Ex Pat Life ~ A Mix of Madness and Mundane

'Life is either a daring adventure

or nothing at all.'

     -- Helen Keller

Okay, so I know I've been telling you that being an ex pat in Greece is one grand adventure. And in many ways living in the midst of Kalamata olive country in the southern Peloponnese is an adventure. It is most certainly a doorway to other travel adventures as well.

Yet, (I suspect many of our ex pat friends here would agree) in many ways day-to-day life could be more aptly described as being a mix of madness and mundane.

That seems a fitting way to begin a report on what's been happening at our home called, The Stone House on the Hill. While I often post updates on Facebook or Instagram, many of you who follow the blog, have asked, "What is happening at the house?' So looking back over the last six months, here's what we've been doing when not having grand adventures.

A Red Hot Welcome

Every other home on our street -- all four of them -- had some form of entry gate. Two black,one blue, one green. Except us.

Entry stairs at The Stone House on the Hill - before

We decided that such a gate at the top of the stairway leading from the road and our parking area to the house, would set off the entry.  Once decided, it took awhile to find a local 'metal man' who could build us one. Once we found him, his work load was such that he didn't get started on the project until January. (If I've not mentioned before, construction is booming in our area.)

I'd collected photos of the ornate types of gates we had in mind. He brought a catalog of more ideas. We agreed on a design, or so we thought.

What I thought we were getting and what we got

Somehow 'the ornate' part of the gate got left behind and we got a very mundane entry gate.

 . .that I will admit drove me a bit into a fit of madness (both anger and crazed) but then -- as with many things here -- it was time to put the madness aside and meet the challenge!

Finished gate with newly planted jasmine vine: Welcome!

The gate's builder said he'd left it plain because it would have detracted from the view. That does make sense. So we've framed the view with bright red and white paint and someday a jasmine vine will loop over its arbor.  I've come to love my little red gate.

On to the garden

I perhaps am smitten with my red gate because I had envisioned (at the same time we were talking about the ornate gate) having a small arbor built over our vegetable garden so that we can this year shade the plants from the cruel Mediterranean summer sun.

Arbor on Hydra Island

Last fall while exploring Hydra island with visiting houseguests of ours I'd spotted this charming tiny red arbor, pictured above. That was just what we needed.  Again, I showed the photo to the metal man who nodded his understanding. He took measurements.

All was good; o la kala, as we say here.

Our 'arbor'

I wasn't home when the construction began on this but arrived as the workmen were putting the finishing touches on 'the structure' that now dominates our side yard.  The Scout, being the taller of us, was tasked with painting it (we'd thought we were getting the small version so had told the builder we would paint it ourselves).

On the bright side, we don't worry about earthquakes any longer as this baby will hold the house up for sure.  We hope the bougainvillea will soon cover a good deal of it and a grape vine has been planted at the opposite end. . . I'll keep you posted on this one.

Yes, mundane tasks sometimes feel like sheer madness.

Do It Yourself  Madness

Not all the madness was caused by others. Sometimes we did it to ourselves by tackling a mundane task ourselves.  There was the stairway painting, for instance:

Our paint job of four years ago had faded and we were inspired by the bright white stairway in a hotel we'd stayed at last summer.  'Couldn't be that bad,' we told ourselves. 'A bit of sanding, a coat or two of paint.'  Let's just say it took several days to get the sanding and the painting to look like that we'd seen in the hotel. In the end we were pleased, but it did take a bit more talent than we'd expected it to require.

Once we had the stairs done, it was time to tackle the doors.  Stone houses built the time ours was, now 14 years ago, were decked out in pine. . .doors, windows, cupboards and cabinets.  While stone is easy to come by here, wood isn't.  The interior reminded us of the design of cabins built amidst, and from, pine forests in the Pacific Northwest.

The doors looked old. They looked dated.

And anyone can do a chalk paint wash, right?

We finally finished all six interior doors and their frames, but this is one of those projects that had us painting for days. . .it sounded so mundane but it became sheer madness.

Our most recent project was a joint effort - we helped do heavy lifting but turned the painting over to a professional.  We'd lived with the odd little closet/drawer/storage unit in the master bedroom -- another in natural pine -- for as long as we could stand it.  The top section was so high we never used it, so moved it to our storage room where it now stores the olive harvest equipment.

