10/4 - Cards and Cars

Tuesday was a slower day for us. Again, Marika, to our great appreciation, was able to lend us her car for most of the day. So, around midday Maria and I went out to make good on our plans of the previous day and do some serious grocery shopping. I’d already done some in the morning at the local “supermarket”, but this was a visit to the island’s biggest supermarket at Mesaria. To put that in context it was probably half to a third the size of one of our Woolworth’s or Coles.
Of course, shopping in a foreign supermarket is an adventure and challenge unto itself. Not an unfamiliar one but the combination of slowness with the characters of the Greek alphabet, combined with the fact that we have a very small vocabulary of words, and didn’t bring our dictionary meant that we were often unsure of what we were looking at (e.g., trying to find sour cream as opposed to normal cream). You can learn lots about a culture based on how much shelf space they dedicate to different items and the prices they charge for things. There was a whole isle of bottled water (remember water from the tap is too salty) and its cheap (under AU$1 for 1.5 litres), a wide choice of beers (500ml and 250ml seeming to be preferred sizes – I have to say I don’t mind the Mythos beer which seems to be the most common local beer), butchers that keep most of their wares in the back room (not on display), loaves of sliced bread that equate to 2 aussie loaves in length (that’s opposed to Japanese loaves that are often 6 large and thick slices), etc. etc. We did pretty well in finding most of what we wanted.

With that done, and some lunch eaten, we went for a drive along the black sand beach front; that is from Kamari way up to Monolithos (quite a bit of land for sale there), and Karterados. As on previous days we found over half the businesses closed, and the tourist areas often possessing a run-down, dilapidated look. Santorini has a strange calendar driven by tourism and the seasons. For 7 months of the year – from May - the island is full-bore with tourism. Marika talks of working 20-hours a day, 7-days a week during this period. Outside this time, much of the island’s services shutdown – the buses run less regularly, many hotels, restaurants, and shops are simply closed (for 5 months) etc. We are here during the lead-up period to the tourist season. In the core centres of tourism such as Fira and Ia the shops are mainly open. However even significant centres such as Kamari (sort of a beach resort) have less than 10% of their businesses running.

It is an interesting time to be on the island, and I certainly welcome the fact that its not crowded. But it can also be frustrating. We stopped in Karterados when we saw an internet café sign. Investigating further we found the business simply had not opened as yet. We also looked for a charger for the kid’s DSs, but were unable to find one (only chargers for the DS Lite).We arrived back in time for Grant to head off to soccer with Stavros – a major event in each day for Grant, while I dropped down the office to post the Easter entries (uploading the images takes a long time on Marika’s connection). Finally, we cooked dinner, after which Marika taught us two cards games that we could play with her father.