It was half past nine in the evening and they were six — in their early forties — at a table when I entered the “kafeníon”. No other customers were present except those men. I sat down at a table a little bit out of the way and ordered a “karafáki” and “mezé”. The...
Read more →This morning we had a little white surprise. I told you already that it had been relatively cold in the last couple of days. Instead of the 18 to 20 degrees centigrade we had in the first weeks of my arrival, we have been at around 10 degrees or less lately. As you can...
Read more →Joseph Conrad, a fellow not unlike Luc Dubois, adopted the practice of writing prefaces to his novels. I have often wished other writers would do the same. A preface allows the reader to understand the motivation of the writer and otherwise gives the reader the context in which the novel was conceived and provides,...
Read more →This is I, Luc, the subject of this narrative. I owe Tom at least an introduction. Here is my paltry attempt to it. Read it and forget it. It only gets interesting from the next chapter onwards. What do you say to a man who proposes to write your biography? “Thank you” does not...
Read more →This doesn’t look good: a fresh month without posting. I have to admit to you that I have been a little bit preoccupied lately, but that’s no reason for neglecting you of course. So please accept my apologies if you came here loyally every day and didn’t find any news. I promise I will...
Read more →It’s getting a little bit confusing for myself, this pre-dating of postings. I hope you can keep track of where you have been and where not. Anyway, the last 3 days have been spent mostly on trying to get those pictures in the correct format, in the correct entry, displayed in an esthetic way....
Read more →To all of you who exercised so much self control and patience I want to express my greatest gratitude. I’ve now entered the logs of the first days, the journey to Iraklio. There are no pictures yet, I will add those later today or tomorrow. Now I must be off to my first tenants...
Read more →It finally happened! The state owned telephone company OTE at long last made true on its promise to install the ISDN line into my appartement. Not exactly within the agreed upon time frame, but let’s not split hairs now over details. The important thing is that I’m now once more a fully connected citizen...
Read more →This is not working the way I expected it. Or at least, not at the spead I expected it. I’ll have to ask all of you to be a little bit patient until I have finished fighting my battles with local bureaucracy. I still have to rely on slow internet cafes to update my...
Read more →After skimming through the adverts for apartments at what had become my habitual morning hangout: coffee at Carola’s, I went to see 2 more apartments and one real estate agent. Minoanland the name was. Upon entry of the offices I immediately spotted something highly unusual in this part of the world: the whole office...
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