The Ionian Islands and Epirus by Jim Potts

Author:Jim Potts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Greece, Travel, Greek, History, Corfu, Ancient, Classical, Cyprus, Ionian
ISBN: 9781908493460
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

A Tour of the Islands

The Reality of Corfu

We have already considered different perceptions of Corfu, from native and incoming points of view, and from different periods of history. So how have recent newcomers to Corfu found the reality of living there?

Raul Scacchi and Gioia Maestro left Milan, Italy, and moved to Corfu nine years ago. They gave up their jobs, urban pollution and their stressed way of life; they left their country. They were entering a new century, and the time for change had arrived; they were psychologically prepared. Having made the big decision, they gave themselves time to plan and organize their new life in the village of Sinarades, and moved there in May 2001. The first period was magical, and full of the energy that came from the beauty of Corfu. When difficulties began and the novelty was over they found their own ways of dealing with it, by looking for their inner resources.

Raul is a painter and a musician, while Gioia is a poet, writer and artist. This is part of what Gioia told me.

As the Ancient Romans used to say, every place has its own Genius Loci...

Beauty is the leitmotif you can find in any diary, chronicle, book, story or article written by artists, painters, princesses, poets, musicians, etc., who spent a part of their lives in Corfu.

Unfortunately, the “dark side” of this beauty, and of the aura hanging over legendary personalities who visited Corfu, is that in recent times the island managed to arouse the worst appetites of those people interested only in exploitation and in a quick way to make more money, without taking any care at all of the environment, nature, balance and harmony. The last phase of modernization, the one which started in the late seventies, saw the abandonment of rural society, destroying in less than thirty years a world which had lasted with minor changes for several centuries; since then, tourism has become the first income resource for the greater part of the local population.

In spite of the huge difficulties in trying to awaken an ecological consciousness, there are still many places hidden in the town, up on the hills, by the sea or in the wider expanses of greenery and of the countryside, able to tell you tales about beauty...

My olive grove is now worried about the possibility that one day a bulldozer will destroy another big area, and the cement will prevent everybody from listening to the story.

Billi Rosen, who was born in Greece in 1942 but who also spent part of her childhood in Sweden and the UK, lived on Corfu for many years. She is the author of prize-winning novels for young adults, such as the semi-autobiographical trilogy which begins with Andi’s War, set during the Greek Civil War; it has been translated into seventeen languages. Looking optimistically at the hills in Corfu in September 1987, she wrote in the foreword to her novel: “Thanks to tourism, Greece has become prosperous to a degree unimaginable even twenty years ago.

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