O Pramateftis - Iraklion 1961

This next video is taken in Iraklion in 1961. It has been posted by John Sooklaris but the man behind the camera is his father Anthony Sooklaris. They visited Crete on a ship sponsored by the Pancretan Society of America in 1961.

This film shows Iraklion very well. You clearly see the old market in Iraklion with all the butchers and fruit and cheese shops unlike now when it is mostly tourist shops. You then have some clear shots of Eleftheriou Square (Freedom Square where I used to work in 1968 on) and the Morosini fountain.

In the closing shots of the film you see a man walking across the road. This is the later very famous musician Nikos Xylouris the great singer of Crete.

Here are Johns words about the movie: “O Pramateftis. While this video clip is more the life and times of Heraklion, Crete, in 1961, it does tell a story that Mountaki so eloquently tells in this story of the poor peddler. You will see peddlers selling their wares at or near the Agora. I just love the shot of the traffic cop.

Anthony Sooklaris so keenly captures the moment in this amazing footage of what life was like. Make sure to catch the traffic cop. It’s a classic solution to a then “new” problem of how to deal with more cars on streets that were once more populated by horses and donkeys, than by motor vehicles.

It was a more simple life, and it will no doubt remind us of fond memories of this most precious past.”

Here is the movie:

Enjoy, but see also how much this island has changed in 47 years.

Film of Hania in 1961

In 1961 a cruise ship called the Queen Frederica set out from the United States to visit Crete. On board were a large number of American Cretans coming to see again - or see for the first time, perhaps, their homeland.

Luckily, one man had what we used to call a Super 8 movie camera. The kind that takes 8mm wide film that you have to have developed professionally. He took some film of the trip and what they saw and where they went in Crete. These old movies, amateur movies but well filmed have now been converted by a man called John Sooklaris in America, and submitted via Youtube for me to display here on my Cretan website. John, thanks for doing this, these films are quite unique and priceless.

The first movie that I am putting on here is of the city of Hania and around in 1961. This was five years before I came to Crete over forty years ago. The film is wonderful, it shows the squares and the Agora and some of the beach between the city and the Akrotiri peninsular. It is ten minutes long. Remember that in 1961, Hania was the capital of Crete. It was changed to Iraklion in 1975. So here is the movie in the days before tourism.

I hope that you enjoyed it and I will be posting more of this 1961 trip very soon.

Another clip from Zorba

This is another clip from Zorba, the film starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates, where Zorba dances until he is exhausted. In this clip we see the real attempt to display the exuberance of Cretans.

Thanks for all your responses on the last clip. This clip tells more of the story.

Zorba’s Dance.

I really love this clip from Zorba the Greek. It is the final moments in the film following the enormous disaster that Zorba caused running logs from the monastery on top of the hill down to the sea. The clip is taken on Stavros bay in the Akrotiri peninsular. Anthony Quinn is Zorba and Alan Bates is the English guy.

Nice stuff, I hope you enjoyed it.

Romiosini - The Memory

I wrote an article a while ago called Romiosini, the soul of Greece and I don’t know how many of you read that article. But it was for real. I spent some time back in the sixties and seventies working on what I had discovered as the soul of Greece. For English people coming to live here I felt that it was an idea that they should understand.

And I feel that you should try to make an effort to understand this. To help, I have added this fragment.

Carnival Day

Tomorrow is clean Monday, the first day of Lent and the day that all Greeks go and fly a kite on the beach or a high hill. But today, today was Carnival Day. Here are some pictures of our local carnival in the town of Kalives, Hania.

These are a few of the well dressed locals walking through the village.

Now the floats start to go by - headed, of course, by the god Dionysus.

Here is the wonderful queen of the carnival, sitting between the feet of the Sphinx. Perhaps I should have said Egyptian queen, ah well…

And of course Harry Potter seems to be taking over the world.

I do love this beautiful dragon.

This is the float for the local football team, the Titans.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say too much, but you may remember the recent police raids on the village of Zoniana. This float represents that and you will see . . .