And as my father, a housepainter by profession, used to say, what a difference a coat of paint can make!  This project was sheer joy and it was madness that we didn't do it sooner!

Closet - before and after

So that ends our behind-the-scenes look at what's been happening at The Stone House on the Hill.  We've got painting projects coming up this spring but managed to squeeze in a bit of travel the last few weeks, including a luxurious long weekend in Athens. If you are planning a trip to Greece anytime soon, it would be a shame not to include Athens in your itinerary! I'll tell you a few reasons why next week.

Safe travels to you and yours and thanks always for the time you spend with us. Use the comments or send us an email to let us know what you've been up to ~

Linking with:

Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday

Greek Expat life ~ The Week of Thanks-giving

Thanksgiving Day comes by statute, once a year;

to the honest man, it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.

       --Edward Sandford Martin, American journalist/editor early 1900’s

The Stone House on the Hill - Peloponnese, Greece

Being American ex pats living in the Greek Peloponnese we are often asked how we – or if we - celebrate Thanksgiving. The American one that is; the one celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.

Thanksgiving 2016

This Thanksgiving will be our third in Greece. 

In the two previous years we’ve joined with other American ex pats for home-cooked meals with a lineup of tasty dishes similar to those served back in the States. 

Here, since we are hours ahead of the United States, we don’t start the holiday by flipping on the television to watch Macy’s Thanksgiving parade wind through New York City; the opening act for American-style football which provides the rest of the day’s entertainment. 

(For those who missed earlier posts about our lifestyle, we don’t have a television. Even if we did, football games, if we could get American feeds, would have a kickoff between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. our time.)

  

Without Thanksgiving television traditions our celebrations with fellow American ex pats here have been centered on comradery and conversation – either tales of past Thanksgivings or tales of ex pat life -- while feasting away on what is a regular weekday for our Greek neighbors and friends.

Autumn task of making olive twig bundles for the fireplace

Tuesday afternoon while I was busy with my autumn chore of making fire-starter bundles for our fireplace from twigs of olive branches, I was thinking of my friends in the States who’d likely be cooking, traveling or decorating at a frantic pace in preparation of Thanksgiving Thursday. I suspect there is quite a contrast between my activity level and theirs.

Then Wednesday morning instead of racing between kitchen and grocery store as I would have been doing in the US life, we went for a stroll through the old part of our nearby village, Kardamyli, and surrounding olive groves.  The most cooking I did was to start a pot of soup for the evening meal.

A view of ancient Kardamyli

Holidays specific to the U.S. such as our Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving call out for celebration as they are so ingrained in our habits and culture. I can almost hear my father asking, “It would be pretty peculiar not to celebrate it, wouldn’t it?”  

Ancient Kardamyli

Yet, when the rest of our New World is going about its regular and routine business, it does seem a bit. . . well, peculiar, using my dad’s word, to be going about a celebration started in America in 1621 by pilgrims who were giving thanks for the blessings of the harvest in their New World.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday in November

a national holiday back in 1863. 

While researching this post I found a number of countries that have their own celebrations of  Thanksgiving including Canada (second Monday of October), Germany, Japan, Korea and Liberia. The latter, Liberia, a tiny country on the West African coast, was settled by freed slaves 1820’s – 1865 and it is thought they brought the American custom of a Thanksgiving celebration with them to the new country they founded.  

Stathi, the owner, makes dinner at the Pigi Taverna a feast any night

When you think about it, we feast quite often in Greece. An ordinary dinner eaten at one of our local tavernas is usually a feast and when gathered with friends, it always seems somewhat a celebration.  It gives rise to the idea, as the opening quote in this post suggests, that  a day of thanks giving need not be limited to a single day around these parts -- nor do feasts and celebrations.

British and American ex pats celebrate Easter 2018

While the Greeks don’t have a specific day labeled as Thanksgiving, they do have a word that sums it up:

Thayer's Greek Lexicon:

eucharisteō

1) to be grateful, feel thankful

2) give thanks

An autumn sunset from The Stone House on the Hill

This year we are doing it differently. No planned ex pat gatherings. No home cooked meals. Frankly, we don’t know where or what we will eat on ‘Thanksgiving’ Thursday. The unknown destination  and undecided route are among the joys of 'living differently'. (We do know it is supposed to be sunny and 70F-degrees, however!)

