TravelnWrite

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Thursday, December 2, 2021

Italy ~Travel in a QR Code World

Our destination was Italy. It was a trip to a neighboring country, less than two hours away by plane. Yet, it didn't take long to realize that while we knew where we were going, we were definitely traveling in a whole new world: the world of the QR code.

We'd flown from Athens to Bologna, the start of a 10-day trip, on a brisk November day two weeks ago. After unpacking it was time to get to the business of what we had come here for: eating and drinking Italian food and wine.

The Scout, the wine and the QR code menu - Bologna

We were seated at a popular bar in Bologna's historic market district, on which two-inch by two-inch laminated cards with a QR codes served as the menu.

Italian wine - Mama Mia!

Now, I can't tell you how much we love Italian wine and how much we dislike QR codes. If you've followed our adventures for very long you know we call ourselves, 'techno dino's' for good reason. We are dinosaurs in a world of technology that long ago moved beyond our skills and understanding. We are people who - heaven forbid! - often leave their mobile phones at home.

It turns out that QR codes, short for 'quick response' codes, were invented back in the 1990's by a car manufacturer to track the components in car production. In the last year they have become the access point to menus, shopping, travel and are being used by any number of industries. The little black and white graphic squares hold far more information than the 'old' bar code.

No QR codes here - Yay!

Some retail stores place bar codes in windows so shoppers can make purchases without entering the store. Tickets for public transportation sport the little guys. And since the pandemic turned the world upside down, public health agencies on this side of the pond use them in contact tracing efforts -- notifying travelers of possible Covid exposure.

We concede that in this Covid-influenced world, we must credit QR codes for providing a 'contactless' means of conducting business. And as a result, we techno-dino's - out of necessity -- have been forced to learn how to point the camera of a mobile device (aka smart phone) at them to access the information we need.

So many wine bars from which to choose - Bologna

Information like the wines available at this bar we'd chosen in Bologna. So I aimed my Android device's camera at that small Italian square and read:

'No network connection.'

"But, of course!! (Fisica!) as we say in Greece. . .our Greek phone network doesn't work outside the country - so we had no way of accessing the mysteries of the menu in Italy.

Explaining our dilemma to the 30-something waiter, we asked for a menu.

Problem was, he explained, they didn't have a printed menu. With frustration causing greater thirst, The Scout, sought to solve the problem by saying, 'We will have two glasses of wine.'

Well, that was far too simple a solution. There were choices to be had. A menu would be found! Within minutes our young waiter presented us with a phone borrowed from a staff member - and on its screen was the wine menu.

Yay, for the printed menu!

I am happy to report not all trattorias and bars have moved away from the printed menus and that made the trip a whole lot easier! But our experience at the bar highlighted the impact of the QR code when traveling these days in Europe.

Don't leave home without it

One of our many QR codes for travel

'Check in now for your flight' came the email notice from Aegean Airlines, the day before our departure. Following instructions we promptly had two emails in return each with a QR code that needed to be shown at the check-in desk.

Worried that we wouldn't have internet access in the airport (which is a well-reported problem for many travelers, as is the 'dead phone battery') we took both our Greek phones, charged them overnight at the airport hotel and opened each of them before we left the hotel to display a QR ticket code - The Scout on one phone and The Scribe on the other.

As if presenting gifts we placed the two phones showing the QR codes on the check-in counter. (Opening them and having the code displayed really was a gift in our minds.) The ticket agent glanced at them as he asked for our passports and then using the passports typed our names into his computer and said, 'You are going to Bologna?'

With little attention paid to our QR codes, he printed paper boarding passes for us with the baggage claim tickets stuck on the back, just like in the 'good old days'.

Off to Italy - PLF QR code in hand

The European Union rules for travel require completed the EU PLF's (that would be, European Union Passenger Locator Forms) for entry into each country. And each country has a slightly different take on them. Italy required one per passenger, Greece requires one per family. Forms are to be completed on-line prior to travel.

The form is a lengthy document requiring, in some cases, details down to your seat number and the exact hour and minute your flight is scheduled to arrive. Others aren't as detailed. The purpose of each however is to know how to reach you should it be determined you were exposed to Covid.

Immediately after submitting that form. . . .(you guessed it). . . a QR code is sent via email to your mobile device. Our QR for Italy provided a link for downloading as a PDF document to our phone, which could be accessed without internet. We tried several times to download but got no further than the message reading, 'We are experiencing difficulties, try again later.' So, we'd also opened those PLF QR codes before leaving the hotel and left those pages open - as they also had to be shown at check-in..

Rejected for not being 'official' enough. . .

Greece allows travelers to print the PLF but it comes out as only a QR code on the paper with a small letterhead. We had our printed copy rejected by an airline agent who said it didn't have enough proof of being issued by the Greek government. Thankfully we found the PDF on the phone with printed information and QR code - it was accepted.

I should mention that you don't get beyond the check-in desk at the airport without showing that QR code, so it is a step key to travel.

