Global Greeks: Greek Australian Award Winning Writer Christos Tsiolkas - "I Will Ask the Queen to Return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece..."

 

Christos Tsiolkas - Winner 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize 

Christos Tsiolkas is 'one of Australia's pre-eminent contemporary novelists' (The Age). 

Born, raised and educated in Melbourne where he continues to live, Christos is one of our Global Greek Writers and one of twelve of Australia’s best writers who recently came together at Melbourne Town Hall for a night of celebration and reflection, sharing the common and different experiences that define Australia's past and  present, to mark the opening of Australia's newest cultural institution, The Wheeler Centre.

It was a night of storytelling, each writer reflecting on those tales that have been handed down to them through the generations, each giving voice to an inheritance of wisdom, of understanding, of identity.

This is  Greek Australian Christos Tsiolkas' very moving story, one that many of us in our Global Greek World can relate to and we thank him! (Thanks Konstantina M, Athens,  for drawing it to our attention) 

Teachings of my grandmothers

I NEVER really knew my grandparents. Both my grandfathers died in Greece before I ever visited there, and I met my grandmothers only twice in my life, once when I visited as a boy in 1975, and then again as a young adult in 1990.

For many of us, migration and distance has shaped the nature of our families and the cultures we believe we belong to. The stories I have of my grandparents' lives are second-hand, filtered through the memories, longings and secrets of my parents.

I am grateful that I did have an opportunity to meet my grandmothers. They both shared the same name, Spiridoula. But even those encounters were made difficult by the limitations of my Greek and the overwhelming chasm of experience that separated myself, a privileged child of the First World, and those two women, each born on the eve of the 20th century, in a peasant Eastern Mediterranean world that was to be torn apart by two Balkan wars, two world wars, an occupation, two dictatorships, a civil war.

I remember sitting in a kitchen in Athens with my maternal grandmother, and she crying, wanting to know why her daughter had only visited her once in all the time she had been a migrant in Australia.

I tried to explain the distances involved, the expense.

My uncle Mitso, who was sitting with us, took me aside and explained that once in the early '70s he was driving his mother from the village to Athens when they came to a fork in the road.

My giagia asked, ''Mitso, if we turn left instead of right, can we go and visit Georgia in Australia?'' You have to remember, Christo, my Uncle said to me, this is a woman born in a time when women were doomed to illiteracy and the shadows. Your giagia can't even read a map. And look at you, you are now a university student, you want to be a writer. You don't know how proud that makes us. But if you ever forget where you come from, tha se sfaxo, I will slaughter you.

I want to share with you a moment with this grandmother. Not anything she said but something she showed me.

I was a 10-year-old in the village, visiting from Melbourne, and my grandmother took me to the chicken coop to get a bird to prepare for dinner. She pointed to the one of the chooks and said, Go, catch it and kill it.

Now I was an inner-city Australian child and poultry and meat was something I believed just magically appeared on butcher's slabs and supermarket shelves. My giagia pointed to the bird and I shook my head.  

No, I insisted, I can't do it.

She was appalled. What do you mean, she said, you are nearly a man and you don't know how to kill a chicken? What has your mother been teaching you?

She adjusted her headscarf, hitched up her heavy black mourning skirt, chased after the chicken and brought it to me.

Now, she ordered, wring its neck.

I started to weep. The bird was fluttering in her hand and I was too scared to go near it. Taking pity on me, she ordered me to sit down next to her and proceeded to break the bird's neck. It was one swift stroke, a wrenching motion and the head pulled away from the body. There was blood and the beast continued to struggle in her hand. By now I was howling.

She ignored my tears and started to tell me how to prepare the bird for cooking. The hanging of the body in the cool of the cellar, putting the pot on the fire, placing the bird in the near boiling water, plucking the feathers first from the wings, the legs and then finally from the breasts.

When my mother arrived back from visiting her sister she was horrified.

What have you been showing Christo? 

 Something you should have showed him a long time ago, my giagia admonished her daughter.

That night we ate roast chook and I learnt something about the real meaning of placing food on the table.

