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Greek Islands for the Few

By Terje Raa

The Cycladic Islands are terminated in the west by six smaller members, the Western Cyclades, forming a vertical string extending from the Attika peninsula. Six different geometrical shapes waiting to be completed with a traveler's impressions. Somehow, I'd like to make my own version of four of those islands: Kythnos, Serifos, Sifnos and Milos.

I decide to content myself with crayons and a long sheet of paper. That's enough to keep me busy, and the process will stimulate my memory. During the boat trip from Piraeus to Kythnos, just a couple of hours, I draw an outline of my chosen islands; starting with the vertically oblong Kythnos at the top, then the more circular Serifos, the bottle-shaped Sifnos and last but not least, the horseshoe-shaped Milos. After turning the surrounding white surface into a blue Aegean, I'm ready for holiday highlights...

On the map I brought, these islands do appear somewhat isolated, which they actually are. Via north-south going ferries, they are mainly connected to each other and Piraeus, whereas cross connections to larger Cycladic islands like Paros, Naxos, Mykonos and Santorini are either missing or limited to the high season. As a result, the major stream of tourists passes over the Western Cyclades, which makes you one of the chosen few.

Merichas, the main port, is my base in Kythnos. I've tracked down the leading tavern, Ostria, bordered by luxury yachts and plain fishing boats. On my limited Kythnos space, I eagerly sketch away. It's evening now, so I use dark colors for the sheltering bay in front of me and for the hillsides left and right. While I'm busy depicting white cubic houses and shining lights at the end of the bay, the familiar sound of a motorbike catches my attention.

Quite as expected, it's my landlady Panagiota on her four-wheeled red bike. Sporting rooms at three different addresses in Merichas, she needs it for transporting laundry. She has even a little furniture shop to look after. I wave my drawing at her. "Red!" she commands and quickly creates a red bike on my piece, knowing how I envy her that machine. "Posidonion!" I plead. She looks at me disbelievingly, then humorously outlines a hotel ruin of six floors in the inner corner of the bay, proving that an abandoned hotel can become the landmark of a Greek village.

Serifos and Sifnos

In Serifos, it's rather obvious where I should sit down with my holiday project: at the Pantheon Cafe on the harbor of Livadi, the main port. It's like viewing a large picture representing two villages, Livadi stretching along a huge beach edged by green tamarisk trees, and above it, the chalk-white houses of the capital Chora, clinging to a sloping mountainside in discreet light brown, a color left by the drought.

I decide to put off my pretentious work of art till after dark when the lights from taverns and bars on the waterfront accentuate the horizontal shape of Livadi. Chora, on the other hand, is more sparsely lit and could be mistaken for an enormous, somewhat slanting Christmas tree, decorated with chains of lights winding from side to side, made up of the white and red lights of all the cars that keep moving up and down through serpentine bends.

Hitherto, I've been spared the ferocious northern winds that regularly haunt the Cyclades. But in Sifnos, the peace is over. I have to design white caps on the waves attacking the port of Kamares and laboriously dot the air with grains of sand. It's more difficult to immortalize tavern chairs tipping over one by one. Kamares is a straight line of white houses on a long bay, set between steep mountains which normally give shelter, though not against the present wind. The taverns are a good place to seek protection, an opportunity to test whether the Sifniots live up to their reputation as first-class cooks.

The constant wind forces me to move about by bus, up the valley to the villages of Apollonia and Artemonas, lying end to end. Apollonia is the capital, aspiring to be trendy with fancy shops and smart cafes. On its main square, Heroon, lies a folklore museum, exhibiting weapons, local embroidery and pictures, none of which has an island pattern like mine, but I don't want to end up in a museum. The whitewashed beauty of Artemonas, the uppermost village, makes me retreat as slowly as possible, on a footpath of broad steps leading down to Apollonia.

Multicolored Milos

The horseshoe shape of Milos is caused by a huge bay opening to the northwest. I have a weakness for ports, so I choose to stay in Adamas, on the eastern side of the bay. From there, I start cruising around the island by boat, a favorite excursion among visitors, while applying my entire collection of crayons to create a coastline of odd stone formations sparkling with colors. Milos is actually the "island of colors" thanks to its volcanic past. The latest eruption, though, occurred 90,000 years ago.

I wouldn't mind creating a glowing eruption on my paper, and I know precisely where to find one; in Milos Mining Museum, on the outskirts of Adamas. They display a red-hot volcano model which I copy onto my paper the best I can. A geological map, full of pins, is too complicated for me. Each pin has a single letter on its head; the first letter in the name of one special mineral or metal, whose physical occurrence is indicated by the pin's location. The underground of Milos, especially the eastern part of the island, is a treasury.

Plaka, the capital of Milos, towers on a nearby hilltop and has merged with two neighboring villages, Tripiti and Triovasalos. In Plaka, there is another kind of museum, dealing in other types of stone, the Archaeological Museum, housing a most famous lady, Aphrodite, a plaster copy of the marble original in Louvre, Venus de Milo. Aphrodite is prevented from doing any drawings, for both her arms are missing.

Finally, I ascend the hill up to the castle, Kastro, to get a complete view of Milos and check out if I have forgotten any important details. The many scars in the landscape confirm that Milos is a place of big mining business. A faded and worn Greek flag, waving on the top in a fresh breeze, is not exactly an eye-catcher. I deliberate whether I should replace the tired flag with my now completed island piece. That would be a very suitable spectacle - four Cycladic islands blowing in the wind.

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