"Please finish your conversation"

I love travel but απεχθάνομαι τον τουρισμό. Ελλάδα θέλω να τον εαυτό μου...but this is good.

In just 20 days, Up Greek Tourism surpassed its goal by raising $20,352 from private individuals to fund an advertisement for Greece. About 50% of the supporters were located outside Greece, including Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UAE, UK and USA. The project - to make this film and display it on a billboard in Times Square, New York - was managed by Greeks around the world on a voluntary basis, with no budget or hired professionals, crowd-funded. Using LoudSauce as its platform, the campaign was mainly promoted via social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter showing on Vimeo and Youtube

I know about inventing paradise. Byron, Μπαϊρον, who came first in 1809 called her 'the wondrous land'; sailed to Greece in the brig Hercules in 1823, arrived at Kefalonia on the 4th August, to die at Mesolóngi eight months later. I first came to Greece, to Athens, by train via Venice in 1957, but in 1962 I sailed to Greece from England with a friend. In July we left Messina in Sicily. The first morning of our two day crossing - on Danica ...

   ...bouncing and swaying on a swift etesian reach; came on our reverse, a sleek Greek frigate cutting smoothly through the cresting waves, heading west. In return to our salute she dipped her flag to us. My chest swells at the memory of seeing that lovely ensign falling and rising again in the seconds of her passing as though official Greece was saying "yasus" - just to us. Next morning we made Byron's landfall. Shapes - north and south - that appeared and disappeared and might have been no more than dawn shadows - though we knew otherwise - lay before us. All day, in zephyrs, we sailed towards them, passed between, and anchored off Killini in Ilia where we rowed ashore to be sat at a table (my memory is flawed by so many photos of Greek chairs), offered ouzikis and welcoming curiosity, before a polite policeman - reproached by our hosts - "po, po, po" - told us we were supposed to clear at Patras, but "please finish your conversation."
That was 50 years ago. My 70th birthday is next Thursday, we expect our first grandson in a few days, and for nearly half the year I wake to see Epirus in mother Greece from Ano Korakiana across the Sea of Kerkyra.

Inventing Paradise

In the post this morning - the spells and potions of mid-20th century Philhellenes. I'll come to Byron later. This is an opportunity to become more familiar with the wonderfully crafted constructions that underlie the creation of Greece as an object of foreign admiration, passion, yearning and joy - not lust or possessiveness like some others - though some Greeks, one talented and very modern Greek polymath - Nikos Dimou - has written of this as a 'misery'. He's qualified that observation since. From the back cover of Professor Keeley's book:

In the looming shadow of an oppressive dictatorship and imminent world war, George Seferis and George Katsimbalis, along with other poets and writers from Greece's fabled Generation of the 1930s, welcomed Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell to their homeland. Together, as they spent evenings in Athenian tavernas, explored the Peloponnese, swam off island beaches, and considered the meaning of Greek life, freedom and art, they seemed to be inventing paradise. In a lyrical blend of personal memoir, literary criticism, and interpretative storytelling, Edmund Keeley takes readers on a journey into the poetry, friendships and politics of this extraordinary time.

On Byron, British philhellenes get a taste of their own medicine. I saw a game of cricket last September while having coffee on the Liston. The grass was too long. There were too many cars parked round the pitch and I've never enjoyed cricket, but I felt quite proud. Byron sailed to Greece for the last time in 1823 and arrived at Kefalonia on the 4th August. I sailed to Greece from Messina with a friend in July 1962. The first morning of our two day crossing we were bouncing and swaying on a swift etesian reach. A sleek Greek frigate cut smoothly through the cresting waves heading west. In return to our salute she dipped her flag to us. I get a lump even now at that gesture - seeing that lovely ensign falling and rising again in the seconds of her passing as though official Greece was saying "yasus" just to us. Next morning we made Byron's landfall. Shapes - north and south - that appeared and disappeared and might have been no more than dawn shadows - though we knew otherwise - lay before us. All day, in zephyrs, we sailed towards them, passed between, and anchored off Killini where we rowed ashore to be sat at a table (my memory is flawed by many photos of Greek chairs - see Keeley's cover as typical), offered ouzikis and curiosity, before a polite policeman - reproached by our hosts - "po, po, po" - told us we were supposed to clear customs and immigration at Patras, but "please finish your conversation."
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Nikos Dimou 17 July 2007

"What a blog! A cornucopia! I know now I need no books for my vacation ..." Which cat feels like me on reading this?

[Squeak is grooming Bubble, and in the background - village sounds from Ano Korakiana]
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Back to the future - 25 July 2010: Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi reissued.

Sailing to Greece

We moved in 1960 to live near the sea. I learned to sail in a 17 foot clinker built gaff day boat with a leaky centre board case. Her tiller was carved with the head of a fish. Her sails were canvas - foxed from being stowed wet. 'Hoppy' sailed kindly - the length of her boom finely calculated to avoid weather helm. My first voyage was across the Solent from Keyhaven to Yarmouth - two nautical miles of open water. I arrived there around 5.00pm one summer evening and took the bus to Newport, capital of the Isle of Wight. I had fish and chips and went to to see 'King Kong'. I got a bus back to Yarmouth and sailed homeward in the dark. I missed the unlit Keyhaven entrance and had to sail against an ebb tide to Lymington where I moored about 2.00am. I was proud at having crossed the Solent without paying for a ferry.

Danica Originally uploaded by Sibad.

I sailed to Greece in 1962 with Chris Jameson from Colchester. I found him by advertising in 'The Times' . Our boat was a 25 foot marine ply sloop designed and built by Denys Rayner near Newbury, Berkshire. My stepfather, Jack Hargreaves, sponsored her design and construction at a time when there was great interest in pioneering affordable seaworthy small sailing boats that could crawl creeks at weekends, be comfortable for families, sail oceans, yet be hauled on trailers and sit upright on a mud berths. He christened her 'Danica' - Latin for his favourite fly. "Take her where you like" he said, wanting, with her designer, to see how she performed. "Get yourself a skipper" he added, knowing I had small knowledge of the sea despite explorations of the Solent in 'Hoppy'. Chris, my skipper, tutor and companion, sailed us from Lymington to Le Havre in April. With mast stowed, we motored through French canals and rivers via Paris and Lyons to Marseilles. In the Mediterranean we sailed along the Cote d'Azur, crossed to Corsica, then on to Naples (enjoying ice cream unknown in England), from where, via the Straits of Messina, we ran eastwards over wine dark sea making the same landfall as Byron between Zakinthos and Kefallonia - high shapes looming in a warm dawn haze. After anchoring for a welcome off the fishing village of Killini we passed immigration at Patras and then sailed and motored with day breezes and calms to the Corinth Canal. Passing through that astounding defile we arrived at Tourkolimano, Athens, in early July (heat I'd not experienced). A few weeks later, joined by Christopher's sister Elizabeth, we sailed homewards round the Peloponnese to Zakinthos. On to Syracuse in Sicily, then Malta, Bizerta in Tunisia, and northwards via Bonifacio in Corsica and on to Sète and the Canal du Midi. Via the canal we motored to Bordeaux, setting sail again up the Gironde estuary and entering the Bay of Biscay where south east of Finisterre we weathered gales (and my fear) before passing into the English Channel arriving in Lymington at the end of September.

Home from Greece ~ Liz Jameson, Simon B, Chris Jameson