THE NAXOS GUIDE PRESENTS A PERSONAL HISTORY

(For  a history of dates and invasions and rulers click here, for a, rather whimsical, tour of the town, past and present, click here.)  Home

The Perennial Tourist

Although I first went to Greece thirty years ago, in all that time I have only ever been a tourist - albeit a frequent one - as evidence, I still speak no more than a few words of Greek.  From the very first time I went to Greece I've always had a feeling of being at home and safe - even though, that first time in Crete, the Colonels were in power - nonetheless, only for brief periods could I see myself living  permanently in Greece in general and Naxos in particular.  

Once again, however, as I decline into grizzled old age, I begin to think again that it would be a pleasure to live in Naxos.  Yet ..... I need to go to Paris at least once a year, to be able to visit other French towns and travel the only civilised way - by train.  And, again, there are so many other cities in Europe to visit - from Naxos such a difficult proposition.  Also, although there is supposed to be a racetrack in Athens, I have never been able to find information about it yet alone actually to find it - what about horseracing?  To go to the Arc would be a major expedition, to get to the World Cup might be marginally easier as Athens is a bit nearer to Dubai ..... 

Buying a Property

I think, now, that I should have bought a house on Naxos when I could have afforded it - if only as an investment, prices over the last couple of years have rocketed.  However, many years ago there was an interesting property for sale on Naxos - large and full of potential.  A friend in a bar told me about it and the asking price.  I did a quick (probably, drunken) calculation in my head and sadly told him that it was way beyond my means.  Several months afterwards I was talking about this and, this time, got a calculator and worked out the price and, to my utter dismay, realised that, before, I had been in error by an order of magnitude.  Say, in today's money, I had worked it our to be £400,000 and, in fact, it was only £55,000!  Something I could, then, have afforded.  And when I look at what is on that site now ....!  Anyway, there are now several Estate Agents on Naxos so you don't have to make my mistake.

Crime

There was virtually no crime on the islands when first I visited and what there is now is mainly imported.  The Greeks, unlike the British, seem not to be a race of petty thieves.  It took us a while but, after a few visits, we thought nothing of leaving our baggage unattended in the streets and were sure it would be there on our return.  Several times we have left, accidentally,  cameras, bags, handbags at bars or tavernas and found them where we left on return - sometimes the next day.  The Greeks are essentially honest - a strange thing to say you might think.  If you are foolish enough to let yourself be overcharged, why, then you are fair game but actually sort-changing is considered unethical.  

And Punishment

A story.  The very first time I went to Greece I had to pay for coffees at a just opened café as day began to break in Heraklion - and, not understanding the language or the money, I held out a handful of change to the waiter to let him take the necessary.  As he started to go away, a stranger sitting at the next table, called him back and started haranguing him with the result that he returned a few coins to me.  It seems he wasn't overcharging - legitimate - but, as I'd trusted him - stealing.  The waiter was shown to be guilty of treating strangers with disrespect and, so, shown up.  Not surprisingly, the first mugging on Naxos was carried out by drunken, English men.  They were quickly caught but instead of a sentence were released into the custody of Lalos (see below) who had them working all day out on his land in the summer sun.

Learning the Customs

I told a story for several years of my first visit to Greece until, to my chagrin, I found the identical story in one of John Ebdon's books (either Ebdon's Odyssey or Ebdon's Iliad - both highly amusing books) and, because if a story is in a book then it is, per se, the property of the author, I had to stop telling mine.  I now realise that is must be the common property of many first time visitors to Greece - you have probably heard a similar one before or even been the "hero/ine" of it yourself.  Know first that, until recently, the visual insult to a Greek was to spread your fingers and thrust the palm of your hand towards his face - meaning something like "I damn you to Hell!"  And Kalimera means "good day".  So, I was walking round, greeting everyone, including the little, blackclad yayas, waving and calling "Kalamares, kalamares!"  thinking I was being very friendly but in fact doing the equivalent of making a V-sign at them and intoning "Squid, squid!"  The hand insult seems not to be current - it looks as if I am  the last person on Naxos to wave to people with my fingers closed and my palm turned towards me.

Lalos Bar

I first went to Naxos in 1979 and have only missed a couple of years since.  The attraction of Naxos did not lie in its kilometers of empty beaches, its mountains, its fertile plains, many-coloured sea, blue skies.  What brought so many people back and started a life-time love for the place, what was the catalyst for so many foreigners to come to live on the island was, simply, Lalos Bar.  Run by Lazarus Theofilou and his wife Wendy, 

it was, probably, the best bar in the world.  Not for its luxurious fittings - it had none - not for its situation - it occupied a triangle between two roads1, set back from the front.  No Hollywood-type juggling with cocktail shakers - in fact, no cocktails.  No, what made it great was Lalos' knack, with no more than a few words of English and none of other languages, to bring people together, to get strangers talking, drinking, laughing, forging friendships.  These friendships might have lasted just that night, the rest of the holiday or for many years.  We, so many of us, went back to Naxos time and time again and, straight off the ferry, went to his bar.  And, quite often, we would find there friends from last year or the year before or ..... 

Lalos, Wendy, his sisters, Katerina and Yana and, later, Christina and several others worked here over time.  And Naxos remained, always, Lalos, Wendy from Australia and Christina from Scotland.  They were the centre of, the essential Naxos.  Alas, the bar closed and transmogrified into various establishments and Wendy and Chris moved on but Lalos remained to open a top class fish restaurant, Karnagio, which you will find beside Ocean Club, at the far end of the Paralia.  An era ended - as it did when the wonderfully entertaining Bakliarakia in the Castro closed and its eccentric and loveable proprietors, Andreas and Hendrix went their separate ways - Hendrix, or Giorgos, can still be found running the Asteria Hotel on St Georges.