I look at my nieces as they play with my father and mother, watch my aunt surrounded by her grandkids. I feel fortunate to have met my grandmothers, spent time with them, I feel a sadness that I could not have known them better, that I never met my grandfathers. I wonder what I could have learnt from them about war and occupation, dictatorship and democracy, poverty and suffering; but I also miss having been instructed on the smaller, just as important stuff, like how to prepare the grapes off the vine for wine, dry tobacco, build a shelter, tend a vegetable crop. I watch my nieces play with my father and mother and think this is what unconditional love is.

A few years ago a woman brought a dying bird into the veterinary clinic in which I am employed. The vet said there's nothing we can do, we have to put it down. She explained that we could inject it with litho barb but it is easy to miss a vital organ in such a small creature and it can be a horrible death as it literally drowns and suffocates from the poison.

The most humane thing to do is to break its neck, she explained, do you want me to show you how to do that? 

It's OK, I answered, I can do it, my grandmother taught me...

Watch and listen to Christos Tsiolkas as he tells this wonderful story

To read the original article at The Age, Click Here 

About Christos Tsiolkas

Greek-Australian author and playwright, essayist and screen writer, Christos Tsiolkas' first novel Loaded (1995) was made into the feature film Head-On (1998) by fellow Greek Australian, director Ana Kokkinos, starring Alex Dimitriades. His works are considered to be autobiographical to a certain extent, drawing on his many experiences growing up as a member of a cultural minority in Australia. 

Other novels include  The Jesus Man (1999), Dead Europe (2005), which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award, and his most recent novel The Slap, where a man slaps a child (not his own) at a suburban barbeque, the consequences of which reverberate through the lives of all of the witnesses to the incident.

The Slap won the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009 for best novel in the South-East Asia and South Pacific area. 

In an interview with Neos Kosmos Newspaper in Australia, after receiving his award, we were delighted to read his  answer to the question

What will you ask the Queen when you meet her? 

(traditionally Commonwealth Writers Prize winners get to meet Queen Elisabeth, the Head of the Commonwealth) 

I will ask her to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece!

From all of us in the Global Greek World, Christo, we congratulate you on your success, we thank you for the support and hope you do just that!

Global Greek Families: Who Would Ever Imagine This scenario? Bobby, Chris and Kelsie +RIP+

Imagine you are a parent with teenage children. 

OK

Imagine your kids have gone out with friends. 

OK, we worry but maybe not excessively. Being Greek parents, we probably worry a bit more than most but they're good kids so we trust them...

Imagine you have gone to sleep thinking all is well in the world. 

Great!

Imagine waking up to find out from Facebook, (yes you read correctly, Facebook, the site we all love to visit to catch up with our friends) that your loved one has been killed in one of the worst car accidents that your area has had, along with two other friends?

Devastating! 

That's the only way we can describe what happened to one of our Global Greek families living in Sydney this week, and our hearts go out to them all - to Bobby's family, to Chris' and to Kelsie's. May God give them strength...

Here is the story as posted on Australian news: To read the whole article click here

WHEN Angela and Maryanne Vourlis woke up yesterday, their 20th birthday, they logged on to Facebook expecting to read well wishes and greetings from friends.



Horrifically, the twins were confronted with the devastating news their brother Bobby, 17, had been killed in a triple-fatal accident, The Daily Telegraph reports.



He and two friends died when the car they were in crashed in heavy rain in Sydney early yesterday.



"I didn't get it. All these people were writing, 'RIP Chris Naylor' and 'RIP Bobby', and I thought: `What's going on?'," Angela said.



Desperate for reassurance there was a mistake, she tried over and over to ring her brother.



"I kept ringing and messaging but couldn't get on to him. So I rang Mum and said: 'Chris Naylor must have died - I just read it on Facebook. But where's Bobby?



"People are writing 'RIP Bobby' too.



"Mum said 'Bobby was with Chris Naylor last night'."



Online social networking had delivered the mother and daughter the worst possible news.



Heartbreakingly, a police delay in notifying the family meant Mrs Vourlis had to ring St Marys police to ask about her son's death - almost six hours after he had been killed.



