Carl Nilsson-Polias

I’m in Paradise.

And no, I’m not talking about the rather un-Eden-like suburb in Adelaide. I’m talking about Symi.

I’m not going to bandy about superlatives because the fact is that I haven’t been to enough places to say that this is the greatest Mediterranean island or any similarly hyperbolic statement. I’m sure the travel nazis out there will suggest a spot on Sicily or a bay in Turkey or a suburb in Carthage that is superior in such and such a way but that’s not the point. Symi has crystal clear water, beautiful swimming spots, stunning neoclassical architecture, high mountains, goats, donkeys, rabbits, wild sage and sponge-diving Greeks. If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, I don’t want to know you. There’s also the fact that my grandparents and their parents (and so on and so forth) came from this island. I’m not about to write a 2,500 word essay for you on ‘Landscape as a Site for Spiritual Revival’ because I did that in my first year at university, but there is something wonderfully intangible and metaphysical about my attachment to this place. God, I’m getting a bit purple with the prose here, but you know what I mean. Anyway, before you either get teary or throw up, I’ll leave the sentimentality behind.

To retreat to the safe ground of Italian film analogy, my week in Symi might be likened to being on the set of “Il Postino” with the cast of “Amarcord” and “Padre, Padrone”. I know at least some of you understand what that means.

We’ve now been around the island by car and by boat, with the result that we’ve swum at about a dozen secluded coves, inlets, key-hole bays, pebble beaches and caves. From Panormiti, to Marathounda, to Sesklia, to some other place whose name rolls of the tongue like an olive pit.

To give you a sense of what my life’s been like for the past week, here is an itinerary of a typical day:

Sunrise: Wake up to go for a walk or run before it gets too bloody hot (it was 35-40 degrees all week … The island gets temperatures in the mid-to-high forties).
9am: Go for a swim between the fishing boats in the second deepest natural harbour in the world in order to wash off the sweat from the walk.
9:30am: Eat breakfast consisting of yoghurt, honey and peach.
10am: Have a nap.
11am: Go for a swim. Finish reading Margaret Atwood’s “The Edible Woman”
1pm: Eat lunch consisting of feta, olives, tomato, cucumber, oregano, olive oil, fresh bread and retsina.
2pm: Have a nap.
4pm: Go for a swim to wash off sweat from nap. Be totally bowled over by gorgeous Danish girl. Begin reading Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and wonder if Danish girls go for bookish thespian types.
7pm: Have a beer. Spend twenty minutes on one clue in the Sunday Times cryptic crossword, work it out and feel thoroughly satisfied with one’s hard labour.
8pm: Put a shirt on for the first time that day. Drink ouzo as an aperitif.
9pm: Eat fresh fish or squid at a restaurant.
11pm: Shower for the first time that day to remove the “salt-encrusted eyelashes look” that I’ve been trying to promote.
Midnight: Write a few lines of an email until the air cools down a bit.

For three months of the year (July-September) Symi has an arts festival that organises more or less nightly events that range from outdoor cinema to clowns to dance and music (and they’re all free). There is a program for all the events but none of the locations or times are given until the morning before the event, when a guy on a megaphone announces the details one word per 10 seconds (the words have to be separated to allow the echoes off the mountains to die away: “Tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight … at, at, at, at, at … nine, nine, nine, nine, nine …”). On Wednesday night we saw a performance by the Byzantine Ecclesiastical choir in the town square, which is nestled in at the top of the harbour, under the houses that rise up the slopes. The choir was the largest group of short men I’ve ever seen gathered together in one place. At the end of a brief sound check, the official party of three Greek Orthodox priests/bishops swaggered in, blessed the proceedings, checked their hair, had their photo taken, and then pulled up chairs. The choir opened with some a cappella religious songs (none of your poncy pre-pubescent-boy sound here, this choir sounds like a group of old Greek men who drop in a few quarter tones every now and again). In the subsequent traditional pieces, they were accompanied by one of the tightest bands I’ve ever heard. The clarinettist surged through his solos and, in some songs, added some spice by taking his mouth piece out and playing the clarinet as a flute (and that’s what separates the greats from Kenny G). The violinist (who was blind, as were the conductor and several singers) was exceptionally brilliant throughout. The rhythm section included Greece’s answer to Ernest Ranglin on guitar, a cute little silver-haired man on zither, and a lute player who made me wonder whether Jimi Hendrix started off life as Dmitri Hendrixopolous. If you saw Apodimi Compania at Womad a few years ago, you’ll know the kind of group I’m talking about. However, the lack of grass (underfoot and in the air) meant I knew I wasn’t at Womad. Yet, the one chain-smoking drunk guy (looking like Danny Devito’s character in “The Man Who Wasn’t There”) who got up to dance in front of the stage, shake hands with the bishops and generally be jolly definitely offered a Symi-fied version of all those hippy gurners down the front of Stage Three.

On Thursday night we saw a performance by a chamber quartet playing under the pink oleander outside one of Symi’s 365 churches (they literally have a church for every day of the year here, as well as a few isolated monasteries). There was some Bach … the kind of music that makes your eyebrows rise and fall in sympathy with the soprano’s cascading scales and arpeggios. There was a beautiful Debussy piano piece, “La puerta del vino”, and some pieces by local Greek composers, some of which were based on folk tunes from the Dodecanese islands (of which Symi and Rhodes are members). A really very civilised night out.

By the time I have I chance to send this off, I’ll be back on Rodos. I’m seriously hoping I’ll be able to hire a scooter for at least one day to get around the island a bit and to suppress my deep and inexorable yearnings for dear ‘Sophia’ back home, locked in the garage. Ah, well.

Meanwhile, one of our neighbours is calling after her friend. The friend presumably lives on the other side of the harbour because our neighbour is doing a very neat impression of Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire” …… “Sebastiana. Sebastiana!”. Olive oil does wonders for the vocal chords it would seem.