Venetian harbours

Heraklion

Saturday 1

 

Coffee to clinch a deal

By the time I've finished drinking coffee with the college programmer and he's given me the chunk of cake which his wife had intended for his lunch and I've offered half of it to his elderly and infirm father who's sitting there alongside nodding and smiling all the while and I've met the self-same wife and talked about her job as a German-speaking guide, I feel I'm part of the family and that the transaction with the Visa card is an almost irrelevant formality ...


mine was smaller than this,
with two doors, otherwise similar

Turns out he has 35 cars in the summer, 25 in the winter; he sells the surplus ones in the autumn and buys new ones in the spring. Mine's a royal-blue Fiat, tiny but perfectly comfortable, all of five months old, and it costs 1.100 SKr. / 110 USD for ten days, it's sitting right outside the door with the key in ready to drive, and he'll drive me to the port when I've delivered it at 8pm on the Sunday evening ...

Only later do I notice that the name on the owner's label on the car seems familiar, and I finally realise that this is the self-same name that I was offered a car from via the internet travel agent, although at a price 150% as high as I got from Mr. Kafetzakis direct ...

Actually when I mention this fact to him on returning the car ten days later, he says "Oh no, that's my brother ..."