. . . from the writing on the float some of the dubious benefits of that place. The little trailer at the back is of course the safe that was stolen from the local bank and allegedly found somewhere else.

So let us end there with our beautiful dancing girls . . . whoopa!!

Spring Has Arrived In Crete.

Although yesterday was a tad cloudy in Hania, we decided to hunt for spring in the Amari valley - 500 metres above sea level. Around two weeks ago we had a cold snap that was part of the worst cooling period in February for fifty years - all across the northern hemisphere. Yesterday in the Amari valley it was just pure warm sunshine and cloudless blue skies - and everywhere, like magic, flowers had sprung up. The magic that is always spring in crete.

Here are the huge yellow balls of flower on the wild fennel.

The wild dwarf Irises bursting through the undergrowth

Here is the superb wild Pistachio tree with snowy Psiloritis (Mount Ida) behind.

Wild Anenomes bursting through the grass. In fact these Amari Anenomes are so beautiful that I took a close up:

So there you have  it. Spring has sprung already on the beautiful island of Crete.

Joni Mitchell - Star of Crete

I have to say here and now that I am a great fan of Joni Mitchell. The posts that I have written here regarding her time in Crete and the video of the song Carey that I placed a week or two ago have generated so much response that I think that perhaps readers of this blog like her too.

Her songs are so unique. They are musically and poetically so different from other songs or artists that perhaps you either love her or loathe her. She has made many albums, some more successful than others but to see her ‘live’ when she sang these songs was the most amazing thing.

She did a concert for the BBC Television in 1970 and she sang beautifully:

Hard to believe that in fact she is older than me. She was born Roberta Joan Anderson on 7th November 1943 and she grew up busking on the west coast of Canada. Her life details are available to all on Wikipedia. The song Carey is available on her album ‘Blue’, an excellent album.

As far as I can make out she was in Crete, mainly in Matala, in 1968 to 1969. She must have written the song Carey about this time I guess.

Today she is approaching her 65th birthday in November this year. She is still singing. One of her earliest songs was called ‘Both Sides Now’. A lovely song of novelty and a freshness about about life. Here it is performed in 1970.

Here is the lyric:

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave ‘em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all.

It was a song from a young girl trying to understand life and also accepting her lack of understanding. Fast forward forty years and Joni Mitchell on her latest album has decided to sing this same song very differently. The words are the same but the song now seems to contain forty or more years experience. By choosing the same song that made her so popular long ago and singing it today almost in a new light shows her great ability and her dignity.

So here it is: ‘Both Sides Now’ made in the year 2000 - 57 years after she was born.

I hope you enjoyed her.

Spinalonga - The Island off Crete.

The island of Spinalonga (actual name Kalidon) lies just off the coast of the village of Plaka, near Elounda, Agios Nicholaos, in Crete. The name Spinalonga is Venetian meaning ‘Long Thorn’.

It came to note in the year of 1579 when the occupying Venetians created a fortress on the island. Some years later when the Ottoman forces invaded Crete, Spinalonga was one of the places that they could not or would not take from the Venetians. So for 50 years after the invasion the island was still held from the Turks and came to be a centre for resistance against them. All supplies to the island came from the sea, one of the last outposts of the Venetian empire.

In 1903 the Greek government turned the entire island into a leper colony. Cretans with leprosy left the caves where they had to live and came to the island of Spinalonga where at least they received medical facilities and a supply of food and social security. This was maintained until 1957 when once again the island became uninhabited.

When I worked in Crete in the late sixties early seventies we used to take tourists to the island from the Italian Cruise ships docking in Iraklion. We used the theme of being ’stranded on a desert island’ where we laid out tables of food and running barbecues for the tourists. My boss always told me never to mention that it had been a leper colony. It went very well until I had a break on holiday for a week when I came to Rethymnon and stayed in the government hotel there. Of course in those days under the Junta government the police knew where I had gone and could be located.