Bobby's uncle Peter Matelis said it beggared belief that police had not contacted the family immediately after the accident.



"It's every parent's worst nightmare to lose a child in a car accident, but to have to hear it on Facebook, then have to chase up the police yourself, is just horrifying," Mr Matelis said.



And that is it - in a nutshell...



It's every parent's worst nightmare to lose a child in a car accident, but to have to hear it on Facebook, then have to chase up the police yourself, is just horrifying...



How very tragic! Sometimes life is so much more horrifying than any terror story we could make up.



Our question here though is not going to touch on the details of why the family wasn't informed earlier than they were or try to apportion blame for the accident, that is for other people and institutions to do, our question here is what is happening to our world?



What is it about the way society is going that the first thing we do is grab our iPhone, sit down at our laptop, or at our PC, to express our condolences or our feelings, or to post something about such a tragic event.



What is it about the way our society is going that the young person or people who wrote this in their status ( on their wall, their page, or whatever, it doesn't really matter),  didn't even think about the fact that the family of those involved might not yet know the news and the devastating effect it might have on them. 



Is it a lack of consideration, a lack of thinking ahead, a lack of common sense that prompted this or was it just a desire to express sadness, a natural desire to communicate the sad news and discuss it with someone?  

Totally natural you will say. Of course, most of us feel the need to discuss such a terrible event, or even a happy event,  anything that has touched us, with someone close to us - generally our family and our friends. 

What happens though when we only talk to our friends via the internet? 

What happens if, instead of turning to the person next to us and talking about it without anyone else hearing, like everything else we do we put it on our Facebook, Twitter or any other such site, and open it up, potentially, for the whole world to see, without a second thought, not thinking about the possible consequences of our actions.

When used correctly the amazing and generally beneficial effects of globalisation and the internet have been positive, such as the street protests in Iran, but it is not the first time that the internet has been used in an abusive fashion, early last year a young woman had her wedding photos accompanied by malicious comments sent to thousands of people around the world ...unknown to her... by someone who was obviously not a friend. Strangely enough, the young woman is Greek Australian...Daily Telegraph

For Bobby , Chris and Kelsie  and their families it is too late unfortunately.

Let us hope, however, that this horrible crash in Sydney that so sadly, needlessly and prematurely deprived three teenagers of their lives, will make us all sit back and think about how we see Facebook, Twitter and other such sites.

Perhaps it will make us all think long and hard before we post something that could have devastating effects on those concerned. 

Perhaps it will just make us think before we post. 

We hope so...

Global Greek Performers - Presenting talented musician, guitarist and performer extraordinaire - Greek Australian Orianthi Panagaris!!

Source: Orianthi

Meet Orianthi Panagaris, talented musician, guitarist and performer extraordinaire!!Listen to According to You, Orianthi's first single from her 'Believe' Album released today, 26 October 2009! It's really great and so catchy! A real hit!

Orianthi’s story begins in Adelaide, in South Australia where, she was born to Greek Australian parents on January 22, 1985.

At the age of six, Orianthi began taking an interest in her dad's record collection. "Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Cream, Santana… he was into guitar players that are real songwriters," she boasts.

Growing up in the 80s, a decade remembered for its many guitar greats, Orianthi listened to a lot of Whitesnake, Van Halen and Def Leppard. Her father, who used to be a player in a Greek band, also kept plenty of instruments around the house, and it didn't take long before Orianthi strummed her first chord. Mastering the six-string came naturally.

When I was 11, Carlos Santana came to play in Adelaide and that show really affected me," she recounts. “I begged my dad to get me a second hand electric guitar so I could be like Carlos, and that was it, no more acoustic. After that, I would buy all of Carlos' videos — on VHS! — which I kept rewinding to try and learn his solos. I totally wore out the tape.

Some seven years later when Carlos Santana passed through Adelaide again , she tells us on My Space,

I had the opportunity to meet and jam with Carlos Santana when I was 18 in my hometown. He invited me to get up and jam with him at soundcheck then later asked me if I would join him on stage that night to jam! It was an awesome experience to meet and jam with my idol...dreams really do come true!

