| olives and ravines |
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The village actually seems to have some remnants of a local population:
- a few boats by the river estuary where it opens into the bay
- real trees with old thick trunks
- an orange tree with one orange on it (stuck on for the tourists?)
- a few chickens and a cock who still hadn't stopped crowing at 11 am
- the village chapel was open
Lovely to be able to just go into a chapel like that; though I must say I'm glad I'm able to live in Sweden and work in the Swedish church where the aesthetics are largely consonant with my own - personally I hate the tawdry style of Orthodox places of worship, the silver frames and silk cloths, the way the altar is hidden from the populace, the cheap metal-framed doors with bathroom-glass in them that look as if they're made in Birmingham.
In the supermarket the only hard cheese is from Holland, the only butter from Denmark; I'd heard that most of the fetà cheese comes from Denmark too these days; but here they have it in a big lump, with Greek writing embossed in it from the mould, and she says it's Cretan ... There's no soft bread, only these brown rusks which are everywhere.
On the way out of the village I pass a tramp with an enormous kit-bag on his shoulders ... when I pass another one just the same later on I gain the impression that they're actually normal villagers collecting firewood from the hills.
Outside the village there seem to be lots of tiny smallholdings, with a few orange trees; the buildings remind me of Russian dachas, the style of planting and growing things remind me of Mendoza in Argentina ...
Is it just because I've just arrived that everything reminds me of something else instead of just being itself, or am I subconsciously looking for something familiar to relate to?