Corfu Sunset
Just retired John Waller and his Danish wife decide to renovate their near-derelict holiday home. They gain control from their neighbour who has pumped sewage on their land. In a frenetic summer they build a road up the mountain and a pool, veranda and a new roof for their villa. A party is held to celebrate a great Greek victory.
"Delightful episodes and characters emerge from the pages of Corfu Sunset. A highly amusing account of the highs and lows of property ownership abroad with attention to detail that puts most travel authors in the shade."
Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard
"Corfu Sunset is essential reading for anyone thinking of moving abroad to a place in the sun, revealing with panache and passion the rewards and drawbacks of buying property in a remote but warm outpost of southern Europe."
Nigel Lewis, Daily Mail
INDEX
Achillion Palace
Greek Bureaucracy
Greek Food - and dance
Greek Food - Casseroles
Greek Food - Fresh Food
Heaven
Measuring Heights
Motivating Pavlos
"No Day" Parade
Olympics
Pink Palace 1999
Planning Permits
Pumping Concrete
Romantic Roof
Shit 1
Shit 2
Shit 3
Village Taverna
Water Problems
Our next destination was the Achillion Palace, constructed in 1890 for Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Sissy, as she was called by her family, was one of Corfu’s early tourists.
Twenty years before, on her first visit, she fell in love with the island and its people. She chose her site well – on a hilltop near Gastouri – with views of Mouse Island and the town to the north. Until she was assassinated in 1898, she spent her springs and late summers at the Palace. In 1907, Kaiser Wilhelm II bought the property and altered it to his Imperial tastes, a project which included the erection of a five metre high bronze sculpture of the ‘Victorious Achilles’.
We queued for our tickets – there were a dozen tour buses unloading their passengers. We climbed the steps to the great pseudo-classical edifice and entered under enormous columns. The hall was crowded – a hundred squawking visitors gaped up, mouths open like chicks waiting to be fed, at the fresco on the ceiling depicting a pastoral scene with naked nymphs cavorting. Ahead was the great marble staircase, at the top of which the imperial hosts would once have stood.
Czuk was in his element. With his knowledge of German, he could have spent a whole day just reading the memorabilia of the Empress and the Kaiser. Outside, there was a colonnade with statues of the great philosophers and writers of all time, including Shakespeare.
Then it’s off to town to visit the mysterious office. Today there is only one other person there so, being British, I make my own queue. Behind the counter people are sitting around chatting and drinking coffee. I can see why being a bureaucrat is pleasant. It’s now my turn. The delightful blond clerk asks me to fill in a lengthy form. It’s all rather hilarious as the questions, about my father and about Jannie and her father and so on, are in Greek. She seems happy with my answers, or perhaps she’s just a happy person. She points me to another office, where a man takes my form and fills in a register, then gives me a piece of paper with a number on it. I go back to my blonde friend. She takes the form, the copies of the passports and the deeds and a note from Nikos Mechanikos and starts entering the details into her computer. Occasionally she asks me to read a name, which she types in Greek. She now prints out a few pieces of paper and then copies some of the details onto a cardboard schedule. Off I go again, to another office. There I find a man, who I assume is the boss, sitting at a large desk which is piled with files, smoking a cigarette and drinking his coffee whilst he ponders what to do next. He signs the documents that the computer has printed out and gives me another note. By now I have collected eleven pieces of paper.
The lamb, for which everyone is waiting, slowly turns on the great spit. For those who cannot wait any longer, a kilo of small lamb chops are provided on a large plate which is put in the centre of their table. Hands reach for the top of the piles and the succulent meat is ripped from the bone to the great satisfaction of the carnivores. The friend of the family, who is in charge of the grill, is getting hotter as he labours in front of the charcoal. He stops for a beer. Flames appear, he steps back and all the meat catches fire. He has another beer and the fire dies down.
By half past ten, we inquire whether there will be music. Angelis, who was the director of the village philharmonic, shrugs his shoulders. His fellow musician has not arrived, so maybe we’ll have music or maybe we won’t. At last a small man carrying a bouzouki turns up. At eleven o’clock, the music starts, the lamb is served and the party begins. Angelis is a virtuoso on the keyboard and sings beautifully. Our duo is joined by a tall tenor, who knows he has the looks as well as the voice. The crowded room joins in as song follows song. Someone gets up to dance: it’s a personal matter. Later a fine lady comes on to the concrete floor and seductively moves to the music – her partner kneels on one knee encouraging her. By one in the morning, everyone is joining in, arms stretched out linking dancer with dancer.