Performances, tours and guest appearances with Steve Vai, ZZ Top and Prince have kept Orianthi busy up to now, and at the age of 24, Orianthi has already experienced what most aspiring musicians only dream of - she's opened for her hero (Steve Vai), backed an Idol (Carrie Underwood), and traded solos with a legend (Carlos Santana), a Santana who had this to say about Orianthi, (you can hear it for yourself in the interview on Australia's Today Show below) ...

If I was going to pass the baton to somebody, my first choice would be her!!!

Her electrifying performance with Carrie Underwood on stage at the 2009 Grammy Awards set the blogosphere buzzing with news of this little-known guitar prodigy. It prompted Michael Jackson to call with an offer for her to be his guitarist for his upcoming This is It concerts at the O2 Arena in London, following a prestigious line of guitar players including Eddie Van Halen, Santana, Slash, Steve Stevens, Jennifer Batten and Larry Carlton.

The world at large found out about Orianthi , and her amazing talent, when the Michael Jackson last rehearsal video was released just after Michael’s untimely death, and this brilliant young Greek Australian guitarist was literally catapulted on to the international stage.

A visibly moved Orianthi also performed on stage at Michael Jackson’s Memorial service joining in the tribute to the King of Pop We Are The World - his legendary song written with Lionel Ritchie for the children of Africa

.

We are sure we will hear a lot about this extremely talented young woman who now lives in Los Angeles and is preparing for the release of her album, Believe, with Geffen Records.

For now we will finish this post with her message to visitors to her Orianthi website:

I wanted to thank you all for your support and messages. I am so grateful to have been ab

le to play guitar with Michael Jackson and the band. Working with Michael was a life-changing experience, one I will never forget. It was awesome watching Michael dance and sing at rehearsals with us. He looked so happy. He was a musical icon and wonderful person and he has left us all too soon. I am really saddened by Michael’s passing and send my deepest condolences to his family.

You will be hearing more from me soon as I need some time to reflect.

Take as much time as you need, Orianthi.

Your friends around the world, and especially those in the Global Greek World will be waiting!

Sources, and to read more about Orianthi:

At Orianthi Click here

At MySpace Click Here

Interview on Australian television's Today Show

Orianthi's 'Believe' For more info Click Here

Global Greek Media: Greek Australian Radio Show - Evdomada Einai ...Kai Kylaei

Evdomada Einai … Kai Kylaei is a Greek-language radio show broadcast on Sydney’s Greek radio station 2MM. The aim of the show is to inform listeners with key news stories that made the headlines during the week and to entertain with music to chill out in between the news.

Although older music is aired the show attempts to showcase the latest from Greece both in pop and folk alternative styles. The show’s name Evdomada Einai … Kai Kylaei roughly translates into English as “The Week That Rolled By”.

The show first aired on 2MM back in October 1998 and has been the longest running show on 2MM. It’s usual timeslot since its inception is on Saturday morning from 9am to midday. Of course in Greek fashion the show regularly starts around half an hour so late...

To read more about Evdomada Einai ... Kai Kylaei, and where to find it, Click Here

Global Greek Thrillionaire - Presenting Nik Halik!

Greek Australian Nik Halik has just turned 40! If you were to judge his age by his Bio you would think it more likely that he is much older... but don't let his age fool you...he started young and does it all!

He calls himself The Thrillionaire. He has the money and motivation to pursue a list of things he wants to do before he dies, but even then he's got it all worked out. After all, he wrote his Things to Do list when he was eight years old, not something a lot of us have done.

He's had lunch on the Titanic; flown in a MiG aircraft; climbed Mt Everest, and trained to be the first Australian (and Greek) civilian in space.

Born in Australia to Greek parents Konstantinos and Dionisia Halikopoulos, Nik Halik (Nikos Halikopoulos) is something of a living legend!

According to his blog, Nik became a multi-millionaire and amassed great wealth through savvy investments in property and the stock market in his late 20s.

