After breakfast I'm told that I cannot rent a scooter with my driver's licence. Although 'I always have', it has been illegal. One needs A category licence. Later internet says that this is indeed so. Most places do rent 50cc scooters without A category but if something happens then insurance doesn't cover it.
I could get a car from the other side of the village. Car is not interesting, I can walk all through this island of theirs. Passing the bus stop I notice that the bus goes in 7 minutes. Plus some additional Greek time. There's an English-speaking couple who ask if this is my first time. I don't understand wheather they mean Greece, Folegandros or riding a bus.
From the last stop I continue walking until asphalt ends and gravel road turns down towards the sea. There are Lygaria and Agios Giorgos beaches, foamy waves and a lot of wind. No people, except one who takes a big ax and comes after me. And disappears into bush then. Many goats, donkeys and cows. I scare a bunch of crows from a stone fence. In Ano Meria there are also cats, one of them hisses angrily at a wisp of grass that wind blows on him. The bus goes back in one and a half hours and by that time I have of course already walked to Chora. The wind pulls at the sparse vegetation. Dust flies but at least it's not hot.
Today the towels are untouched and Irene comes to clean only after I've already finished in shower. I don't think it is necessary to clean but allow her to take my garbage and we agree transportation to the port for tomorrow. Irene thinks that there will be less wind tomorrow. The Norwegians don't think so. But what do the Norwegians know.
I finish the book about houses and Palladio. Endless architectural descriptions but it is not as bad as it sounds.
'After an excessive meal, which raises again the puzzle of how Italians get anything done in the afternoon, I take a stroll.'
'The houses here are too new to be picturesque.'
I also finish the Icelandic language 'Sofðu ást mín' that I started at home, short stories of Andri Snær Magnason. I liked his long stories more.
The wind tramples around the house all that time and tears at the shutters.
All in all, Folegandros is a livable island and descriptions of trails have been gathered here. www.anavasi.gr sells paper maps with the trails on them.
Having finished two books today, I start a new one. Kolyma Tales after Varlam Shalamov. Stories from the Gulag prison camp system. Should be a suitable read in communist Greece. The style is very different from Solzhenitsyn but reading it makes you scream inside the same way. Not because it is true but because the truth is worse than that and indescribable.
Moon creates weird patterns with edges of clouds in the sky.
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