"You made a good choice!" Stavros told me, "Buying a house on Patmos is an excellent choice. And you have a very good location."
Stavros was born to a Greek immigrant family in Australia – one of so many who exited Greece after the economic devastation of World War 2 and its aftermath. At 18 he made his first visit to Greece – and back to Patmos where he is part of two very large Patmian families. "I never went back! I just knew this was for me, and I never went back."
Stavros is one of a few people on Patmos who fascinate me because despite being born and raised native English speakers in an English speaking country, they sometimes have trouble finding the words they want in English and intermix Greek in their English conversations as if all the words have melded in their heads and they can no longer separate them out for their target audience.
Given, in what I would guess to be his late 50's, Stavros has spent much more of his life on Patmos than in Australia. He has somewhat populist views on politics, not liking the current centrist government much. Stavros is worried the government may have allowed the recent fires to burn further than needed in order to clear away plant life to then establish solar farms on hillsides and formerly natural areas. He's against helmet laws for motorcycle and motor scooter riders. And he's a big proponent of Patmos keeping its fossil-fuel burning electric plant because the alternative the national government wants is to run undersea electricity cables from much larger Samos to Patmos, thereby reducing the number of emissions-creating power plants. Apparently, when this was done between Rhodes and Leros, Leros began experiencing outages. Patmos isn't having it and fought to keep its local plant.
"People were ready to riot, to fight!" Stavros flourished.
If the national government uses burned lands to create solar farms rather than allow nature to restore, he thinks it will be chaos in the streets, the reaction from the Greek people will be so harsh.
"Some of us don't want to embrace the new ways, we want to go backward!"
I can't imagine Greece is an easy country to govern. With 227 inhabited islands in addition to a long north-south oriented mainland, in some ways Greece is a lot of little countries under one umbrella. In fact, the very the idea of Greece as a nation-state is relatively new. Until the early 19th century when a Greek nationalist movement began, most of the Greek islands saw themselves insularly. Look at Ancient Greek Mythology and wars were between Spartans, Athenians, Peloponesians, Achaians,. Cretans, Trojans. Greece was a collection of city-states and independent kingdoms. The Greek side of the Trojan war and multiple kings in an alliance – not identifying as Greece.
Even during the path of Greek nationalism, at one point, it was not a foregone conclusion that Crete – Greece's largest island – would be part of a unified Greece. The current composition of the Hellenic Republic is due in no small part to Britain which sought to chip away at the reach of the Ottoman Empire and increase its influence as a "friend" and "protector" of fledgling Greece. It's no accident that a Danish prince who was cousins with Queen Victoria ended up on the Greek throne – and that later, Prince Phillip, the late Queen Elizabeth II's also late husband was a prince of Greece.
Undoubtedly, any government of Greece finds itself in untenable positions. A country that was a strong welfare state for decades, which has one of the oldest populations in Europe and a culture that leans far more toward enjoying the simple and good life under the sun than it does towards industrious, hard work is a difficult thing to maintain. Greece's gifts are its natural resources: Earth, wind and sky. It has good growing lands, fishing, sea transportation, and enough sun and wind to become a giant in the renewable energy business. Selling it sun and wind solves many problems from creating enough revenue for the government to maintain strong welfare benefits to meeting not only Greece's global climate obligations, but Europe's. Germany alone would be a huge consumer of sustainable Greek energy. The one problem? No one wants solar or wind farms in their territory – and they don't want them in the beautiful countrysides.
In an attempt to solve the conundrum, the national government offered subsidies and tax breaks to get solar panels onto people's roofs. It worked so well that Greece has actually had days of being solely powered on renewable energy. The problem? Solar energy from residential and commercial buildings can't be controlled by the electric companies. They received whatever is generated whether it's insufficient or excessive. The utility companies need reliability and planning to stabilize prices and ensure supply and demand sync up. The power companies far prefer solar wind farms they own and/or control. Which leads us back to Stavros' concern, the polluting power plant on Patmos and the proverbial riots in the street that could break out at any moment.
I didn't want to tell Stavros my full set of thoughts, but olive oil, shipping and tourism aren't paying all the bills. Unless Greece diversifies its economy significantly and has either enough of its population working or brings in enough foreign labor – or both – selling the sun and wind are probably its best play. Life doesn't stay the same and the world certainly doesn't turn backwards. There might be better ways to go about it, but sustainable energy is Greece's path of least resistance if it doesn't want to make other, more radical changes.