Green Pass -- QR code in hand

United States version of the 'green pass'

The European Union 'green pass', as the Covid vaccination record here is called, is another QR code on a mobile app provided by each EU government. You must show it to travel, for access to tourist attractions like museums, restaurants, bars, to shop in retail stores - nearly every public place you want to go these days.

Those of us vaccinated in the United States, carry a card that has information about our vaccinations on them. While we don't like QR codes it would be so much easier to travel (and to go about daily life for that matter) if we did have them only a phone away.

On several occasions in the last couple weeks I have found myself holding out the cards to a perplexed gate keeper, pointing to the notations of our three shots and saying, 'American, Pfizer, ena, dio, tria,' in Greek and 'American, Pfizer, un, due, tre' in Italian.

Our CDC cards were checked by the airline, train and three of the four hotels in which we stayed. Museums also scrutinized the cards. The cards were accepted by all who reviewed them.

But not once in the 10-day trip were we asked by an Italian bar or restaurant to show our cards. Other customers were being asked to show green passes on their phones. We reasoned that either we looked and sounded like tourists, who wouldn't have been allowed in the country without vaccinations or they didn't want to deal with our cards and matching the names and date of births on them to that information in our passports.

Trains, ferries and buses - QR codes

QR code on train tickets

Train tickets in Italy carry the QR code which is quickly scanned by the conductor as they make their way through the train. We purchased tickets from a ticket counter and received paper tickets, had we done it on line we would have had e-tickets.

The ferries that shuttle people through the canals of Venice also have gone to an optical reading system, no longer time and date stamping the tickets but using electronic coding instead.

Paper tickets sold at the ticket office

We traveled on the airport shuttle bus between the Bologna airport and train station, where electronic readers have also replaced the time/date stamp of the on board validation machines.

While traveling in the techno-world is still a bit of a challenge for us, we can't tell you how nice it was to travel again. There were plenty of tourists and folks out and about but none of the crowds of pre-Covid travel.

We are wondering what your travel experiences in the QR code world have been like? Have any of you been contacted by an airline or government agency using the PLF information after a trip? Shoot us an email or tell us about them in the comments below.

Hope you'll be back next week when we'll have another serving of Italy for you. Thanks, as always, for the time you've spent with us today!

Linking soon with:

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Expat life - An Old House Made New

The jackhammer's pounding on the floor above us rattled the ceiling, the walls and our brains. From the furthest points in the upper garden to the lowest level of the olive grove, there was no getting away from it.

The Stone House on the Hill

For two and a half days, the racket of those mechanical waves dislodging and destroying the massive centerpiece our living room, shattered the silence of this rural slice of Greece. It nearly shattered our resolve for the project as well, as we cringed, encamped in the guest room on the lower floor.

So painfully obnoxious was the sound, that our next-door neighbor said he'd been ready to start wearing his noise cancelling headphones inside his home.

The Stone House on the Hill

While I had once chuckled at the hilarious tales of stone house renovations recounted by writers Peter Mayle in France and Frances Mayes in Italy, I found nothing humorous about it now that we were experiencing it first hand at our Stone House on the Hill in the Greek Peloponnese.

If the sound didn't do us in, I was certain we'd be asphyxiated by the concrete and stone dust that filled the house.

And had we succumbed to one or the other, we'd have had no one else to blame but ourselves. . . we had chosen this path of destruction and there was no turning back.

Time for a Change

The Stone House on the Hill built in terraced olive grove

Early this year, we had declared it the Year of Change at our spitiki, small house, in Kalamata olive growing country. The layout of our Stone House on the Hill follows that of our olive grove which marches down the hillside on steep terraces. Thus the three floors of our home are built on terraces that were long ago carved into the hillside to accommodate olive trees. Stairs lead to the house and stairs connect the floors of the house.

The early years look at The Stone House on the Hill

Our 15-year-old house (still an infant when viewed in the overall span of Greek history) felt and looked tired when we bought it. In the seven years we've owned it, there have been small cosmetic changes, but this year would herald a major makeover. It was definitely time for a face lift and body sculpting!

New closets were installed in July which provide more storage space, yet take up less floor space than the originals that came with the house.

Our new front door

That same month we gave the house its first facelift by replacing the original muted green windows and doors with energy efficient ones - their vibrant blue giving new life to the interior and exterior of the home.

Tile replaced flagstone on the front deek

With October's summer-like weather the third of four projects was completed. It was another facelift, the installation of tiles on our outdoor deck to create more of an outdoor room than flag-stone paved patio. And it worked! The project brightens the deck and gives the feel of having increased the space.

Tiled Outdoor room/deck at The Stone House on the Hill

Buoyed by the outcomes of those projects, we moved to the grand finale, or what will now forever be remembered as 'the mother of all projects' here. We were finally getting rid of the massive stone stairway that looked as if it belonged in the lobby of some grand hotel and not the small living room in our house.