As well as being a global wealth strategist, Nik is a successful entrepreneur, international speaker, astronaut, high adrenalin adventurer and best-selling author. He is the founder and CEO of the FINANCIAL FREEDOM INSTITUTE, Money Masters Global and co-founder of The Intelligence Group of companies. His group of companies have financially educated and life coached over 250,000 individuals globally. He is the real deal, creating millionaire clients across the globe.

As an avid, thrill seeking adventurer, Nik was one of the first explorers to dive down five miles and land on the bow of the Titanic. He has summited the highest mountains in the world and was one of the privileged select explorers in the world to view the curvature of the earth from the edge of space. He is the very first flight-qualified and certified civilian astronaut from Australia and his biggest dream is to walk on the moon.

"I want to be one of the first group settlers to colonise the moon and I am prepared to provide all my wealth to charity and be stripped back to basics. That would be a really unique experience. It's something that I've been waiting for all my life", he told ABC News, and hopes to be a part of the NASA move to colonise the moon by 2018.

However if that doesn't happen, Halik has guaranteed he will make it there one day...

"I've paid an American company to, in the event of my death, my cremated remains will be rocketed to the moon and my ashes will be scattered on the lunar surface, so eventually I will make it to the moon." he says.

He currently resides in Miami, Florida but also in one of his homes in the Greek Islands, Morocco and Australia.

In JULY 2005, he set off on an expedition and thrill seeking adventure which consisted of diving 3 miles deep in the cold water abyss of the North Atlantic Ocean in a 3 manned Russian submersible, to become the first Australian (and Greek) to land on the bow section of the TITANIC and have lunch on it, the first Australian to set foot on the TITANIC since the 1912 sinking of the famous cruise liner in dangerous iceberg plagued waters.

His latest book,The Thrillionaire is orchestrated with stories of adventure interspersed with financial wisdom and personal development - an astonishing personal journey that will touch you deeply. Nik is an extremely gifted writer, painting beautiful pictures in the minds of readers and taking us on his journeys with him. He is an extraordinary individual and his uniqueness comes out at you from every page in this book.

The Thrillionaire® splashes a kaleidoscope of colours onto a life mosaic which will inspire, connect, contribute and stir the soul of every reader with its oasis of enlightenment.

Good Luck, Nik! We look forward to hearing more about your Thrillionaire achievements!

To Read More about Nik:

Nik's Thrillionaire Blog Click here

Nik in Space Click here

Nik on Facebook Click Here

Global Greece Through the Eyes of Greek Australian Writer Katherine Kizilos: 'The Greece that has always been there is the Greece I go back to.'

Greek Australian Katherine Kizilos is an award-winning Senior Writer for The Age Newspaper in Melbourne, Australia. Katherine writes regularly on social and cultural issues across the various sections of the paper. In May 2007 she won the Victoria Law Foundation's Tony Smith Award for reporting that promotes understanding of the work of the courts for her report on Victoria's Koori courts, "Law and a new order".

In her book, The Olive Grove: Travels in Greece, 1997, Katherine writes about Greece "with an insider's understanding, describing generous people,passionate politics,and breathtaking landscapes of a country that is frequently visited but rarely explored".

One of the reviews by an anonymous reader on Amazon.com, had this to say about The Olive Grove:

Sparked by childhood stories told by her father and a natural curiosity for the truth, Kizilos retraces the steps of her father to find the heart and soul of her roots. This entails a journey of not only the mainland, but several small islands and villages where the past struggles violently with the future.

Told in a concise and vivid way, she is both straightforward and philosophical. In contrast to other travel accounts, Kizilos' writing is accessible and often emotional because she is both a journalist who understands how to write for the public and a woman who feels life.

Because she travels to several "unknown" places in Greece -- not just Athens, Mykonos and other popular places frequented by tourists -- readers looking for something off the beaten track can appreciate her more.

Recently, one of her articles in The Age, written back in September 2005 but still relevant came to our attention and we enjoyed it very much, feeling that it really does represent how many of we Greek-Somethings feel about Greece. We have reproduced it here for the benefit of all our readers but you can click on the link at the end of the article to read the original. Thanks very much Katherine!! Keep on feeling like that!!