If you are among those celebrating the American Thanksgiving we send good wishes to you for a happy holiday and hope you are surrounded by family and friends!

There is also no better time than Thanksgiving to give thanks to all of you who’ve taken the time to read our tales.  We are so pleased we’ve gotten to know so many of you and look forward to meeting even more of you as our travel paths cross.

Wishes for continued safe and happy travels to you all. See you back here next week!

Linking up with:

Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday
Communal Global
Best of Weekend

Moving from ‘The Morgue’ to Manson

‘Change is the only constant in life.’

-- Heraclitus

Was it only last July that we turned our lives upside down by deciding to sell our U.S. home and live full-time in Greece?

Was it only last year that I showed you photos of our ‘summer of slogging’ and made jokes about living out of that corrugated metal storage unit we’d rented in the Seattle suburb?

Filling up the Storage Unit - July 2017

One Year Later. . .

The Stone House on the Hill - far right

Settled in to our Stone House on the Hill in Greece’s Peloponnese, we are comfortably adjusting to and enjoying expat life. That is, with the one exception I told you about last week:
being ‘homeless’ in America.

Having no address to call our own, coupled with ‘living out of the storage’ unit (as I had quipped last summer) wasn’t working. That fact became real clear after our visit in the Northwest last January.

We got rid of one temporary address during that visit. Our friend's graciously loaned us another. Our visits to the storage unit were bleak. Seeing our life’s accumulations – the stuff special enough to have kept -- stuffed into stack and piles, boxes and bags was nothing short of depressing.  We began calling it ‘the morgue’. It made us feel dead. We knew it was time to regroup.

Time for change -

‘And suddenly you know;

It’s time to start something new

and trust in the magic of beginnings.

  -- Meister Eckhart

So for the past few months, while I’ve been telling you of the wonders of Greece, we have been conducting a long distance search for a ‘seasonal home’ back in the States. (We would have once called it a ‘second home’ or ‘vacation home’ but the industry jargon has changed over the years.)

With no immediate plans to give up full-time residency in Greece, we needed a place for our belongings and a place to stay when we go back to visit. Someday perhaps it would serve as a full-time home when health, age, or immigration rules (or a combination of them) prompts us to leave Greece.

In keeping with our downsizing philosophy, we set out to buy a condo in the same Seattle suburb we’d left last year. Unfortunately for us, it is the suburb that continues to make headlines as being one of the hottest (high prices and selling quickly) housing markets in the nation.

With condo’s selling within five days of listing, we picked up our pace. If a ‘possible place’ came across the screen, we’d contact good friends back there, asking them to drop what they were doing to race out and see it. They’d report back and with the time differences, we’d have about 48 hours in which to make an offer. We went for two and lost out. The market was limited and the list prices the baseline for a bidding war.

The process got real tedious. It was time to expand the search:

Our old home was Kirkland, just north of Bellevue, a Seattle suburb

We opted to stay within Washington State boundaries. And in a quirky turn of events we came across a place we’d looked at and liked last summer. Back then the owner wasn’t ready to sell and we weren’t ready to buy.

Now she wanted to sell. We were ready to buy.

New adventures. . .of sorts!

We're heading to Manson, Washington, an unincorporated town in Central Washington nestled on the shores of Lake Chelan.

Manson and Wapato Point on Washington's Lake Chelan

The 55-mile long, glacier-fed lake has long been a popular tourist destination and the photo above shows the portion of Lake Chelan where Manson is located. For those who know the area, that is Wapato Point jutting down (towards the bottom of the photo).

A portion of Lake Chelan from the town of Chelan - Cascade Mountain range

The house will be new beginning for The Scribe and a return to his roots for The Scout (after a many-decades absence), as Manson is eight miles from Chelan where he was born and raised.

A

A portion of Lake Chelan from The Butte

The hillsides surrounding the lake were once carpeted with apple orchards, however, as the Washington State wine industry has exploded, many of those orchards have been replaced with vineyards – acres and acres of vineyards.