O Yiannis is the best pot restaurant on the island and Costas is carrying on a long tradition. I am welcomed into the kitchen, standard procedure in Greece. The lid of each pot is opened, a powerful aroma of herbs floats up and the contents are prodded to show that it is veal, lamb, pork, chicken or rabbit or fish, squid or octopus. Sometime he has snails and mussels. All have succulent sauces and many contain vegetables, such as little onions in stifado and mushrooms with chicken in white wine and saffron, Jannie’s favourite. Then we move to the vegetables, tsigarelli which is spinach and hot pepper or paprika, giant beans in a thick tomato sauce, wonderful potatoes fournou, cooked slowly in the oven with lashings of olive oil, oregano and lemon. Finally, we look in the ovens, where the favourites of moussaka and kleftiko are sitting. I remember Jannie saying Costas’s taramasalata, full of garlic, is the best she’s tasted, even better than her own home-made recipe from smoked cod’s roe as one can find only in a Danish smokery. I prefer the aubergine baked with feta, a dish called imam during the Turkish occupation. For Jannie, I order the chicken; for us I chose sofrito; and for me, the octopus and the bourdetto, the fish baked in a tomato and paprika gravy. Today, Costas has dog fish or bakaliaros, the salted cod. I prefer the former. Long gone are the days when grouper, the best of all fish, was on the menu.
It is time to check out the Crossroads Taverna. Vassilis and Eleni welcome us with open arms. They sit us outside. In the country, the night is dark; we are in the shadow of the hills up to Pelekas to the west; and Corfu Town is too far to the east for its lights to brighten the sky. Between the branches above, stars twinkle. Surprisingly little traffic passes: the tourists are in their all-inclusive hotels.
Vassilis brings us the menu; it is very short – a good sign that the food will be fresh as they promised.
“What do you recommend?” I ask.“The rabbit stifado is excellent. I saw the rabbit, it was very plump.”
“And is it fresh?”
“Last night I shot it myself,” Vassilis explains. I look surprised. “Just down the road from here,” he adds. Surprise turns to shock.
“Only joking,” he says. “I don’t like rabbit,” states Jannie emphatically.
Rather than spoil her meal, I declined the offer and we moved on. “As well as the grill, tonight we have coq au vin, sofrito and lamb in mushrooms,” says Vassilis.
Predictably, Jannie chooses the chicken and I go for the lamb. In England, we are rightly proud of our Welsh lambs but, because of the cold climate, they always have fat on them. Their Greek cousins are pure lean meat. I am certain that if I ask Vassilis where it came from, he could, this time in all honesty, tell me from which field.
The great glory of the west coast is its moods. From a gentle start of the day, the wind has grown in strength and now its wildness has come. Right across the bay, waves roll in, beating themselves on the shore. The sandbanks break their majestic rhythm and turn them into frothing dragons. To the meek, the beach is the safest place. To the brave, the dive deep though the breakers, under the rushing water, is rewarded by a lonely sea, one moment low with the beach out of sight, the next moment high as watchers came back into view. The return to land offers danger, either the tumble over the breaking wave, which throws the unwary to the bottom, or the body surf in over protruding rocks and finally the attempt to stand in the shallows as the water sucks the unstable down the coast to a painful landing.
Fotis and Tassos watch. Unlike others on the beach who are driven by money, their restaurant offers them the most perfect spot to just exist. The taverna hasn’t changed much since we first came thirty-five years ago. The concrete tables are from another world. The roof is unchanged: why change it if it keeps out the rain? I think they do nothing because that would be a hassle.
The following afternoon, Zacharias returned, in his smart outfit, with an assistant. He asked for a bottle of water – I assumed he was thirsty. He rejected my unopened litre and a half of Zagori mineral water and indicated tap water was OK. I duly obliged. Instead of drinking it he poured it into a thin tube some fifteen metres long. Mystified I watched him hand one end to his mate, whilst he took the other end and started to climb an olive tree below the track. Experience had taught me that one needed two hands and proper boots to scale a tree. Zacharias had one free hand and wore his slippery city shoes – but up he went like a squirrel. He stopped when he was at the same height as his mate up the hill. Then with much shouting they adjusted the ends of the pipe until the water levels were the same. With a measure Zacharias worked out the distance to the ground and then descended. Numbers were being called and Zacharias was computing furiously. He then fought his way through the uncleared jungle just above the main road and climbed another olive tree.
Having watched this performance, I walked down the fifty-four steps from where Zacharias’s mate was standing to the road. At 19 centimetres each I had descended about ten metres.
Zacharias, now on the road, announced. “Deka metra.”
We agreed but I didn’t say anything as he was the expert.
I am now left with Pavlos. I ask him to come up to sit under the olive tree, where my notebook lies. I find the great speech I have made, written out in Greek. He looks over and reads it even quicker than I can say it.
“For a thousand years, my family have been soldiers,” I have written, referring to the ancestor who came over with William the Conqueror. “In 1641, we fought in Ireland where we stayed. My father fought in the first world war in Palestine against the Turks.” I thought this would go down well with a Greek. “Now my battle is to complete the pool. I hope together we will win.”