Ode to an Absent Friend

The Age - Melbourne September 2005

Sometimes, when you love a person who is far away, you carry them with you. When you meet again, the interval when you were parted disappears; it is insignificant. My visits to Greece are like this.

Years go by between visits, yet whenever I return, I feel at home. Melbourne is my real home, the place I was born and where I live and work. My feelings for Greece are separate from all that; they have their own independent life.

And like an absent friend, the Greece I remember is not static but always changing. Almost 30 years have passed since my first visit. The country that I saw then is, in many ways, quite different to the Greece of today - a place where even the shepherds carry mobile telephones, and where remote mountain villages are being kept alive by a tide of immigrants from neighbouring Albania. My idea, which cannot be proved, is that some essential qualities - the cardinal Greek virtues, if you like - are somehow able to survive the tides of politics and economics. The Greece that has always been there is the Greece I go back to.

A glass of water

Greece is not the poor country it was in 1978, the year of my earliest visit. Its poverty provided my first, and strongest, impression of the country then. Poverty was responsible for what I didn't like in Athens: the labyrinth of crowded, ugly, cement apartment blocks stewing under the nefos, the heavy cloud of pollution that choked the city. But it seemed to me then, and still does now, that this poverty was also what made the people so strong and direct.

Maybe it is a mistake to draw a connection between a person's lack of riches and their capacity to be open-hearted. I noticed both on my first trip to Greece and have placed them together ever since. If it is a mistake, it is one that other people have also made on visiting Greece.

In The Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller describes arriving in Athens in the months immediately before World War II. By day he was overwhelmed by the heat; he ventured from his hotel room in the evening, about 11pm. Walking the streets, he was moved by the sight of couples sitting together in cafes, talking softly and drinking glasses of water. These glasses of water, and the couples who sat before them holding hands, appeared to Miller to be sainted things.

He wrote: "The dust, the heat, the poverty, the bareness, the containedness of the people, and the water everywhere in little tumblers standing between the quiet, peaceful couples, gave me the feeling that there was something holy about the place, something nourishing and sustaining."

Greeks have a fine capacity to make a ritual of everyday blessings: a cup of coffee, a midday meal, an evening stroll - days revolve around these simple acts, which become rich because of the attention that is paid to them. This is not easy to explain, but it can be experienced when you are there, if you are open to it.

An Australian-born Greek I know, who visited Greece for the first time as a young man in his 20s, once described to me a visit he made to his uncle and aunt who lived in a poor village on the rocky ground near Argos.

"We sat inside, and then my aunt prepared lunch. After lunch, we moved the chairs into the courtyard and sat outside."

He did not mention what they talked about, or whether the neighbours dropped by, or even what they ate. Just the sitting together, the sharing of the meal and moving the chairs inside and outside.

How did he like it?

"I loved it. It was beautiful."

But to return to the glass of water. Even today, when a Greek talks about offering a glass of water, it is understood that this is a humble gesture, but also the essence of hospitality. A mere nothing, but everything. I once heard a Greek say of an old woman who had recently died: How could I forget her? When she had nothing, she offered me a glass of water.

The mountains and the sea

Old people in Greece retain the sense of the land that they acquired in their youth, before cars became commonplace. My Uncle Apostoli, for instance, who is now in his 80s, did not buy his one and only car until he was in his mid-50s. He and his wife Katina, who does not drive, have spent most of their lives walking up and down the mountain where they were born.

This is healthful, but it also means that their sense of the place runs deep. Each bend in the road holds a memory, and so do the olive groves, the cherry orchards and the vineyards that grow on the surrounding valleys and hillsides. The land that belongs to the villagers does not comprise one continuous plot, but many different bits and pieces on various sites, acquired over years. Each piece of land has its own name and history.

The task of tending to this land, and of providing for their family is their pride, but has also been their burden. The villagers stayed on the mountain while their brothers and sisters travelled overseas to make their fortunes. The ones who left Greece are envied and pitied for the adventure they made of their life. Envied for their fortune - if they were able to make one - and also for the freedom of being released from the mountain and its gravity and toil. Pitied because most of the people who leave are still bound to the place; it always remains a part of them.