Manson Washington - apple orchards and vineyards

The vineyards have given rise to wineries, and the wineries have opened tasting rooms. New seasonal festivals related to the wine industry now fill tourism event calendars for this part of Central Washington.

Benson Vineyards - Chelan Washington

Our new U.S. base will be about four hours drive from our former home in the Seattle suburbs.

The similarities are many between our Greek and new U.S. home. In many ways it will be village life, as it is village life here. The main thoroughfares are two-lane roads. Agriculture and tourism blend to keep the areas vibrant. Much like our Agios Nikolaos, Manson village has a few restaurants, a grocery store, and bars. It does have a post office.

Wenatchee, like Kalamata is here, will be the hub for major shopping, health care and each city has a regional airport. Both are about an hour's drive away.

Our new U.S. home, is walking distance to the village and to the lake. We’ll be surrounded by vineyards and wineries.How much better a location could we have found?!

Surrounded by wineries - a perfect location

Thanks to the internet and Skype, the purchase process, completed during the month of July, was carried out quite easily despite being 8,000 miles and 10-hours time difference away.

Our airline tickets back have been purchased, a moving company has been hired, we are synchronized to move ourselves out of ‘the morgue’ and to Manson this fall.  It took three months last summer to get us moved out of our old life and we’ve scheduled three weeks this fall to get us moved into the new.  I’m certain with all the offers of help we’ve received from friends and with a bit of that Chelan area wine – we’ll be able to pull it off.

Oh. . .did you want to see the house? Well, here it is:

Our new home in Manson

It’s one level (like they recommend for boomers) and its in a gated community – so will be a secure place to leave our belongings. Unlike our Stone House on the Hill in Greece, we have no water views, but we will be able to see a portion of the Washington Cascade Mountain range from our front deck:

Our front porch

So with the purchase ‘done and dusted’ last Wednesday evening (as our British friends would say), we toasted the fact that we have a US address again and that we can now get back to the business of enjoying Greece.

A toast to a new address

The Scout has been busy planning a Greek road trip for us, that involves some more Greek island hopping!  And they might be some islands that many of you’ve never heard of. . . I’ll tell you about them soon!

Thanks for being with us as we travel this ex pat world! Safe travels to you and yours ~

Linking this week with:
Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday
Communal Global
Travel Photo Thursday – 
Best of Weekend

Greece ~ Living the ‘New Normal’

‘We have a normal. As you move outside of your comfort zone, 

what was once the unknown and frightening, becomes your new normal.’

-- Robin Sharma

Ice cream for lunch - a new normal in Greece.

Today we ate ice cream for lunch. 

With the Mediterranean sun shining and Grecian temperatures climbing, it seemed the thing to do. 

It wasn’t the first time, as we’d done the same thing two days ago. . .and a couple weeks ago. Giving in to the temptation of this frozen delight is really beginning to be a noontime normal. What I find interesting is how ab-normal it would have seemed back in our lives in the U.S.

Normal has become an operative word in our ex pat lives. We seem to have two standards of normal, the old one and the new one. Since last July when we made the decision to move from our Pacific Northwest home to Greece as full-time ex pats, we’ve had days there and here in which nothing seemed normal and other days when things were remarkably normal.

One thing we’ve learned in the last year is that nothing can turn the context of normal upside down faster than moving to a new country and adapting to its lifestyle and culture.

Normal - conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.

Greece - a normal scene

The mere fact I’ve given so much thought to normal and am now writing about it, isn’t normal by my old behaviors. But with more time to think about such things these days, ponderings such as this seems absolutely normal. What I am most surprised about is how quickly we human beings can adapt to new environments.  And that seems to be a key to whether or not ex pat life agrees with you or not. 

I've read any number of articles about why ex pats return to their home countries.  Bottom line seems to be: they wanted the normal they once knew. The challenge of a new language, new culture, new environment was too much for them.  With only nine months of full-time ex pat life under our belts, we are still in the infancy of this adventure; so in our case, bring on the new normal!

Normal is as Normal Does?