The way that this trip worked was that we employed people with big speedboats to take the tourists out after they had alighted from their coach from Iraklion. We also employed people to set up the food and the barbecues as well as bringing them back to get on their bus to the cruise ship in Iraklion.

This time that I was away, my boss had set up the trip. He employed the speedboats to take them out as well as the food and the barbecues. Unfortunately by lunchtime, what with all the friends he had in Agious Nicholas, he was pretty drunk and had forgotten all about the tourists.

As evening drew in, I had a phonecall at my hotel in Rethymnon from the chief of police in Agios Nicholas. He asked if I knew that there were tourists on Spinalonga today and did I know that they were still there lighting fires on the pebbly beach to attract attention?

I asked where my boss was and he said he had no idea. I asked him to tell the owners of the speedboats to get them off of the island back to their bus in Agios Nicholas. He said that it wasn’t his job to do that, so I pleaded and promised him a good night out. He agreed. It would take at least two to three hours depending on what happened to get them off and on the bus. I told him I would drive there as fast as I could. Next I phoned the port in Iraklion and told the purser of the cruise ship that they may be a little late but it wasn’t a problem. Then I drove like hell for Agious Nicholas. The national roads weren’t as they are today and I got there in around two hours and a half. That was a miracle. Truly a miracle.

As I arrived at the Agious Nicholas port, the tourists were just arriving from the island of Spinalonga. Not on the super speedboats but on the coastguard ship. Whatever. I put them on the bus and asked the driver to get back to Iraklion port as fast as he could. If that cruise boat left Iraklion without them we were on penalty. I asked the chief of police why he used the coastguard? What else could I do he asked. We had the bill about a week later. Actually it was less than the speed boats.

I followed the bus to Iraklion and welcomed the tourists as they came off the bus at the port. The general consensus was that they had had an amazing day - ‘the best time of our life’ one American said. ‘You know, we thought we were really stranded - incredible’. So we still had a load of tips from the tipsy tourists. We had certainly sailed close to the wind that day. But there were other days that were worse . . .

Books about Spinalonga:
The Island of the Damned; by Victor Zorba.
The Island; by Victoria Hislop.

Matala and Joni Mitchell.

For all those of you who responded to my last posting, here are the words of Joni Mitchell herself regarding Matala in Crete and the song ‘Carey’. It appears that Joni was in Matala, Crete around 1968/69 - three years after 1966 when I went there and it seems that it had developed a bit from my time. . . .

The following extract is from an interview with Joni Mitchell by Rolling Stone in early 1971

“Matala was a very small bay with cliffs on two sides. And between the two cliffs, on the beach, there were about four or five small buildings. There were also a few fishermen huts.

“The caves were on high sedimentary cliffs, sandstone, a lot of seashells in it. The caves were carved out by the Minoans hundreds of years ago. Then they were used later on for leper caves. Then after that the Romans came, and they used them for burial crypts. Then some of them were filled in and sealed up for a long time. People began living there, beatniks, in the fifties. Kids gradually dug out more rooms. There were some people there who were wearing human teeth necklaces around their necks,” she said with a slight frown.

“We all put on a lot of weight. We were eating a lot of apple pies, good bacon. We were eating really well, good wholesome food.

“The village pretty well survived from the tourist trade, which was the kids that lived in the caves. I don’t know what their business was before people came. There were a couple of fishing boats that went out, that got enough fish to supply the two restaurants there.

“The bakery lady who had the grocery store there had fresh bread, fresh rice pudding, made nice yogurt every day, did a thriving business; and ended up just before I left, she installed a refrigerator. She had the only cold drinks in town. It was all chrome and glass. It was a symbol of her success.

“Then the cops came and kicked everyone out of the caves, but it was getting a little crazy there. Everybody was getting a little crazy there. Everybody was getting more and more into open nudity. They were really going back to the caveman. They were wearing little loincloths. The Greeks couldn’t understand what was happening.”

