Sounio

 We enter again in the internet house exchanging with our holiday house in Sounion

From north Sweden to the south

Kiruna's church

That’s it, we leave Kiruna. We spend there a week, a very interesting week indeed, as I did not expected, to be honest. We visited a mine, the iron mine that actually created the city. A young girl was the guide of our group there and I was impressed by the deep involvement she seemed to feel towards the mining society and its history, problems and evolution. She looked so young and fragile before wearing the professional helmet and uniform, a frail fair girl like a bimbo, and so very serious after starting speaking, so impressive whenever she put herself in front of the huge machines and explained how they used them.

Another girl, other kind of speaking and appearance, was our guide in the Ice hotel when we went to Jukkasjärvi.  Machines again she showed us, machines cutting the ice from the Torne River and then preserving it through the summer in a tent, but also she told us the history of the place, that was without winter occupation before the idea of Ice hotel, and they should have been desperate for years, if we believe her. She had such a passion when she was relating the whole story. She was very young as well, but fat and plump with her rosy face, rosy cheeks,  shoes and nose, even voice. Nevertheless she moved us, speaking slowly and convincingly, so involved as well to the great achievement of her small town, the producing of ice for tourism and fancy. She made us pass some seconds in the 3 sample rooms of the hotel they conserve under the big tent, and we had to admit that the ice hotel it’s a real ice hotel, not only by name.

Imagine that, a city growing in the almost wild north in the beginning of the century because of the iron. A big ‘iron body’ as they name it, that runs for kilometres underground, and obliges the men to search deeper and deeper to satisfy the great need of the world for iron. A whole city emerges in the fringes of the mountain that sinks where the iron is excavated. And 10 decades later, so close to it, another factory starts producing something out of nothing: ice! Just by digging deeply (again) in the frozen water of the Torne River. And this time is about fancy, is about the human need for wonder and magic, is something absolutely temporary, destined to melt down in some months, the opposite of iron and steel.

Ice candelabra in the ice hotel

Both girls guided us to factories that use the material of the earth, iron or ice, just taking it from where it lays. That is Sweden, a long country that is not a country really, is just a piece of the planet. The train to Kiruna goes and goes and goes, and you can see nothing else that woods, trees, lakes, mountains, as if men have not passed yet to this place. It is summer and you cannot understand why all those woods and lakes have not attired people, but you must think of winter, when living really needs a great consumption of energy. To live here in winter must not be so easy.

But I would like to come back in winter. The family we met in Kiruna got a sledge and 3 dogs to pull it, and they invited us to try. We have to do it.

Exchanging the south of Europe with the north (for 23 days)

In the Sami museum

The midnight sun in Kiruna

We are again in an exchange trip, this time in Sweden. We have chosen the northern country of Europe, as coming from the southern, in every sense. We stayed some days in Stockolm, and then we came here in the north, over the Arctic circle. It was an old dream of my husband, to see the midnight's sun. And we saw it!

We even lived with it, finding big difficulties to sleep through the eternal day... The sun does not set at all, it goes near the horizon at 0.00 and then begins to go up again.
We stayed a hole week in Kiruna, this town made by the mines. We went to walk in the national park Abisko. It is a wonderful place really, around a river that comes from a torrent and becomes a lake, between the tundra and the taiga, with colors unseen by me at least until then. We visited the mine of course, and were very impressed by the work it is done there, over 1000 m deep into the earth. We went to to Ice hotel, that you can visit even in summer, there is a sample under low temperature. We learn about the Sami people and visited every possible museum about them, and another wood and footpath going to the biggest mountain of Sweden (we have not been there).
Today we leave for Stocholm again, where we stay for 10 more days.




The village in Pelion, Greece, where our house is

Drakia, our village




Stone made roofs in Drakia

 In one of the exceptionally green mountains, Pelion in Thessaly, the homeland of the Centaures


An old public fountain in Drakia

 

The village in autumn




An old mansion in Drakia

 


Walking in the village





Panorama of Drakia from a footpath around

 

The old main road leading in the mountain's top, starting from the
central square

The village, as many mountain villages in Greece, has known days of wealth in the 19th century, then difficulties and the cruelties of war and Nazi occupation, poverty and decline. It is now recovering slowly with the help of tourism.

For many decades Drakeia had been one of the biggest villages in Pelion. It used to have many two floor buildings like small mansions and a web of cobbled path roads. People that lived there had made money trading cotton in Egypt and fertilizers in greek cities and built their houses in those villages. In the beginning of the 20th century economical decline began, but for Drakeia the Nazi occupation was the period that brought a catastrophe. One day the resistant army of the mountains killed two german soldiers and the occupant authorities then slaughtered 120 men in Drakeia as retaliation…You can see the monument of the martyrs in the village’s square.

After the war, as the village tried to recover from the loss, an earthquake at 1955 destroyed most of the nice mansions and many others had to be demolished because they became dangerous to dwelling. Small single-storey houses had been built instead, and the village lived in poverty for decades.

Drakeia was my grandmother’s birthplace, but I only visited when I was a student at the University without her even knowing. We fell in love at first sight with its beauty and from that moment we tried to stay there for a few days almost every year. We finally built a house in 1990, and began to plant its garden.

It is a place of exquisite beauty, of exceptional nature. Winter, spring, summer, autumn, every month has its own scenery, its own fruits, foods, and pleasures. The children go skiing in winter (I never learnt how), we swim in summer, walk in autumn and gather fruit and enjoy blooming in spring. One can never have enough of that beauty and every day brings a new delight.

After 12 years we discovered the possibility of house exchange and have exchanged our house and our car many times already. People have been here appreciated the landscape and enjoyed the weather, the greenery, the sea and the calm. With the help of books we have collected that guide you everywhere in the area and also the help of our kind neighbours, they can find footpaths, gardens, squares, walks, they enjoy the house, the village, the mountain.
We love visiting other countries, meeting other people and helping them getting to know of our beloved village. And when we come back from far away, or from not so far, we can appreciate it again.

The garden

My mother in the garden of the house she has built

Gathering cherries in June

Playing in the veranda

The entrance of the house and the garden

The linden tree in autumn

The wooden fence on the upper level and the appricot tree

The garden has two levels, but you can only see one in the photos. It is full of cherry trees that begin giving cherries in end of May and continue until July. There is also an abricot tree, a peach tree and a big linden tree that offers a nice shadow trough the summer.

The garden in winter

Friends in the yard in winter time

You can never get enough of that garden. You can spend the whole day there, gathering flowers, herbs, palying, reading, relaxing and having your meals in the open air, in the big dinning table that we have set in the yard

The house

One of the two bedrooms

The house form above

Children in the yard

The attic in the bedroom with two spare beds

Snow in the ground

The sofas from the stairs

Kitchen and dinnig room

Living room

The dinning table full of guests

The house has two storeys.The kitchen, the dining room, the living room and a bathroom are located on the ground floor and two bedrooms, a big one that can accomodate two or three, or even five persons, and a small for two persons and a third in a small attic if necessary, and a bathroom are located on the first floor.