Greek Style – Part Two 

I’ve written before about my disgust with most of the UK Dentistry profession (the woefully awful NHS variety and the Mafia-inspired private practitioners with their new patient waiting lists, rip off first appointment assessment fees and thereafter hard-selling of unnecessary costly cosmetic work). Having finally given up on Hull area dentists, it’s probably been four years since I’ve been orally probed, and so I felt a visit wouldn’t go amiss. To cut a long story short, I booked to see a Greek dentist in Heraklion – highly recommended by my Greek friends, yet who seemed to have excellent appointment availability. At the appointment I was required to answer a few basic health questions by the receptionist/dental assistant, before being taken into the surgery proper (no different equipment-wise to any UK dental surgery). There the similarities ended – the dentist who spoke passable English (embarrassingly most foreigners do, whilst we still seem reluctant to even attempt other languages) sat me in his chair and asked the straightforward question: ‘when I look into your mouth what will I see?’. How refreshing to be given the opportunity to give some direction to the person being paid to care, rather than them just poking and prodding in the hope of finding something wrong, and then inevitably x-raying with ‘potential’ problems seized upon for recommended (aka mandatory if you want to remain a patient here) further expensive work. As I had no problems other than some chipped teeth, which the dentist identified as being caused by nocturnal grinding, I was given a 50-minute descale, clean and polish which though extremely thorough didn’t cause the discomfort or bleeding I’ve always encountered in the UK. I’m now one of Mr. George’s patients, and he’s going to make me a night gum shield next time I visit. Oh, and by the way the cost of my one-hour customer chosen date/time highly efficient appointment? €50.

Cretan taxis are comparatively expensive compared to the economic a/c buses, but these days few villages merit a scheduled bus service – however virtually all have an early morning (often very early) school bus service. These allow paying passengers at a sixth of the cost of a taxi. Bizarrely though, paying passengers are not allowed on the afternoon home run – why this is so only the bus companies seem to know and they aren’t telling.

Greek state school children aren’t like their UK counterparts when it comes to dress. There are no uniforms, and the girls mainly go to school dressed (some would say) inappropriately with bare midriffs, boob tube type tops and long stick-on false nails. The first thing many do on the ungodly hour school bus is get out their make-up bags and apply thick war paint. Boys often have beards or unkempt facial hair, wait for the bus smoking roll-ups or vaping, wear skintight jeans and T-shirts always with English Language motifs, and frequently sport tracksuits and paramilitary camouflage gear. Both girls and boys without exception wear only trainers and spend the majority of the school run glued to their mobiles, flicking at incredible speed between apps and photographs ignoring each other after the initial ‘Kalimera’. On arrival at the school destination town, all then seem to pile into the bakers to buy snacks and coffees, before ambling on in packs to the actual school. Some pupils (even pre-teens) ride to school, helmetless, on quad bikes, motorbikes, mopeds or electric scooters, whilst others are ferried by their parents by car or pick-up truck.

As everywhere else, and predominantly one must assume to pretend to be modern thinking, the scourge of Net Zero, climate emergency, carbon dioxide phobia and environmentalism is rife. Laughably whilst encouraging everything ‘green’ and recycling, there is still a widespread fly-tipping mentality. It’s not uncommon to see broken large household appliances in remote rural fields along with the livestock, or piles of rubble and building materials dumped anywhere other than where they originated (including sometimes even behind prestigious looking commercial and residential properties). It’s easy to be critical, but let’s be – when plastic bottled mineral water is consumed on a scale that’s impossible to even calculate, why aren’t bottles that when empty concertina down to a smaller size mandatory? I guess it’s easier to be ‘green’ in theory than in practise, as is apparent everywhere in the cynical, guilt-induced developed world.

It’s not surprising that Xenophobia is a Greek word, most Greeks simply do not like non-affluent foreigners and frankly exploit them financially. Like the UK, although not noticeably on the same scale, Crete is awash with refugees, but mainly foreign migrant labourers (Albanians, Bulgarians, Macedonians etc. plus a surprising number of Bangladeshis). Unlike in the UK, these grudgingly welcome ‘guests’ typically squat or rent slum-like otherwise abandoned properties. Given the poor relations between Greece and Turkey, plus the memories of Ottoman domination, there is absolutely no concession made to Islam whatsoever, and the Greek Orthodox Church exercises almost complete power over social attitudes. This grip is slowly eroding, especially among the young and in the larger towns and cities, yet still commands a part of the national consciousness in ways that the confused Church of England lost by the mid 20^th Century.

Despite some of the criticisms I’ve levied in these two articles, I wouldn’t miss my long trips to Crete (Covid Passports and rigorously enforced mask wearing nonsense being a 2-year exception), and I heartily recommend Crete to all discerning travellers.

(This is the concluding part to Greek Style part I, published earlier.) 

Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.

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