Competitions and moving houses

Lately besides work I have been moon-lighting for an architectural competition declared by the municipality of Mihaniona

(near the city of Thessalonki in Greece) for the design of a light movable kiosk to be used as a sea-side seating area for the seafront cafeterias and restaurants.

I teamed up with a friend from university and we came up with a cute idea of a repeatable module that could be moved on tracks. Unfortunately our model turned out so-so (we used plexiglass which wasn’t such a great choice in the end) and what’s worse my team-mate lost her designs last minute and hadn’t got round to printing them all out. We sent what we could before the deadline, but the chances are great we’ll be disqualified for missing out a set of designs…

At this rate I will never win an architectural competion. My team was also disqualified for a ridiculous technicality from the architectural competition we took part in last year (the design of a Town Hall complex in a small town in Crete).

To top up the bad luck we didn’t move as planned. Ever since we finished our studies, my sister and I have returned to out hometown of Athens and have moved home to our parents’ place. It’s stifling and we’re desperately looking for a place of our own to rent.

Only thing is we’re fed up of student apartments and want something nice for a chance. And it’s hard! Landlords in Athens are out of this world. The rents are too high for the wages.

Let me just say that many people (us included), even with university degrees, only earn 800 euros a month, whereas most three-room apartments (70 to 80 square metres) built in the 60s in an average neighbourhood in the centre of the city have a rent of about 450 to 600 euros. Something new is out of the question. A studio apartment will cost 200 to 400 euros depending.

And not to forget that very often the houses are in bad repair, the kitchens and bathrooms the originals and the walls unpainted.

They area we are set on in living is one of the hardest to find a place because the locals are notorious for not moving out. At least two of the places we’ve seen the previous tenant was an old lady that died there. The furniture had not even been moved out yet! And the state of the places was un-believable. One of them was completely surreal, complete with antique television set, psychedelic green-veined black marble in the hall and dizzying flowered tiling in the kitchen and bathroom. We beat a hasty retreat!

Now we’ve found two prospective places. One is a bit small and has weird landlords that live way out in the suburbs on the complete different side of Athens than us where buses barely reach and they expect us to go to their house to talk about renting the flat! The other is nearly perfect, only a stone throw away from the ancient Herodio theatre, but the landlady, as usual, is asking far more than it’s worth.

And so the hunt continues…

I finally got round to creating a flicker account!

If any one wants to see my photos you can just go here

Bad News

I went to a funeral the other day. I didn’t know him very well, but he was a part of my life. He was the younger brother of one of my oldest friends. I have known her and her family since I was twelve, which is more years than I care to count.

We went to the same school, we had been on holiday together, I had just returned to Athens properly and was getting to know him when he fell ill. We all hoped against all hope, but he still died. And on Tuesday we buried him, and I couldn’t look his parents in the eye because there is nothing you can say.

All I can do lately is remember what I knew of him. He was smart, very smart. I was jealous of how good he was at maths at school. He studied computers and was a complete computer nerd, reading linux manuals on the beach. He was very shy and discreet; we never knew a thing about his private life. He was calm, dependable and funny. When we were younger he looked just like a male version of his sister. Until he grew a beard and we told him he looked like a long curly-haired Jesus. I remember how I always felt comfortable with him. He truly was a nice guy.

And every time I think about it I want to cry. For him, his parents, and his sister. My very good friend who is breaking into little pieces in front of my eyes and I can’t do anything about it.

Sorry if I depressed anybody, I couldn’t help it.

Christmas in the City

The Christmas holidays came and went faster than the blink of an eye and left me more tired than I was before. That’s what happens when instead of spending your week off in bed sleeping you spend it on holiday, trying to fit everything into a week.

I went to Istanbul.

I had been meaning to go for a while now. I have a friend who lives there and it’s only a short hop away from Athens. A very short hop. It’s different and yet the same as Athens. We were constantly amazed at how many Turkish words we knew without even knowing it, at how similar but different the food, the people, the traffic is.

Istanbul is much more beautiful and cosmopolitan than Athens will ever hope to be. The buildings, the roads, the people, the shops are all more colorful. But at the same time the city seems to be crumbling.

All important cities have water. It’s something that makes me feel at home where ever I have lived. Athens has the bay of Phaleron, Thessaloniki has the gulf of Thermai, Paris the Seine and London the Thames. I am used to crossing water, seeing it from my balcony, walking next to it, but in Istanbul the experience is unique. Every day we crossed the Bosporus, from Asia to Europe and back, either by boat or else over bridges. The smell of the salt and the multitude of the seagulls as you took the boat made the city feel even more exotic. And yet we were the lone tourist among a multitude going to and fro from work. I couldn’t imagine going to work everyday by boat. What’s more at times it felt like the whole city was rocking with the motion of the waves. Or maybe it was just me.

We walked up steep hills and down cobbled streets, took wrong buses during rush hour, spent hours in the Grand Bazaar haggling, admired Agia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, ate food that was vaguely familiar, ended up exhausted in the Irish Pub (every city has one!) only to be hit on by the sort of Greeks we successful evade at home.

I just have two blots on an otherwise good short holiday. Both being typical holiday experiences I could have lived without and both being my fault. At a moment of fatal inattention I had my camera (with all my lovely photos) yanked out of my hand by a couple of kids. On the bright side, I got to see first hand the inside of a Turkish police station (all the policemen are young and not half bad looking).

The other less than stellar experience took place on New Years Eve. Need I say any more? I keep on telling myself than no sex is better than bad sex, only to drink too much and forget my good sense. All you end up is unsatisfied, embarrassed and with a surprising collections of new bruises to discover next morning. I blame it on my English genes that make me drink too much and be stupid. My Greek genes are the sensible ones that tell me off next morning.