I have electricity issues of my own. With 11 days left on Patmos, I still don't have a new electric line to power my dishwasher and kitchen outlet. Manolis The Electrician said he would return before I left, and it hasn't happened yet. What I came to realize quickly after the power line was made to power the oven and stove – leaving the dishwasher and outlet non-functioning, is that the outlet is really important. Aside from the refrigerator, it turns out the kitchen has only one outlet. Sure, I can use a power strip or extension cord to help turn one plug into several, but not if the original single outlet doesn't work. That has meant in addition to not enjoying the dishwasher I had so planned to luxuriate in using here (both because they are so rare for Greece and because I hate washing dishes), I have had to carry the microwave to the foyer to use it. I have reheated leftovers on the shoe rack – which is fine for me, for now, but won't fly with Airbnb guests.
Today I texted Manolis who kindly and promptly replied that I was not forgotten and he will be coming by the end of the week – he'll let me know when he has the specifics. Score!
At 10 am, my weird doorbell that sounds like a nest of cuckoos went off. Prokopis from the hardware store came in-person to see if his friend the plumber could come tomorrow to talk about my bathroom so thee plumber and Yorgos the contractor can collaborate on a plan. Yes, please. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 am? Absolutely. The bathroom and kitchen counters are the two big pieces of work I'm trying to get squared away.
Meanwhile, I have a second bid in progress on the bathroom. Mohammad who painted the doors, his friend Hussein who does decorative concrete work and a contractor also named Prokopis are coming soon to evaluate the bathroom together. Their approach would involve changing the walls and floors to decorated, textured and glazed concrete instead of tile – which is interesting. Prokopis is also working out a quote on the kitchen counters.
Instead of being treated as a beggar, contractors are beginning to compete for my business! This is a very exciting turn of events.
Which one to go with? Using George the property manager's advice – I should go with the one who will show up and do the work. I'm learning the island's ways.
Then there's George. The last remaining person I need to speak with to square away the work of the summer. We've talked about him listing and managing the property in texts and passing conversations, but because he's so busy, he keeps putting me off to have a full discussion. His office is just below and next door to yoga – so I've run into him a few times and reminded him time is limited. He seems committed to talking soon, though I'm sure I'll have stay on it. Worse comes to worse I can always ambush him at Agriolivadi where he goes every afternoon at 3pm to paddle board. I appreciate and admire that he takes his sanity break no matter what, the way I do with yoga.
George once told me, "This is the point of having the business and working on the island. I left Athens and banking for this. I always stop and go to the beach at 3:00 because it is important."
To be clear, he returns to work around 6pm and his office is open until 10 or 11. And I appreciate George's perspective.
There may be furniture and lighting that arrive after I leave and there's also likely to be work done on the house without me here. But I am within striking range of having things organized and a plan in motion. I'm sure there will be calls, FaceTimes, flurries of texts required to support what happens here when I am not. Nonetheless, compared to where I began seven or so weeks ago, the house and I have come a long way. The nights of painful hard beds are almost a distant memory. Better yet, the numerous questions over the how's and whose it would take to get things done have largely been answered. I can see where we're going and know that next year, most of the big work will have been accomplished.
Of course, no house is ever really done. I'll still have things left on my list to accomplish next year and into the future. I expect the house to remain an ongoing project. I will just enjoy the fact that it will be livable, enjoyable, presentable and rentable. I can also be particularly proud that I might well have the most comfortable mattress on the island (which isn't THAT hard to do) and a well provisioned kitchen with all the tools, pans, and serving ware one would expect from me. Last night I made dinner and actually enjoyed working in my own kitchen – which in and of itself was a big step to the house becoming home.
With the breeze blowing, the deeply blue water glittering, people enjoying this paradise so removed from the world, the monastery above, the ships coming and going below and a place to call home – what sane person would want to leave? Not me. However, I feel the world at home waiting, nudging me. The kids I want to see and hold. The responsibilities waiting. The people who keep asking, "When will you be back?" I hear you, I hear you….
I'm just not in a hurry.
