Olives and Greek real estate
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Aaah, ‘tis the season when olives hang heavy and ripe and juicy on the trees in the Pelion, and you can just reach up and pluck one off the branch and pop it in your mouth and bite down and …. Argghhhh, pffffftttttt, gag, sclrrrr, ack, blahhhh!
Don’t do that. There’s a reason you never see “fresh” olives in the grocery store. It’s because fresh olives are rank and filled with something called oleuropein, which is super bitter, even for a bitter-fiend like myself. I learned this the hard way so you don’t need to. I also learned how to get rid of the bitter, at least enough of it to make the things edible: Bury them in salt or salt water for a long period of time, which sucks out the oleuropein.
The olive trees in our rental’s yard didn’t produce this year, and Greek’s trees in general didn’t do so well, either. Theo, a guy from nearby Koukouleika, told us that his 900 trees through which we walk every day hardly had any olives, thanks to the warm temperatures over the last decade or so. Once again, climate change hits where it hurts; Theo didn’t even bother harvesting what his trees did yield.
We were able to glean enough low-hanging olives off of some trees that were not harvested to fill a few jars. I buried some of them in salt, switching it out every week or so, and now they’re downright tasty, if still a bit bitter. Lydia is trying the brine method, but we won’t know how it works for another couple of months. We’ll let you know how it goes.
Olives may not be great right off the branch, but another wild fruit is quite dandy to pluck and pop in the mouth: the fruit of the strawberry tree, or koumari. These things are growing everywhere around our house, and every day on our morning walks we eat a handful. They’re wild looking fruit and have a sort of crazy lifecycle: the same trees with ripe fruits are also blooming, and the fruit from those blossoms will be ripe in a year from now. The blossoms are some of the only flowers left for the bees. Rumor has it the honey from them is somewhat bitter, which is odd because the fruit are so sweet. Go figure!
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We’ve been looking around at real estate, just dabbling and dreaming, really. It’s a bit of an eye-opening experience. I keep an eye on housing prices in the U.S. for work and just to know how far out of reach my hometown housing stock is. And let’s just say, it’s way out of reach, with Durango’s median home sale price “stabilizing” at around $600,000. Come on! That is messed up, folks.
For that price, you could get a deeeeeluxe place in this part of Greece. I mean, the decor in this 3,100 sf, stone palace, built in 1863, leaves a little to be desired, but it’s got damned nice bones and is in a lovely mountain village not far from the beach where Mamma Mia was filmed. Or, let’s see, for $500k I could get a townhome up in Edgemont, outside of Durango, or this mansion, overlooking the Pagasetic Gulf.
Whatever. We’re not even close to that market, anyway. If we were to buy, we couldn’t and wouldn’t want to spend more than $112,000 (or 100k Euro). I know what you’re thinking: You couldn’t get a crappy Florida road cardboard condo for that. And it’s true. But this isn’t America, it’s Greece, where the real estate world has yet to lose its collective mind. For about $60,000 we could get a nice, habitable old house here with easy access to hikes and views.
I’m partial to the old stone places with three-foot thick walls (reminds me of real New Mexico adobes) in old villages with southern exposure and balconies or outdoor living spaces with views. My favorites are in a hilltop village called Trikeri. It’s lovely, and the houses are cheaper there. It’s also way out on the very tip of the peninsula, meaning it’s far away from everything else, and a good two hour drive from Volos, the nearest city. Wendy’s a little skeptical, as we’re already pretty isolated. But who needs a city when you can stroll down to the square for some tsipouro and meze? Or when you can take a mile-long walk down the kalderimi to Agia Kiriaki, a fishing village that seems straight out of a 1970s Leonard Cohen song (from his Hydra days), and get a grilled fish right out of the sea from Kostas?
I’m liking the looks—and price—of this place (but beware of the creepy doll photo). And this one, too, which sits on a narrow cobblestone street just steps from the village square. Okay, sure, the people who take the photos of these places need to work on their composition and staging skills for sure. Open a window, dude! Let some of that bright Aegean light in! Get rid of the weird art and dolls (this is another nice looking one, but I can’t tell what kind of views or southern light it has).
What we’d really like is for all of our friends to come over and buy some property too and move here. So come on over! The price is right!
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Dude, you're killin me. I could take either/any of the houses, dolls or no, as long as I could get me some of those olives and a few of the strawberry fruit. Livin the life. Good for you. Keepin the dreams alive:)