On Sunday we went on an outing back into the mountains, an area we'd never explored before. We found four new villages that will require return visits for further exploration. To get to them though, we traveled on roads that once seemed frighteningly narrow and winding. These days those once-unnerving roads seemed quite normal.  A new normal to be sure, but normal all the same.

You wanted to go where?

.

The photo above, taken last week during a ‘normal’ trip to the grocery store, illustrates an entertaining new normal for us.  Old normal for us was frustrating bumper-to-bumper traffic jams on multi-lane roads that brought cars to a standstill. In this world’s  ‘new normal’ it just might be a cow that stops us in our tracks!

Whether traveling roads, shopping or cooking, there is usually something that occurs or is required that gives a moment of pause and we have to think a bit harder and do things a bit differently but that’s why we came here. What amazes us is how quickly so many of these ‘foreign’ things have started feeling routine and normal.

Agios Nikolaos on a June evening

As those of you’ve who’ve been with us awhile know, this will be our first full summer here. We’ve had brief samples of both June and July but never have experienced a full three-month run of summer.

“Is this normal?” asked our recent guests a couple weeks ago, when they made their way around tables that filled the village’s main street. “They tell us that the crowds will get bigger in August,” we replied, but whether they are normal size summer crowds we have no idea.  Ask us again next year.

Stoupa beach on a June morning

We had a storm hit this week that brought high wind and heavy rain for a couple of days to most of Greece, including our area. The road between Athens and Corinth was flooded and closed for a short time, and ‘nornally’ dry river beds were filled with gushing water. 

“Not normal, for this time of year,” long-timers told us. We’ve spent three springtimes here and haven’t seen rain like we had this June, but whether it is normal or not, we couldn’t tell you for sure.

Cloudy skies in June - normal or not

Two weeks ago we woke one morning to find our water tanks bone dry. Not a drop of water to be had out of any tap in the house. (Of course, we had houseguests at the time. So the water truck was summoned and tanks of water delivered to return us back to normal.) 

Our water supply comes to us from ‘the Municipality’ (an entity we have yet to clearly understand) and when we reported our drought they seemed surprised at our situation.  The locals tell us that’s because we ‘normally’ don’t run out of water until in August, when the reservoirs are 'normally' pumped dry or the water diverted to the tourist-filled villages along the sea.

Pantazi Beach - near our home

One new normal for us is the lack of travel plans for summer getaways. Our startled friends say, “But you ‘normally’ go somewhere!”  We’ve never before lived in a place as spectacularly beautiful as we do now, so we’ve decided to join those sun-seeking tourists arriving each week in the villages, and enjoy this place we call home.  Perhaps it will become a new normal for our summers.

Mesimeri spent on our deck

Our staycation here has us completing our chores and errands before the clock strikes 12 each day which allows us to luxuriate in a favorite new normal: similar to the Spanish culture’s siesta, we have in Greece mesimeri which means midday and generally refers to the time between 2 – 5 p.m. but also means ‘quiet time’. 

Scenes of the village where we run our errands

This guilt-free quiet time is ‘normally’ spent resting, napping, reading and catching up on correspondence. Then it is time to think about food and drink; sometimes consumed at home and other times at one of the many tavernas, cafes and restaurants that come to life in the summer. Eating and drinking out with regularity is another new normal that we’ve adapted to quite well.

Dinner at Stathi's is a culinary treat - how many mezes can we eat?

We eat different food at a different time in far different settings than we did before moving here. But as with eating ice cream for lunch, going to the grocery store, watching weather and all things here the new normal is feeling quite normal these days!

We hope that your travels take you – armchair or real time – somewhere that is ab-normally wonderful!  Thanks for being with us again this week as we took a bit of an introspective look at ex pat life.We’ll be back again soon with more tales of our Grecian Summer and do hope you’ll be along to enjoy it with us!  Safe travels to you and yours ~

Linking up this week with:

Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday
Communal Global
Travel Photo Thursday – 
Best of Weekend

Heading to the Other 'Home' ~ Make that, 'Hale'!

Hale ~ ‘Home’ in Hawaiian

As the pilot announced our approach to the Honolulu, Hawaii airport on Sunday, the person next to me shifted and stretched as he observed, 'Boy this is a rather long flight, isn’t it?’

