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Category: Greece
Karpathos, 2023
I decided to visit Karpathos on my first holiday trip, for fairly trivial reasons. Karpathos is renowned in Greek linguistics for its archaism and its diversity of dialects. I had written a paper on the dialects of the Dodecanese, in which Karpathos had played a starring role (Nicholas, N. 2004a. Η γεωγραφική ιστορία του «ίντα […]
Sitia, 2023
My home town of Sitia is routinely described as a sleepy kind of place, and sleepy it is. Sleepy enough that I couldn’t write about my time there, until after I’d left it behind, three weeks on: its lazy cafes and brandy bars encouraged nothing so much as more brandy and more coffee. A town […]
Europeans dislike it when Americans say ‘I am Irish’ or ‘I am Italian’. What if Australians and Canadians said that? Would Europeans still dislike it? Or do they dislike it only when Americans said that?
Answer deleted by Quora for violating Be Nice Be Respectful policy. I won’t appeal, but it needed saying. Dear denizens of the Old Continent (Γηραιά Ήπειρος, as Greeks like to call it): You discard your poor huddled masses, and you repay their passed down love and homesickness with sneering, now that you’ve grown fat. […]
Two songs of loss
I have had occasion to think, in recent times, on two songs of loss. I’ve cried to them before the loss, and I’ve thought of them ruefully after the loss, when I had no tears left. I will analyse them and discourse on them in The Other Place; and I’ll have fun doing it; and […]
The revival of bagpipes in Crete
I have written on this blog ten years ago on my discovery of the changes in the traditions around Cretan folk music this past century. These changes have taken me by surprise: if you are immersed in an (albeit commercialised) folk music tradition, you assume it was ever thus. In fact, Cretan music used to […]
Why do Greek parents not allow their grown children to take care of themselves?
So let me tell you an anecdote. I have a relative in Greece of roughly my age, who was studying at university away from home, 20-odd years ago. (Since “home” is a town of 7000 people with only a nursing school, that’s not hard to imagine.) Said relative at some stage took a job distributing […]
The Decalogue of Nick #1: I’m Greek-Australian
For Kaan Kılıçaslan. I was born in Launceston, Tasmania, in 1971, to a father who had migrated from Cyprus and a mother who had migrated from Crete. We moved to Crete when I was 8. We moved back to Melbourne when I was 12. I’ve lived there since, but for 6 months in Greece in […]
What are the best things about your country?
What I would have answered your question about my country (Australia) is largely already in Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do Australians like being Australian citizens? But I’ll pretend I didn’t already answer it. Many of the best things about Australia, it shares with the US, and they have a similar reason. The optimism. The social […]
What are the rest of Ottomans’s presence in present Greece?
Andrew Baird has blocked me, so I’ll post here my corrective that the Parthenon blew up because the Venetians bombarded it. Yes, the Ottomans stored their gunpowder there. They figured the Franks would never destroy the old stones they venerated. And there was noone in the Ottoman realm with the concerted evil of Michel Fourmont: […]
If your country had a slogan what it would be?
My country (Australia) already has a slogan. The Lucky Country. The popular understanding, within and outside Australia, is that Australia being lucky (having lots of resources, affluent, stable) is a good thing. The original book, which everyone in this country should read (and which is still relevant 50 years on), argued that this was a […]