Island Life:Koufonisi

The city has never felt more glum and I feel so disconnected, as if I've been gone for ages. In truth I was only gone for a week which thankfully seemed a lot longer as it was going by but suddenly feels brief and tiresome now it's passed. I wish I had stayed on the island. Time seems to work differently there or wherever summer finds you. As if it stops and starts at its own pace, languidly and hastily all at the same time. An hour feels like ages on the beach and a night feels like a minute. I'm a city girl, I grew up in the city, I adore the city. The traffic, the noise, the impurity and the beauty in the grey and murky. I mean I live in Athens so it's not so murky, actually sunny and alight most days. The murkiness perhaps draws itself from routine, from characters and from the idea that a city should be something out of comic book, dark and brooding. At least in my head. But I adore it. Summers though are really when  Greece is at it's most astonishing. Ever since I was a little girl the islands were my escape. I lived in Santorini as a baby, and later while other kids would visit their grandparent's villages I would be swimming in a different sea, discovering a new island.The water was always essential to me. I was always in the water. I guess it's where I feel most comfortable and weightless, flowing but secure. I swam and held my breath under water until I was blue in the face( I still do) and over the years I've associated the sea, the blue, the island with good things. But I always came back to the city and it always seemed different in its sameness. This time I just didn't get enough. My mind wasn't ready to quit daydreaming and my body didn't want to leave the water. I almost wanted to quit my job, not for any particular reason other than to protest coming back. To live in anarchy, not to conform, not to be told when to come back to responsibility, not to be told when to get out of the water because I'm not a child anymore..and yet isn't it funny that we get told what to do more so now that we are adults than when we were children? Not in the literal sense like when our parents told us to brush our teeth and eat our vegetables. Alas as adults we still have to sleep at a certain time to go to work, work certain hours, look a certain way, eat a certain time and in a sense those things aren't dictated by us we just enforce them on ourselves because of circumstance and routine. Many times I think part of what made me want to be a writer was that I could make my own schedule, not to have an everyday-ness that someone set for me, do it from anywhere and because I hate working with other people. Maybe next year I'll have written a book and moved to an island. Maybe I'll go back to the island we've been going to for the past two years. Speaking of which, the reason I started writing this, my vacation. Koufonisi is paradise, in no way exaggerating it is heaven on earth.

The waters are crystal clear and tirquoise, the cuisine is amazing and the people are friendly but at safe distances. There is a lot of walking involved but it is so worth it. Even this city girl found herself enamored with the blue skies and brownish green shrubs and white flowers that grew in the sand. Walking along the coastline, navigating around rocky, sharp cliffs and white, sandy shores was even more adventurous and majestic done at night, in the pitch black, when the sea looks like oil and everything seems somehow bigger. In total we must have walked about 20-25km during the 5 days we were there. We snorkeled through deep caves that led to open sea and along the rocks where my boyfriend kept collecting live seashells and I kept making him put them back in their "home". We climbed down to the most spectacular hidden beach where the water is milky white and frothy. We didn't spare any expenses or calories when it came to delicious meals and I'm so glad we didn't. I crave luxury and richness and I found all of that in the nature's colors, the sea, the food, the essense of the island life. In the end I don't know that I could live there but it is certainly hard to leave it behind.