The one thing I know for sure is I’m going back again. There remain so many things we didn’t do and places we didn’t see. Not to forget the photos we didn’t take...

A great omission

A while ago I realised that for a person who supposed was rather fond of science fiction and fantasy fiction I had read remarkably few books of the genre (the fact that I generally prefer dead authors having a great deal to do with it). Even though I have seen many many films. The list of books on the genre that I have read and liked enough to remember the titles of, are very very few:

1. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

2. Dune and it’s sequels by Herbert

3. The Narnia books by CS Lewis

4. The Harry Potter series by Rowling

5. The five book Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy by Douglas Adams

And some books that don’t really count

- Alice in Wonderland

- The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs (the last bookshop I visited had it as science fiction.)

- The Master and Margarita by Bulgarov

And that’s about it. All other’s have been forgettable mediocre books,

But not for long! I have decided to remedy this.

And I started with Gay Gabriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, which was nice. Really nice. It has a great cover, I am a sucker for books with nice covers. It wasn’t as good as Tolkien, but it was more adult than Tolkien, as in the heroes where real live people, with feelings and hang-ups who even slept with each other from time to time. I liked it. I teared up at the point where the dog and the wolf lord where fighting while Paul hung from the summer tree. I am weird that way. On the other hand making Jennifer into Guinevere and raising King Arthur and Lancelot from the dead was a bit much. I liked it enough to consider reading some of his other books in the future.

And now I have just bought Pullman’s Dark Material’s trilogy and am hoping to read at least the first book before I see the film... Let’s see.

On another note it had finally got cold here, and this is the time the boiler in my block of flats decides to break down. I have been freezing for days now, when will this torment end!

My summer holidays (the severely abridged version)

Proof that I had fun is the fact that I hardly wrote a word the whole month. I actually harboured crazy hopes that would write as much as two chapters. Then I got there and reality hit. I was on an island. Camping on sand dunes under cedar trees above an idyllic beach with golden sand, clear green-blue sea and lots of good looking naked men (it was a quasi-nudist beach), was I seriously going to pass my time writing? I am embarrassed to say that I do not have such strength of character.

What I did do was get a nice dark suntan, do a lot of swimming and meet new people. What’s remarkable with free camping is how much easier it is to meet people. You can’t not meet your neighbours, for one. Also it proves really easy to invite total strangers, who you see cooking over fires and gas heaters, if they want to eat with you. Everyone pools their food and drink together and you have a dinner party!

We did a bit of exploring and sight seeing (there weren’t actually any sights on the island), but for most of the time we just lazed around. On the beach, at the taverna, in the shade on the sand dunes. So many days passed where I did nothing and yet didn’t get bored. That’s the life!

The island was Gavdos, the southernmost island of Greece – and Europe. It’s a whole journey to get there from Athens. A boat and then a bus and then another boat. But it’s worth it. It’s one of the few islands where you can free camp without a problem. Also there is no real tourism (hardly any foreigners even know about the island) and only lately has development slowly begun with rented rooms and more tavernas.

So much happened in so little time and most of it incidental, the you-had-to-be-there sort of things. One thing was for sure, I had a shock upon returning to civilisation. I am certainly thinking of going there again next year, even though I don’t often go to the same place twice. The thing about Gavdos is not the actual island, but the ambiance and the people. Which means that every time is different.

More ranting about the fires

I come back from my holidays to find that a great part of my country (Greece) went up in flames while I was away. Not that I hadn’t actually heard of it before (there is no place on this planet without mobile phones), but I was ignoring the horrifying reality until I got back and saw the newspaper headlines and the live footage. Now, like most Greeks, I’m feeling saddened and furious. Like there’s a hole in my heart where the forests (and the villages) that were burnt used to be. Like if I sit and really think about it I will cry, so I don’t.

I’m assuming that the damage was so big that we got worldwide coverage and everyone knows about the fires and the deaths. Some of the most beautiful places in Greece: Pelio, Taigetos, Euboea, Parnitha and even groves inside Athens. I was away, but I am told the sky went dark with the smoke and the ash for days, even in the suburb where I live which was far from the fires.

One of the reasons we are all so angry is that it wasn’t only the winds and the heat waves and the incompetence of the fire-fighters and the state. Everyone knows that the majority of fires were arson. The reason why might only interest those into politics and town planning.

The sector of the economy that generates the most money and the most work in Greece is the building sector. Thus the Ministry Of the Environment, Town Planning and Public Works is obviously the most corrupt. The majority of buildings in Greece are more or less illegal in some way or another. Some are even completely illegal, as in they are built in forest or littoral areas where building is prohibited and don’t have a licence. Most town planning departments can unforunately be bought off. (I have seen it happen. I am working for an architect who does it all the time.)

Now apart from all that Greece happens to also be a country without a proper cadastre (: an official register of the quantity, value, and ownership of real estate used in apportioning taxes). It’s embarrassing really. For the past ten years a public corporation has been created to put together a cadastre. Its slow work and they’ve hardly got anything done yet.

When will I get to the point? Put the two above together and add the fact that for a number of months before summer came, parliament had been talking about this cadastre and amending the laws concerning it and what land would be considered forest land and what wouldn’t. The motion had been put forward to ignore the existing forestry maps as out of date (they date from the 40s I think) and to put together new ones. Obviously the public together with such bodies as the Technical Chamber, the Lawyer’s Association and the Forestry Department have been up in arms about it for months now. Everybody knows that the new forest maps will definitely not include all the forests that were just burnt, just like word has already got out that the government has already given a large area of the newly burnt Parnitha (a supposed National Park) to the casino that just happens to be situated next to it.

I’m starting to feel a bit sickened by the whole thing, so I’ll stop writing now and hopefully stop thinking about it.