see the occasional small SUV and know its likely the family vehicle of a Greek tourist family that has been brought over by ferry and it's too large for comfort in Patmos. I've become pretty happy with our I30 – it does everything we need of it.
But for people who live large by Patmos standards, we have definitely learned to live without by American standards. Last night we made the mistake of giving the kids melon too close to bedtime and Ailyn wet the bed. At home, this gets no more than a short groan of inconvenience as we toss the wet sheets in the laundry and pull out one of the five or so sets of clean sheets – just for Ailyn's bed. Here, we have no second set for any of the beds, and so the sheets and the monkey she sleeps with needed washing. As I said, we live large for Patmos, so we have a very nice washer from Italy that says things like "lavaggio", "cottone" and "syntheteci" on the dials. Only, the small, economical washer takes at least three times as long per load as our giant Samsung does at home. And then the real hitch – no dryer. We have to hang anything we wash out to dry on the roof, to end up feeling a bit stiffer than home unless we iron (which we don't). This is why all our clothes go down the hill to the fluff and fold laundry which delivers. And still being the spoiled Americans we are, sheets and towels are usually left to the cleaning lady who comes twice a week (at an exceedingly affordable price, I might add). Only Monday isn't one of her days to come.
This "threw off" the day since we actually had plans to visit the kids' Australian friend Raquel at her resort hotel in Grikos around 10 am and Raquel's very gracious mom, Nadia wasn't sure if they might need to leave in the afternoon to visit other friends – so we actually needed to show up relatively on-time. Only if we didn't get the sheets hung by mid-day, we wouldn't have clean ones for evening. So, I took everyone to the resort and headed home, waited for the little washer to finish its long job and hung the sheets. Only I forgot to toss in the sleeping monkey, and the washer door locks when in use with no mechanism to toss anything else in (unlike ours at home that has a special hatch for this), so we have to get home around 4pm to ensure enough monkey drying time.
Naturally, these things are small – almost ridiculous – and should be no real inconvenience. They just happen to be things we never even consider at home as our dryer can fire up, beat and bake that monkey dry in less time than it takes to check my emails in the morning.
On the way down to the car, I took out our recycling. In Patmos, there is no door-to-door garbage and recycling collection. Instead, there are clusters of garbage cans or dumpsters along with recycling dumpsters in stations throughout the island. Residents bring their refuse to their nearest center. Recycling has to be sorted with bins for plastic, metal, paper and glass all separate. So, unlike home where we're used to mixed recycling, we stand there and separate everything out because as Matheus said, "I really want to recycle to help protect this paradise". Although I'm sure the separation requirement likely leads to more recyclables heading to the garbage, largely because of tourists – my friend Leanne would tell you that separating the recyclables is better because it also creates awareness and responsibility. Still, standing in the heat separating my recyclables, I prefer the mixed recycling bin at home.
Nowhere do we live happily with less than in our kitchen. Our refrigerator isn't as large as an American one – most countries' aren't. So we don't stock up fully for the week. In fact, heading back into town today, I stopped at the butcher and baker – down the street from one another – and picked up fresh whole grain bread and some incredible meat – all for much less than we pay for it at Trader Joe's and even a discount over the nearby Alpha Beta supermarket . Moreover, this process of taking the time to stop by local shops not only gets a better deal, but creates relationships. The butcher and bakery people know me now. They're friendly and kind and customers in the butcher shop all seem to nod with approval that I know to come to Tassos for my meat rather than the corporate supermarket down the street. It's what the locals do – and it shows I care. They appreciate it. Everyone wins, especially my family at dinner-time.
Back in the kitchen itself, we have no small electric appliances other than a coffee maker and a hot water pot. No microwave. The range top and its associated electric convection oven work very well, although both are much smaller than in any American kitchen. With little counter space, a dearth of pans and utensils (we bought disposable aluminum oven pans I continue to reuse and will recycle when we leave along with a few decent knives, a spatula and a garlic crusher) and two small cutting boards, I've managed to make good dinners several times a week. I use the local produce and seasonings and keep it fairly simple. Not always being able to read the signs and packages meant that last night what I took to be brown rice was really whole wheat orzo. But it was okay because I season my rice and it didn't seem to slow Sennen down. I think if we were to actually live in Patmos, we would probably do some work on the kitchen – because we like to cook and entertain which would be very hard with an oven this size or without the aid of a dishwasher. But really, after getting used to it, our family is living just fine and changing our shopping and cooking habits to align, probably like most of the locals (although they have to have better cookware than we were left!).
Our house has split-air units in each bedroom and a solar-powered water heater on the roof – both on the luxurious side of Patmos life. So we get great hot water throughout the house and can sleep easily at night. But the living areas have only a ceiling fan, which seemed inadequate at first. Then we learned that if you open two of the bedroom windows and the front living room windows, the house gets a great cross-breeze and cools off nicely in the afternoons. We don't need an air conditioner even on a hot day.
One of our bathrooms is fairly large with a bathtub and shower. The kids and Matheus share it. Emily and I sometimes use it for showers too. Because our other bathroom, the one adjacent to our room is very small with tile walls and the shower simply sprays into the room – in the same way as you see in most of Asia (and often in Greece). The wet floors and walls aren't a problem, but the fact that there's not more than elbow's room in the bathroom makes it a little tight for a comfortable shower. But it works for everything else.
Yet of all the things we've learned to be happy with less, only one seems to be problematic: water. As mentioned previously, Patmos is short on water and has its water-supply augmented with deliveries from water-boats that inject directly into the island's reservoir system. This means both that the tap water is questionable compared to other locations in Greece and Europe, and also that with the surge of tourists in the summer, the tap water supply isn't sufficient to meet everyone's drinking needs. So Patmos – like so many tourist destinations, including most of Southeast Asia – brings in unbelievable amounts of bottled water, tragically using more plastic than I can fathom. It's easy for one person to go through six or more small bottles of water in a day and the plastic recycling bins are always full.
We noticed a Brita pitcher in our kitchen that was lacking a filter and inquired as to where we could buy more filters only to discover Victor got it in Athens and no replacement filters are available on Patmos and Amazon would take a long time and be quite expensive. In short, there are few, if any alternatives to bottled water. The best we can do is buy the 5 liter jugs from the supermarkets and recycle them. At 1.50 euros they're certainly affordably, but going through them every day to two days feels sad. So while Brita pitchers or some other filtration products would end our schlepping, reduce costs and most importantly eliminate tremendous waste, I think Patmos makes little effort to change the system because the bottles are essential to the island having enough potable water. A conundrum worth solving.
Still, even with the water issue, our fantastic experience "summering" in Patmos shows that less can still be great. Compare us to some of the European families lodging in small studios with minimal amenities for a couple of weeks at a time and our experience is downright luxurious compared to their vacation standards. Patmos is a small island, demanding smaller scale – and knowing we can be happy with it is a wonderful lesson and an unexpected blessing.