The idea that the land carries a person's history and can provide their nourishment and solace is strong in Greece. When Greece was a peasant economy, there were practical reasons for this. But there is another reason, which can sound sentimental to say aloud (particularly to someone as outwardly gruff and sceptical as my Uncle Apostoli) but which is plain and obvious to any visitor: the overwhelming beauty of the place.

Why so much beauty is concentrated in such a small area, and what effect it has on the people who live there, are questions without answers. In Greece, vistas of the mountains and the sea are endlessly juxtaposed, with dazzling effect. The light is limpid, the colours intense. If you arrive by plane from Australia, you are rewarded with the sight of the sun rising over the Aegean and its islands; hundreds of mountains floating in the sea. It is astonishing to look down and find that Greece is more beautiful than you remember it to be.

Madness

Many orderly and predictable events take place in Greece. The new underground rail system in Athens, for example, is handsome, well-designed and a model of efficiency. All around the country, bread rises and is baked in thousands of reliable bakeries. Well-dressed children go to school and do their homework and play soccer in the park when siesta time is over. Church bells ring on name days and everybody visits their parents at Easter. In many ways, Greece is still a traditional society, which means a Greek is more likely to follow custom and convention than an Australian - because here it is easier for a person to cut loose and declare themselves free of all ties than it is in Greece.

For all that, the Greek reputation for madness is not unfounded. Public drunkenness is rare, but it is not unusual for people to yell at each other in the street (and then, perhaps, to embrace), to push in, to smoke too much, to become argumentative, or to buy you, a perfect stranger, a meal for no reason except that they like the look of you and why should you be sitting there all alone on such a beautiful evening? If the ability to strike up a spontaneous friendship is a sign of madness, then the Greeks are barking.

Greeks can also be exasperating, particularly in banks and government offices. As a rule (with honourable exceptions) the melancholy facts of bureaucracy and paperwork do not bring out the best in the Greek people. There may be historical reasons for this, connected to the long years of Greek subjugation under the Ottomans and the sense it gave them that any official - even a bank teller or a post office clerk - is a powerful person who can use his influence for personal advantage.

My own experience is that everyday dealings in Greece - shopping, ordering coffee, asking for directions - are unpredictable. You can never tell where the simplest exchange will take you. One can be met with great kindness or exasperating rudeness, sometimes in dizzying succession.

Whether or not you like this is a matter of temperament. On a recent trip to Greece, my son, who does not speak Greek, witnessed a long and intense conversation between a husband and wife as we travelled down a mountain together in a car. He watched their hand gestures, listened to their raised voices and their laughter, and wondered what it was all about.

Peas, I told him. Green peas. They are particularly good this year. Nick wants Sophia to buy more peas.

People

The word for summer in Greek means good weather; Greece is sold as the land of eternal summertime, a good-time place that you leave when summer is over. In summer, the population of Greece doubles; by November the Greeks mostly have the country back to themselves. This means, for instance, that most visitors do not see how good Athens can be in the winter, with its wonderful shops and restaurants. They do not see what Greece is like when everyone is back at work.

I had a friend who enjoyed Greece so much in the summer that he was determined to live there all year round; his plan was to open a bar on the island he loved best. I think he lasted six months. He complained that the island was cold in the winter and dreary in the off-season. And he found that not speaking Greek, which had been no obstacle during his summer holiday, was a huge disadvantage when trying to set up a business. He blamed the Greeks bitterly for this failure. Greece was not forgiven for having a workaday self.

But it is in this working Greece, this parallel place where there are all seasons, where Greek people can be found. And they need to be found, and talked to, if you want a living, breathing sense of what Greece is.

This is surely true of all places, not just Greece. And it can be difficult to know a people, particularly if you do not share a language (and Greek is a difficult language, as Greeks are proud to explain to you).

Not everyone will want to find this other Greece, and perhaps that is just as well. And not all those who do find it will like it there; Greece is not for everyone. But my own bias is that Greece is worth the effort. It is a land lovely beyond imagining and the people who live there belong to the place and will welcome you - if you are open to them and willing to take them as they are.

Click here To read the original article

Click here To buy the book -The Olive Grove on Amazon.com