At this point, he’s finished reading and puts out hand and says, “OK, John. I do my work.”
“My family motto is ‘honour and truth’, Pavlos.” We shake again but I am not sure if he sees this as applying to himself. But I have a final point which I know will clinch the deal. I have looked up a quote from Herodotus, who claimed that the Persian general had said before going into battle with the Greeks: “Alas, Mardonius, what kind of people have you brought us to fight against? They do not compete for money but for pride!”
He smiles. The message has got through. He then leaves. I wonder if I should have suggested that finishing the pool is, to me, like completing the Olympics on time.
28 October, the day before we left, the island celebrated Ohi Mera – No Day. A parade was held around Corfu town to remember the day in 1940 when the dictator Metaxas had rejected Mussolini’s ultimatum to occupy Greece. He had already invaded Albania in April 1939. As soon as the Italian Army crossed the Albanian border they met tough resistance from Greek troops, heroically supported by the local population, in the Pindos Mountains. The Italians were thrown back into Albania and Agii Saranda and much of the Greek-speaking south was taken. Hitler, furious at his ally’s calamitous adventure, came to the rescue and swept through the Balkans to take Athens at the end of April. This diversion probably delayed, by at least a month, Operation Barbarossa, the great attack on Russia, and so may have affected the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front.
The team leaves with Alexos. The Poles will go by ferry to Patras and on by bus to Athens. Alexos cannot get a cabin, so they will sleep on deck. Christos, the Albanian, will stay the night in Corfu and drive the truck back via Igoumenitsa in the morning. We have been teasing him that he will be staying on with one of the beautiful girls he has seen on the beach. He has fallen in love with Corfu. I tell him he will always be welcome for a swim and a Coke.
My view of the 2004 Olympics is now more positive. In 2 days and 3 hours, the three Athenians have done a fantastic job (and built the pool). Admittedly they are not Greeks, but it will be the energy of the East Europeans that will build the Parthenon of the 21st century.
Looking back from below the mountain of Garouna to our once virgin hillside, we were shocked, appalled and dazed by a great Pink City that had grown up behind the Pink Palace. This was hidden at road level by the two storey replacement to the original roadside building, which sat on an enormous retaining wall, perhaps eight metres high at the downhill end. For the first time, up high, we could now see its offspring, pink blocks containing hundreds of rooms for backpackers. From afar the complex appeared to have eight storeys. At least all the blocks had pitched roofs tiled in the traditional fashion. Spiros ‘Pink Palace’ Grammenos had come a long way in twenty-five years. It was impossible to be too angry with the development as it had provided a ‘home away from home’ for tens of thousands of students, many from the United States. I was sure that they would always have happy memories of our lovely island.
Nikos is stressed out. The council architect who was due back today is still on holiday, so we still have no permission.
“Let me tell you about a pool I designed in Lefkimmi,” Nikos says. “The permission was a month late. I go down to tell my client so he could start work, but what do I find? He has completed the pool. I tell him that if the police had seen it, we would both be in prison. Next day, the police do turn up and ask for his permit. He tells them I have it in town, so they visit me. They look at the date and ask me how come it’s taken the client only a day to build his pool. It’s a miracle, I tell the police.”
It seems the police are now after Nikos. So he doesn’t want me to start work until we get the permit. The September completion date is looking hopeless; at this rate we won’t even start by then.
The pump is parked on the main road blocking the traffic. I ask Spiros next door and Michael below to get their guests to move their parked cars. The great machine is ready for action; its four legs are extended and then lowered to stop it falling over. It raises its huge upper arm, straightening its elbow, until its forearm is high above the olive trees and the three electric cables stretching from Spiros’s to a pole lower down the road. It now slowly bends its wrist so its long hand turns downward over the cables. From its hand, it drops the long hose, which looks like an elephant’s trunk, right over the corner box. It is ready to pour the concrete. The operator moves the arm sideways and sees a problem: the slightest error will cause the arm to hit the cables and Agios Gordis will have lost electricity as well as water in the same day.
“Do you think it is possible to be romantic about a roof?” I ask, and then, I answer my own question. “I think we can with ours. Her shape is gorgeous and the mottled mix of old and new tiles is so pretty.”
We look over the edge. Below us, the moon lights up our olive grove. Perched on our platform, we are now higher than the top of the trees. I look back again at the roof, suspended in the shining moonlight above the dark shadow of the veranda and the house beyond. The view triggers off a memory. Where have I seen this before? The answer suddenly comes.