Joni Mitchell - 1970
photo by Henry Diltz

Then during a performance at The Troubadour, Joni introduced the song “Carey” with the following story (transcribed from the tape by Kakki).

“I went to Greece a couple years ago and over there I met a very unforgettable character. I have a hard time remembering people’s names like so I have to remember things by association, even unforgettable characters, I have to remember by association, so his name was “Carrot” Raditz, Carey Raditz, and oh, he’s a great character. He’s got sort of a flaming red personality, and flaming red hair and a flaming red appetite for red wine and he fancied himself to be a gourmet cook, you know, if he could be a gourmet cook in a cave in Matala. And he announced to my girlfriend and I the day that we met him that he was the best cook in the area and he actually was working at the time I met him - he was working at this place called the Delphini restaurant - until it exploded, singed half of the hair off of his beard and his legs, and scorched his turban, melted down his golden earrings.

Anyway, one day he decided he was going to cook up a feast, you know, so we had to go to market because like in the village of Matala there was one woman who kind of had a monopoly - well actually there were three grocery stores but she really had a monopoly and because of her success and her affluence she had the only cold storage in the village, too, so she had all the fresh vegetables and all the cold soft drinks and she could make the yogurt last a longer than anyone else, and we didn’t feel like giving her any business that day. Rather than giving her our business we decided to walk ten miles to the nearest market.

So I had ruined the pair of boots that I’d brought with me from the city because they were really “citified” kind of slick city boots that were meant to walk on flat surfaces. The first night there we drank some Raki and I tried to climb the mountain and that was the end of those shoes. So he lent me these boots of his which were like Li’l Abner boots - like those big lace-up walking boots and a pair of Afghani socks which made my feet all purple at the end of the day and I laced them up around my ankles and I couldn’t touch any - the only place my foot touched was on the bottom, you know, there was nothing rubbing in the back or the sides - they were huge and he wasn’t very tall, either, come to think of it was kind of strange - I guess he had sort of webbed feet or something but we started off on this long trek to the village, I forget the name of it now, between Matala and Iraklion - and started off in the cool of the morning and by the time we got halfway there we were just sweltering me in these thick Afghani socks and heavy woollens and everything, so we went into the ruins of King Phestos’s palace to sit down and have a little bit of a rest and while we were there these two tourist buses pulled up and everybody got off the buses in kind of an unusual symmetry, you know, they all sort of walked alike and talked alike and they all kind of looked alike and they all filed over to a series of rubblely rocks- a wall that was beginning to crumble - lined themselves up in a row and took out their viewing glasses, overgrown opera glasses, and they started looking at the sky and suddenly this little speck appeared on the horizon that came closer and closer, this little black speck.

Cary was standing behind all of this leaning on his cane and as it came into view he suddenly broke the silence of this big crowd and he yells out “it’s ah MAAGPIE” in his best North Carolina drawl. And suddenly all the glasses went down in symmetry and everybody’s heads turned around to reveal that they were all very birdlike looking people. They had long skinny noses - really - they had been watching birds so long that they looked like them, you know - and this one woman turned around and she says to him (in British accent) “it’s NOT a magpie - it’s a crooked crow.” Then she very slowly and distinctly turned her head back, picked up her glasses and so did everybody else and we kept on walking. Bought two kilos of fish which would have rotted in the cave hadn’t it been for the cats.

When we got back from that walk Stelios, who was the guy who ran the Mermaid Cafe, had decided to put an addition on his kitchen which turned out to be really illegal and it was so illegal, as a matter of fact, that the Junta dragged him off to jail and torture was legal over there - they burnt his hands and his feet with cigarette butts mainly because they hated, you know, all of the Canadians and Americans and wandering Germans living in the caves but they couldn’t get them out of there because it was controlled by the same archaeologist that controlled the ruins of King Phestos’s palace and he didn’t mind you living there as long as you didn’t Day-Glo all of the caves and everyone was like putting all of their psychedelia over all this ancient writing. So they carted him off to jail…” (End of tape)