It had taken six hours to travel from Seattle to this island state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Ko Olina on O'ahu's western shore from the airplane

I simply nodded. He wouldn’t have comprehended that this was just the final leg of our 8,700 mile journey which had begun days before on the other side of the world. This flight simply marked the end of our journey and our arrival ‘home’ – albeit the short-term variety.

This is the 10th year we’ve journeyed to Hawaii in January for a month of tropical living. What makes this year’s trip different is that this is the only 'home' we have left in the United States.

Our Stone House on the Hill, far right small gray stone home in this photo

Our full-time home is on a rocky hillside at the edge of an olive grove in the Greek Peloponnese. We moved there last fall after selling our home on the outskirts of Seattle. And in doing so, made our ‘commute’ to the timeshare life we’ve lived for a decade a whale of a lot longer. But this segment of the 'old life' was one we weren't ready to give up.

The journey between homes is a long one

Our journey began with a four-hour drive to Athens and an overnight stay at the airport hotel there. An early departing Aegean Airlines flight the next morning got us to London’s Gatwick airport where we had another overnight stay.  Wednesday morning we boarded another early morning flight from Gatwick to Seattle.

Norwegian Airlines flies Boeing 787 'Dreamliners' to Seattle from Gatwick

We could have shaved some time and hotel stays off that by flying British Air from Athens but it would have come with a much higher ticket price. Instead, we’d opted to try Norwegian Air, the European low-cost airline, that is taking that side of the world by storm.

Even though we knew it was popular, we were surprised at how large its presence is at Gatwick.

Norwegian Airline counter at Gatwick

In September the budget airline, which flies to 150 destinations world-wide, began flying between Seattle and London four times a week. Flying this airline to Seattle can cost as little as $500US or less, round trip in economy class, with an additional charge for food and beverages ordered on board and for bags checked.

Affordable Luxury

The Lounge at Gatwick

Being a low-cost airline, it doesn't have a Business or First class section, yet it offers what we consider 'affordable luxury' in its Premium Economy class. For a trip as long as we were taking, that's what we wanted for at least a portion of this journey.

Premium Economy offers large reclining seats, with food and beverage service provided as part of the ticket price. We also had access to the Business Class lounge at the airport.  Our cost was about $1,300 per ticket – several hundred less than the price of Premium Economy tickets on British Air and we had no extra charge for seats (British Air charges for advance seat selection).

Two seat side, bulk head - perfect!

Waiting for takeoff  with feet up and not yet fully reclining, it had already exceeded our experience flying British Air Premium Economy last fall.

A Mimosa or a Buck's Fizz by any name, is tasty

Wine and beer are complimentary in Premium Economy and our flight attendant made sure that my Mimosa (or a 'Buck’s Fizz' as it is called by our British friends) was as generous a pour as The Scout’s club soda! A second round was offered before meal service commenced. We had a choice of fish, meat or chicken entry. We chose the fish which was flavorful, not overcooked, but steaming hot and tasty (on an airplane! - can you believe it??).

Dinner was served

The lights were dimmed as were the windows (the Dreamliner’s features include enhanced air filter systems, mood lighting and extra large windows that turn dark instead of closing completely.)

Lights and windows dimmed 

We set off for The Land of Nod and hours later awakened to the second round of food – this one a cold plate was just as tasty had the first had been.

Second meal service as tasty as the first

Had we flown in the Economy section we’d have made our food choices from the screens at each seat and the flight attendant would have brought the order from the galley and payment would have been made by credit card.

Menu choices included food and drink

As you can tell, we were pleased with that experience and are singing the praises of the new airline. I should note, that our praise is not based on any compensation we received from the airline for saying good things about them. . .they don't even know we are raving about them. But we wanted you to know as many of you are contemplating travel to Europe and it might be worthwhile to check out this airline.

That’s it from our Pacific Paradise this week.  Welcome to our new readers this week (thanks for getting in touch with us and letting us know how you came across TravelnWrite!). And thanks to all of you for the time you spend with us.

We are linking up this week with:
Best of Weekend
Through My Lens
Our World Tuesday
Wordless Wednesday
Travel Photo Thursday – 
Photo Friday
Weekend Travel Inspiration