“Do you remember Jørn Utzon wrote of the Mayan civilisation building a platform above the flat, never-ending rain forest from which they found a completely new dimension on the world. That’s what we have now. We can see south with an uninterrupted view to Garouna. And do you remember what inspired Utzon in his design of the Opera House? He visualised buildings constructed not of walls but of roofs. He started with sketches of the curved roof of a pagoda floating above his platform. That is exactly what we have here. Our roof is the same shape as the pagoda’s and it really does float above the darkness below.”
“You have a problem!” he said in an unfriendly and officious way. He pointed first at my ‘drive in’ where our car was parked and then at the pipe under the ramp up to it.
“There.” I looked and saw a large turd, right next to my lawn. Maybe our neighbour, Spiros Grammenos, had got another Alsatian. Fifteen years before, his dogs had driven off the estate agent when we tried to sell the property. I wasn’t an expert on faeces, I must confess.
“Spiros says it’s your shit.”…
“I’m your neighbour, Michael Pangalis. The problem is Spiros Grammenos. He lets his septic tank overflow all through the winter.”
“Where’s his septic tank, then?” I asked. “Under your car!”
“But that’s my land,” I said. “Then you should blow up his tank,” he said, meaning every word.
Moments later, Spiros rushed down his stairs.
“Good morning, Mr. Wallace.” “Why is your septic tank on my land?” I asked him.
He pretended not to understand, so I pointed at the turd.
“That’s yours,” I said angrily. “No, Mr. Wallace. All mine is on the other side of the house.”
He takes me up the road and shows me the drain pipes. One of the advantages of Greek construction was that all services, in and out, were in full view. I was now even more confused.
However, Michael had one problem – a big one at that: Spiros. He claimed that it was Spiros’s sewage that oozed under the enormous retaining wall of the road to appear on the floor of the rooms of the original building. Consequently, after any rainstorm, Michael would appear in the street and scream abuse at Spiros, who was hiding on the bridge of his ship, the equivalent of four stories above. Nikos, Spiros’s son, was occasionally dispatched to view the catastrophe. Health inspectors would come but could do little to stop the feud.
Some English friends had rented a room at Michael’s and they confirmed the unwelcome intrusion – black stinking sludge creeping across their room. I contacted a News of the World reporter whom I knew. I explained how Spiros and his German guests were destroying the holiday of the British below. I could see the headline: GERMANS SHIT ON BRITS
I agreed to pick up a reporter and photographer from the airport. He then asked. “How many British did you say?”
“Well, only one family at the moment – the rest are Danes and Swedes.” “Forget it – the story is not big enough for us,” he replied.
At that moment, we hear a noise from below. It’s the pump? No, it’s Spiros’s shit wagon, what a stink. And to think Nikos Bulldozer will be working over Spiros’s septic tank which is half on my land. What a terrible accident could happen if he went through its roof. The trouble is the courts might not think it was an accident. All of us on the whole mountain are fed up with Spiros and his shit. Once the season is over, his septic tank is never emptied. I have been told that over the winter a trail of sewage can be traced from the valley up to Spiros, even by a blind person. Fotis and Tassos have at one point recommended dynamite, but I think they just enjoy the fight between their friend John and his enemy. Michael on the other hand has a vested interest in demolishing the tank.
Having expected just kebabs, we were in for a surprise. The giro was rotating, the meat was sizzling on the grill and chicken was browning on the spit. In case that wasn’t enough, he offered us bifteki – his wife’s homemade hamburgers.
“Chicken,” said Jannie. “Make it two,” I added.
They were succulent and served with tzatziki, salad and crisp fresh chips. After one bite, Jannie said. “I’m adding this to our taverna list.”
Georgy Porgy had bought us a half litre of wine – it was interesting. He came over to ask us how we liked the wine.
“Excellent,” we replied in unison. “I make it myself,” he said. “I mix Kakotrygis, a white wine, with Petrokorintho, a red one.”
I didn’t tell him I had been warned about mixing drinks. At the next table was a slightly inebriated local with a litre of George’s wine – confirming that the warning was justified.
“I’m Spiros,” he introduced himself in a Brooklyn accent. “They call me Amerikanos. How do you like the restaurant?” he asked, using a word which was slightly over the top.
“It’s great.” I replied, trying not to grin stupidly. “I planned everything for George,” he added.
So this was how he got his litre of wine – as a daily consultancy fee.
I meet Councillor Papadatos, P.C. Poulis and Spiros Alamanos inspecting the water main. Where Spiros demolished the concrete cover only two days ago, there is now a fountain. To make the repair he had cut out 30 cm of rusty pipe and replaced it with the same length of shining new pipe. The pressure was too great and now we have a buckled mess of metal. I follow the water, a happy stream, all the way down the road to the valley, pick up a paper and return to find a permanent solution has been found. The down-stream rusting pipe has been raised by a brick and the up-stream pipe has been tied to Michael’s rarely working supply pipe – Greek ingenuity at its best.
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