Symi Chat

when it's hotter in the UK can than it is here!

Mind you the only summer I ever spent in the UK was in 1966 and it was so hot I remember my mother improvising paddling pools with washing up bowls of water for us on the balcony of our flat in London. Breaking us in for the tropics!

its only hot in the day time .in symi its hot all day and night
the sea is still cold here on the south coast

its very hot here in ireland and on the west coast it usually rains, however we were there last week and the sea was lovely, fine to swim in. you should all visit my island sometime.

Don't know where you are Pat, but it's been so hot here at night, you could hardly breath! The suffocating heat in central London today, and the pollution, and travelling home on the train to Surrey is beyond anything most people of Symi could imagine, it's hell on earth. The heat has never bothered us in Symi, and we spent many holidays there in August, but it's a different kind of heat here. I can't explain the difference, but it is.

i agree

I agree. Smoggy heat is awful - Durban was like that. At least here on Symi, apart from the little black clouds of soot which accompany the hydrofoil and other ferries, the air is quite clean.

Long may it remain that way.

Trailer, I feel the same way.
The heat in the outskirts of Copenhagen is killing me and the kids slowly. (- poor hubby is working in this heat)
But temps in mid 40s in Symi have never bothered me one bit.
And Cph isn't that smoggy, really.

Not if roads are built all over the island, it won't Adriana, and tourists/visitors are encouraged to bring their vehicles on to the island as well, and local traffic continues to increase but no local traffic control is introduced. Sadly car/motorbike pollution has already become a downside of the harbour area. Still nothing stays the same, but not much changes for the better either! That's progess for you.

Mind you, when the island had 20 000 or so inhabitants and every household had a donkey or two...

Doesn't bear thinking about.

Trailer, you've really got a point.
I dont mind roadbuilding, but the town council should really have a trafficplan made up in order to minimize the pollution.

Adriana, is it true or is it folklore that Symi ahd that many inhabitants? Church- records? Or?
Donkeys pollute, but it's organic and darn good for the vegetables

Dunno Adriana, I think I would prefer the odour of donkey poo to car fumes any day! Provided it was on someone elses doorstep of course!

And donkeys are very useful creatures aren't they? On our first trip to Symi in 1981 our luggage was taken to our villa by a donkey led by a very elderly gentleman. We had the hugest suitcase, (we were daft enough then to bring all the food and nappies with us for a baby son), but we never saw the old man again. We often wondered if our bulging bag was the end of him, if not the donkey!

Hi Mille,

It was about 20 000 at the end of the 19th century, many of whom were immigrants. At that time the sponge industry was booming, along with its ancilliaries, and people actually came to Symi from other islands, including Crete, to look for work.

Symi was literally the industrial hub for the surrounding mainland. All those windmills were for grinding wheat grown in other places. Cattle were brought over by caique for slaughter and the leather was tanned down in the harbour, by the Kateraktis. Families had farms across the water in Asia Minor but lived on Symi. If you ever go over to Datca and ask a taxi to take you to so-called Old Datca, you will see Neo-classical houses exactly like the ones on Symi. You may remember, before your SV subscription expired, an article we wrote about Andonis the Andarte, the forebear of one of our Pedi neighbours, who was a sheep 'rustler' over near Bosburun, opposite Pedi.

There are records, but they are in Turkish as the island was still part of the Ottoman Empire. It was really when Symi became an Italian outpost that economic decline kicked in and people started to emigrate en masse.

Concerning donkey poo, we muck out our neighbour's donkey shed as he's getting a bit old to do it himself and he lets us have as much as we want for our land. If it isn't well rotted down, it is a great way to plant grass in the vegetable beds! Just add water and it sprouts overnight. ops: .. and then spend the rest of the winter pulling it out

Hi Adriana
Now that's the kind of history lesson I love!! Thanks a mil

I wonder how many of the SV- newspaper got lost in the mail, because I can't remember the article

I should get some donkey poo for my roses, they seem a little tired these days

Yes Adriana, it was once a common sight when the donkey population was larger, to see a local housewife pop out quickly with a dustpan and brush and collect up the poo, or otherwise speaking in rapid Greek, and brandishing something at the donkey minder sometimes too! Along those lines though, Symi should have some wonderful lawns in the winter!! Always lovely to read your comments on things Symi.

After the hay has been cut in the summer it is not uncommon to see a donkey tethered in a field, munching what's left and manuring the field at the same time!

Very tidy.

What we need here for our plants Mille is WATER! We have a hosepipe ban in place, (subject to a �1000 fine) and no matter how many buckets of water you carry out, everything is curling up and dying. It's very annoying. The problem is supposedly lack of rainfall, but is just as much about poor maintenance by the water companies as billions of gallons leak away from old piping. Ho-hum.

Where would you find a donkey in Cph do you think??

Trailer, the place where the kids go after school (- playschool I think is the best word I can come up with) Anyway, they have a couple of horses, a donkey and a zillion rabbits, two dogs and a various number of cats.

mulch mulch mulch....

Dish water and bath water are okay but don't let anything with bleach anywhere near your garden as chlorine is a herbicide.

i live on the south coast near brighton its not as hot here as it is in some parts the sea breese cools things down and we all get a good nights sleep
the heat on symi seem to me to be different we were there in june and it was hot and lt;we dont have polulion here lots of lichen and gt;

Millie

In the UK the place where kids go after school is called (drum roll please ...) after school club! Playschool is the UK equivalent of bornehave - for children between the ages of about 2 and a half and 4 and a half. In the UK children start school the September before they turn 5 - that's much younger than in Denmark isn't it?

Sapphy x