On a troublesome road 400 meters up in the mountains, more than ten kilometres to go, the people from Myrtos, with a lot of effort created the new village safe from pirates, no matter where they were coming from. The daily business was still on the coast, when the intruders did leave, and you were able to go back after the occupation.

But when a whole coast village does have an extra village to flee to, the communications are hard and troublesome, new business will undoubtedly appear on the new place up in the mountains. Bakery, trading, shoemakers, priest, farmers and further on, public administration. Almost everything else needed for a working village was soon doubled. Nobody needed to safely commute regularly, so soon there was two societies consisting of siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles.

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The old, not very good times later became better times. Pirates were gone and the coastal plundering ceased. Both villages lived on, developed and modernized. The next generation need in their adult ages somewhere to live. Old houses were demolished, new were built. Most of the time, life at the coast is to prefer and is particularly less isolated, especially if you live on an island.

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Cassette tape recorder if anyone remembers these? They were used almost to the end of the 1980s before the CD disc killed the analogue, if someone remembers the CD?
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On a chair lay a new or freshly stretched shirt and waited for the Sundays visit to the church
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TWO VILLAGES LIVES ON, BUT
Now move forward in time a bit. The post war generation got another view on the world, even on Crete. If you don’t have a TV at your home, there are enough TVs in the village to make an impact on the new generation of young TV viewer’s, and their perspective on most of the things. In modern times with the start of WW2, the population in the higher village begins to move back down to the coast, building new houses and getting jobs at the coast village. In this specific case, one new
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Hard to know what is basement or what is floor.
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THE STOP OF THE RETURNEE
The year is 1967, the month is April and the Greek military makes a takeover from the democratic government in Greece. For seven years Greece will be a military dictatorship. Greece will be boycott as a tourist destination and it is less attractive being a tourist on a place where you find uniformed soldiers in every street corner. In such situation a distant mountain village is more attractive for the inhabitants than a brisk city at the coast with a lot of uniformed soldier’s, who in a typical dictatorship way are paranoid and frequently asks for passports

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THE FINAL EXODUS
1974, after seven years of dictatorship, Greece became a chaotic but working democracy again. The tourism sped up, the northern European charter airlines fill up the hotels and beaches. Now there are a lot of Nordic Crowns, German Marks, French Frank and British Pounds pouring in. Many more companies come to grow grapes and olives up in the mountains. In the same way as the northern European urbanization took shape, inhabitants were attracted to move to the cities for a better life on the coast. People were not only attracted by foreign investors and banks that invested in new hotels, another very important power in this process was the Greek membership in to the European Community EC 1981, fourteen years before Sweden.

here I got a scolding by a village resident
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SEPTEMBER 2018
My visit in Kalami starts with an escape from the beach in Myrtos. The Korean rented car struggled up the winding roads 400 meters above sea level.

To escape here in the old days with donkeys and on foot must have been a daylong trip. Donkeys do not have a button with the letters AC and they give maximum two horsepower, an ordinary horse gives approximately 4,5 horsepower and a lot of these 4,5 hp are consumed moving the horse itself.

I felt a bit intrusive when I went into what was meant to be the main street through the village. This was Kostas and Aristoteles block. The doors to the house were open, the vegetation had taken over. Some houses were more freshly painted, other houses not at all. The most decayed houses lacked windows, and some had rooves collapsed. The silence was apparent, every step felt like I was intruding to those who no longer lived there. One more step and the silence is broken, I don’t see them but two dogs barking,

I kept walking, and after 25 meters the dogs stopped barking. Now I have seen three living creatures, one priest and two dogs un-sympathetic towards me. A hundred meters later the street ends and so does the village. On my way back, I turn left on the next little street. All houses are of the same kind, small boxes, external stairs to the rooves and overgrown gardens. The views from here are magnificent, to the north are high mountains and to the south the mountains are falling away and even further away is the Mediterranean Sea. Everywhere, vines grow at the cracked facades,

Hard to imagine the need for heating when I was here, but it will be winter and cold, even in Crete.


Further down on the next path crossover, someone had tried to build a ridiculous contraption to prevent trespassing, using a rusty bed base naively fixed on the side with some steel wire. On the other side of the bed base I have to admit there was a reason for the naive try. The house on this path was in an obvious very bad state. Most rooves were gone, the staircase was no longer safe to step on. Between some houses the vegetation has expanded over the rooves in such a dense way that streets below became tunnels. Perhaps it was meant to be like this, beneath it was comfortable and shady.
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The village Kalami consists of a hundred and fifty houses, most of them unlocked. Entering the unlocked empty houses felt a bit like I was intruding into someone else’s private sphere. In the kitchen the plates have been set to dry, the open wardrobe exposed stretched shirts and jackets. On a chair, a never used shirt waiting for the owner and a visit to church on Sunday. In another house,

The scenery repeats, for each house, the experience of repetition becomes increasingly evident. Half furnished houses, beds, sofas, kitchen tables, pots and everything else that makes for an ordinary life. I could spend many more hours here, but time goes by. As it has done for a very long time in Kalami. Even though it has stood still here for the past twenty years. The phone clock tells me I will be late for my lunch appointment.