Squirrels, maple leaves and ten days with mummy dearest

I will never understand why people always, always insist on clapping when the plane lands. It's a fine tradition sure, but cringe! I mean it's their job! It's like saying "there was about a 50/50 chance they weren't gonna be able to land this plane and all of us would die, so applause all around for that not happening"! I'm more impressed when a massive metal thing with 200 people in it actually makes it up.  Now that's something to applaud. Take-offs are always the worst for me, those few moments when the plane lifts off the ground and starts its rapid ascend into the sky and you're like "is it gonna make it?", especially when you're sitting behind a fat, curry-smelling East Indian couple who seem to be stalking you since last Christmas when you were on the same flight sitting next to them and they didn't speak a word of bloody English and they kept fidgeting in their seats and kept you awake for the entire 9 hour flight. This time my exotic tormentors had their seats pushed back so far I couldn't get in or out of my already shitty seat. I mean, who does that? There is such a thing as flying etiquette ya smelly bastard. To top that experience I also had a lay-over in Paris which meant dealing with the French, whose incompetence is like second nature which they communicate exclusively in their native tongue. I can speak some French but apparently not enough to tell them they're cunts. Unlike the Canadians who are actually pretty cool folk. Of course most of their country is a god-forsaken icicle but arriving in Toronto, unlike last year, I found it to be surprisingly mild weather-wise. The day following my arrival we drove up to a friend's cottage, literally a cabin in the woods with a large window right in front of the toilet seat looking out upon the dark woods(perfect for say a bear or a serial killer to pop out and scare the buttons of your shirt. Actually if it was a serial killer, or a clown as my buddy likes to remind me, you'd be losing a lot more than just your buttons), located passed something called the Snow Belt, with a car filled with an excess of smelly cheese, wine and various gourmet delights, although we mostly stuck with the wine and cheese. I was comfortably plopped in front of the fireplace for almost all of the two days we spent there and my jet lagged, abnormal, sleeping patterns, which woke me at 6 a.m, offered a sun-drenched view of the frozen lake and woods right outside my bedroom window, utterly breathtaking. Mum, Bruce and I ventured to the nearby town of Gravenhurst for some thrift shopping and discovered a music and antique shop which I would be happy to be left at forever. Records, guitars and old books, far to heavy for me to carry back home, and a collection of typewriters one of which dating back 150 years, that made me tear up. And then came the plight of our adventure. I discovered that although if all else fails I could easily become a plumber, my surprising professional skill doesn't go as far as cutting through a frozen lake and replacing a water pipe frozen in its entirety. It's surprising how much you miss running water when you don't have it. We instantly felt dirty and itchy and fled to civilization. With a warm home, running water and clean hair I spent the rest of Christmas in Toronto going nuts over the squirrels(pun mostly intended and very successful) that were literally everywhere in all shapes and sizes, visiting a petting zoo at which I did not get to pet anything and eating amazing food cooked by my mum, who always swears she can't cook just to get out of doing it, and drinking mimosas, not just for brunch. On one occasion we found it a delightful idea to tipsily run around the neighborhood late at night and look at Christmas lights and decorations, most of them tacky and some downright terrifying such as one snowman, mum running down the street with her tiny skinny legs and I walking at my usual pace which doesn't count as running or strolling but is a rather odd combination, trying not to trip and fall as I usually do. The baffling truth is that this time around I didn't need to be drunk to get through the Holidays, me and mum got on spectacularly well and although I missed people back home I would have gladly stayed longer, voluntarily, sober(I know, I am shocked as well). Though I planned on writing earlier and while I was there, I was having to much of a damn good time to be bothered, honestly. My last day was consumerist heaven, a much needed day-long Boxing Day shopping spree for presents, a lot of them for myself, and a mother-daughter-and Bruce mani-pedi. In the evening we decided to end my trip going full circle to the place that started it, a charming pub on the Danforth called Allen's- a small parenthesis here to talk about the food at Allen's. The steamed muscles in white wine were to die for, the pork medallions were exquisite but the burgers...ah the burgers! Now, I basically eat for a living and I will go on record, with confidence, and say those were the best burgers I have ever had. Okay, parenthesis close, just had to share that- and once we were fed and sufficiently wined we popped in next door to the Irish Pub for what my mother called a jig. Due to the festive season there was a live band with traditional Irish music played not be ginger-bearded Irish folk but by massive clean-shaven Kiwis. It was sort of the perfect way to end my visit which was very merry indeed. At the airport I ran into the same Indian couple and laughed at the face of in-flight horror as the kind, wonderful woman at check-in gave me an excellent premium seat, right next to first class in which such a thing as the elusive, stuff of dreams, leg-room existed! Although it wasn't my preferred and most beloved British Airways, KLM did just fine and the tall Dutch flight attendants were polite and proper with a touch of effortless sophistication, and they let me use the first-class bathroom which is why somewhere in the world there is a Dutch gentleman flight attendant I very much love. And nobody dared clap as the plane landed...
Finally on dry land, with swollen feet struggling to fit in their shoes, I arrived back home to a bouquet of white tulips sprinkled with glitter and the sight of my wonderful boyfriend.

Athens Speciale

There's a real good chance I smell as if I fell into a tank of tzatziki, onions and meat grease and marinated in it for 3 days. I don't think I've ever eaten that much souvlaki in my whole life! And I'm Greek! Well half-Greek but I haven't drank that much tea either as half-English. Truth be told, it's fun running around the city, finding the most surreal places to eat, and Athens is a lot bigger and more bizarre than it seems. For many reasons it is odd and even contradictory that I ended up as food writer. Reasons I will discuss later.What excited me most in the beginning was the idea of writing professionally for a famous chef who also happens to be a close friend so the chemistry isn't lacking. Soon I discovered the absolute turn-on of being privy to the luxurious and lavish as well as the hidden and often forgotten. I always loved this city. The deafening sounds of traffic and construction, the never ending chatter that starts becoming white-noise after a while, the foul odors of garbage mixed with the mouth-watering aromas of souvlaki being grilled at almost every corner. It seems I am discovering a new, almost cinematic, side of her. The first frame has us running to cross the high trafficked street amidst violent honks and mad drivers to get to the quietest little tavern to eat traditional Greek food and chill under the shadowy trees. We are then eating legendary pizza next to a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk and a hooker giving a john a blowjob in the middle of the street, just minutes away from a nearby fancy neighborhood where we have sushi as if we were native New Yorkers in Manhattan. Since we are never far from a grill we immediately after feast like Greeks on some filthy souvlaki which is not particularly to anyone's liking(that happens too). The final shot closes in on Vasilis Kallidis, my chef extraordinaire holding a giant ice-cream while the rest of us behind the scenes are stuffing desserts in our already full stomachs. Now back home, I'm kinda reveling in my intense body fragrance, which I like to call eau de κρεατίλα (meaty), as it reminds of how much I truly love my job!