1. What is 'horta'?
Horta is a dark green vegetable dish served in tavernas. They are not exactly dandelion leaves but of similar plants and, in spring the are collected from the wild. It is not unusual to see women bending over in the field, knife in hand, busy collecting these leaves.
To cook, the leaves are boiled with a change of water after a few minutes. To serve the vegetable is tossed in olive and lemon juice and is best served hot.
For the taverna menu, horta does not translate so easily so often appears as spinach or just green vegetable.
2. How do you work out the name of a church in Greece?
With difficulty, mostly! The following guide works in most cases but there are exceptions. Looking at the iconostasis, the icon of Jesus is to the right of the central doorway with the Virgin Mary to the left. To the right of Jesus is John the Baptist and to the left of the Virgin Mary is the icon of the saint to which the church is dedicated.
Easy so far but.... very often there is another doorway in the iconostasis exactly to the left of the Virgin Mary leaving no space for the icon of the Church saint. In this case, John the Baptist is replaced by the icon of the saint to which the church is dedicated. There are still plenty of pitfalls and one common problem is that the name of the saint is in ancient Greek or the icon is so old it is almost impossible to read.
3. On which island was Sappho born?
Sappho was born on Lesbos around 612 BC. She was a great Lyric poetess and her work dwelt on the loves, jealousies and relationships of herself and and her contemporaries. Although it was not entirely conclusive, it was generally believed that Sappho was a homosexual. That Sappho from Lesbos somehow turned into the Lesbian Sappho and a new word was coined for female heterosexuality, Lesbian. Interestingly, b in the Greek language is pronounced v so the word lesbian might well be a mispronunciation.
The people of Lesvos now prefer to call their island Mytilene, after the main town, or Lesvos which might be the wrong spelling but at least is gives the correct pronunciation. People of Lesvos are then Lesvians.
4. What are those woolly looking nests hanging from pine trees?
The nests are formed by the Pine Processionary Caterpillar. They live in communal nests in the winter and come out to feed when the weather warms up. Their communal behaviour persists on leaving the nest and they move in procession, each one nose to tail with the next so forming a chain which can extend to several metres in length.
5. What is an 'archondiko'?
An archondiko is a traditional mansion of which there were plenty to see in Lindos on Rhodes. Unfortunately, many of these grand mansions are either falling into disrepair or are being converted into restaurants.
6. How do you correctly pronounce 'agios'?
Most visitors have considerable difficulty with the Greek alphabet and language. There are one or two rules which are easy to absorb and help to make a start on the pronunciation. G is one of the letters which causes problems. It is pronounced as a y when followed by e or i, otherwise it remains as a g. Agios, a saint, occurs many times in place names in particular. So it is actually pronounced 'Ayios' .
7. Where will you find a petrified forest?
Lesvos has an amazing petrified forest over in the west of the island. It was created intense volcanic activity some 20 million years ago. The lava flowed so quickly and in such volume that trees were smothered before they had chance to burn. Now they are preserved in a petrified state. The whole are is protected as a European Geopark and the museum dedicated to the petrified forest is outstanding.
8. Which is the second largest island in Greece?
The answer is Crete, the largest island is Evvia just off and bridged to the mainland.
9. On which island was Zeus born?
Crete, in a cave.
10. From which island can you most conveniently trip over to Ephesus in Turkey?
Samos lies close to the shores of Turkey and not too far from Kusadesi. Boat trips takes tourist over daily and it is just a short bus ride from their to Ephesus.