The first time I went to Naxos, it was on a two-island package tour, including Ios.  We had seen Lalos Bar and dismissed it as a "hippy" establishment, a throw back to the early seventies.  It was scruffy and dark and, I suppose, disreputable looking.  One evening, towards the end of our stay, we were passing it on our way home (or, perhaps, to Sanoudos or the Square) and they were playing one of my favourite rock songs - one I had not heard for many years and, so, much against my wife's wishes, insisted we went in.  We were just finishing our drinks, about to go, having concluded our first impressions were correct, when the waitress (whom we later learned was Katerina, Lalos' sister) tripped on the uneven floor and spilt water over us.  She profoundly apologised but we, laughing, said it was no problem, in fact quite refreshing on such a hot night.  But Lalos insisted on buying us drinks - and so we sat on talking, long after the bar was closed, meeting Lalos'wife whom we though talked immaculate English - until we learnt she was Wendy, from Australia.  We told them we were leaving the next day for Ios and Lalos said that we wouldn't like that island and we would be back the day after.  He was right in the first, wrong in the second, it was three or four months until we were back.  Ios, then, was a most beautiful island but the dregs of the backpackers ended up there.  It was the first time that I found the locals unfriendly and, in the shops, the owners followed you around - so used were they to thieving.  The junkies have gone now to be replaced, we hear, by the drunken yobs of the 18-30 ilk.

We returned to Naxos in the autumn and, after a busy summer full of new faces, when we walked back into the bar, Lalos recognised us, even remembering our names - and so began twenty odd years of visits, sometimes three times a year.  If it hadn't been for one song, I wouldn't be writing this now and, also, well, lots of things that I will tell some other time.

Chez Nick's

After Lalos moved on his bar was reborn for a while as Odyssea run, eventually, by Jackie and Christina.  Although it was a very fine bar and they both were (and are) extremely charming, it just was not the same, the special magic had gone.  And it was only a couple of years later that the eccentric Bakliarakia also closed together with Chez Nick's run by the crazy, eponymous Nick.  How the latter ever made a living from his bar shall be forever a mystery - to my recollection I was never charged for my drinks - although I always offered - and doubt if many were.  The bar is still there but, at the moment, is a curry house (run, so it is said, by a sister of a policewoman in the "Bill")*.  Until reaching this, it went  through various reincarnations - our particular favourite was when Jan, of "Rent A Car union", had it under the name of Dolfini Bar.  Anyway - Nick was one of the best, alas, he died at a ridiculously young age.  I remember the first time I met him.  Talking to a stranger in a café in a Greek square, the expected questions coming:   "English?  Where from?  Whereabouts in London?  Camberwell?" and then the unexpected:  "Oh yes, I know Camberwell well - I used to drive the 45 bus through there."  He married a visitor and moved to Canada, then came back to Athens from where he often took the ferry out to Naxos - a much missed man.

*This has now closed (2004) and the sale is at present being negotiated, rumoured to be to a German.

Bakliarakia

In the Castro is a sad, neglected little garden with still the faded remnants of once-gaily painted gourds.  This is the site - unused for many years - of the much lamented Bakliarakia, run by the two jokers, Andreas and Hendrix.  For several years it was our (and most others, residents and visitors alike) favourite taverna.  You could always be sure of good food, wine, lots of amusement and a banana liqueur on the house - the latter could quite often turn your legs dangerously rubbery for negotiating the steep lanes and steps down to the Paralia!  It was not always thus, at least not for me.  The first time I went there, I thought it a marvelous discovery, very Greek, hidden away in a sneaky, little passage, no tourists.  I have never found out whether it was a prank - to see how the effete tourist behaved - or whether they, at that time, just didn't care for their customers (all customers or, perhaps, just tourists) but, whichever, they served up stale bread alive with ants and the barreled wine was thick with drowned or desperately swimming vinegar flies.  I cannot remember what the rest of the food was like or even if we tried it.  Needless to say, being British, we didn't complain but didn't touch these insults and left without tip or smile or "Kala Nichta".  For years we bad-mouthed the place about town until friends persuaded us to try again.  Of course, it is very possible, that the duo weren't running it in those days.  Would it were there now.  When it closed, Andreas went to be the chef at The Castro Taverna (Soulis), married Adele (now of Adele's Clothes Shop, just behind the OTE) had a delightful son, Joe, but now, so sadly, he is dead, barely into his forties.

McDonalds

There are many people who, wherever they travel, only seem to want to eat the worst junk they can find so long as it's familiar junk.  So a few words on fast food outlets.  An application was put in to open a McDonalds (See Athens Airport) on the site of the old Hotel Hermes - on the sharp bend where the Paralia becomes the Champs Elyssée2.  Thank god, however, either the application was turned down or it was deemed uneconomic and the shop did not materialise.  In its stead was built yet another bank to process the tourists' euros.  There are Greek equivalents of fast food outlets with at least one on Naxos, Goodys - this, also, seems to have the monopoly on the boats.  Nonetheless, this doesn't seem that popular even with the young Greeks.

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1Not as bad as it may sound because, in those early days, late 70s, early 80s, there were just a few motorbikes and even fewer private cars.  There was only one taxi, I seem to remember, and only once, perhaps twice a day, was the peace shattered when the lorries drove to and from the port to embark on and disembark from the ferries.

2I had thought for years that this designation for this street of old-fashioned Greek shops had been a small joke invented by foreign residents but recently found, in an old photo (about 1980), that there used to be a municipal sign so naming this street!