Dreams Undeterred

The original stone stairs in The Stone House

Throughout the spring and summer I would imagine a house without that massive stairway. Okay, so maybe I was obsessing about it, but I'd grab my tape measure, or metro, and I would measure the structure and announced to The Scout that we would create 'x-amount' of living space if we were just to get rid of 'those' stairs. In fact I announced it to every visitor who walked through the front door and to any poor soul who would listen to me.

The Scout, using that voice-of-reason tone that husband's often use, pointed out how miserable the project would likely be as we'd need to remove its stone and concrete base, read that: dirt and dust. Then we'd likely find more stone and concrete inside. (He was right, btw.)

His even more spot-on reality check was that we had no idea how to go about coordinating such a project and certainly didn't know of any stair contractors.

The truck said 'stairs' - we were on our way!

Fate was with us (as it so often is in this expat life) as one morning we literally drove past the van of a stair building company working on a house in the village. One Greek word I know is skala, or stairs, and it appeared on the side of the van. By afternoon the contractor was at our house. We shook hands on his proposal and the project was underway!

Paniotis, the 'stair master' as we named him, returned a few days later with the men who would destroy and rebuild the living area. He set out the plan of action: demolition, rebuild of the wall and re-tile the space exposed by the stair removal. Like dominoes falling, those steps would be completed and then he could install a much more compact open wooden stairway.

Two weeks was the estimate from start to finish.

Out with the Old, In With the New

Provlima: wires ran through the stairs

The demolition was barely into its second hour when the workers called out, 'Ella! . . .Provlima!' (Come! Problem!). Removing the wooden treads had revealed not only more concrete under the stairs but a major bank of electrical wires that ran their full length from the wall to the floor.

Provlima solved - meeting of the minds

The team - stair builder, demolition duo, the tiler and the recently-added electrician - gathered at the stairway that afternoon in a hastily called meeting. We took our places as spectators. They scratched chins and heads, pointed and measured. Voices sometimes raised, as is the case of most Greek conversations, options were discussed.

After a time, Paniotis turned to us and said, 'Yes, we can do this.' He drew a plan of action sketch, all viewed it, and it was taped to the refrigerator door as a handy reference.

The plan on the back of an envelope

The meeting adjourned and the jackhammer resumed its destructive percussion.

Jackhammer serenade resumed

What seemed an eternity later, the jackhammers were silenced, the space cleared and, our master stone mason began putting the wall back together, creating a niche for adornment and then floor tiling was completed. We marveled at his skill in putting the house back together.

Stone mason magic

Much of the stair work had been done in the Kalamata workshop so installation required one very long work day.

The new stairs

Day 12 found us up to our elbows cleaning concrete dust that had escaped despite the best attempts at sealing off the workspace. Cleaning finished, furniture moved back into place and by Day 14 we were settled into our new Stone House on the Hill -- one that now has an enormous amount of space in the living area.

Footprint of the old stairway

Time to Travel

We are now back to doing what we do best: planning and packing for travel. As Covid continues to dictate protocols and preparation for travel, countries on this side of the pond are open and welcoming travelers.

Protocols and preparations begin for travel

Way back when we bought our stone house it was to serve as a launchpad for adventures. It is time we start using it as just that! We are off next week. . .and I'll tell you about it in upcoming posts. Until then wishes for continued health and happy travels to you and yours. Hope you'll be back and bring a friend or two with you! And as always, thanks for your time today.

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Monday, November 1, 2021

In Greece ~ To Everything A Season

To everything there is a season.

In Greece, especially this Kalamata region, it is now the season of the olive.

Olive season has arrived in our world

The olive harvest season is upon us, heralding autumn's arrival. Brisk dawns and dusks open and close the ever-shortening days. The mighty wind that blows down from the Taygetos mountains this time of year has returned with its seasonal gusto. Some days it dances leaves and blossoms through the air and other times rips the awnings and hurls the sun-shade umbrellas out of their stands at local tavernas.

September's sunshine gave way to October's rain

When we set off in early September for a stay in our other world, Washington State, we left the lingering golden summer days of Greece behind us. We returned in early October to a much needed, but rather dreary, rainy stretch which served as the opening act of autumn.

Our drought-stressed olives in August

As olive growers, albeit small time growers, compared to so many in the area, we welcomed the rain after a long, very dry summer. That summer drought and heat had turned our usually green olives into withered purple pimples on the branches. 'They just need rain', Taki, who owns the olive processing plant, assured us. Then he added, that while the rains plumped them up again, it also served to make them attractive to the pesky 'dako' as the olive fruit fly is known here. Those tiny winged terrorists can (and do) destroy crops rather quickly by boring eggs into the fruit when weather conditions allow.

We didn't want to test fate with those inviting little olives remaining on the trees for very long, so we were among the first to be at Taki's olive processing plant when it opened for the season a week ago.

Olive Harvest

Friend Jean will attest to the hard work part

It takes a day to harvest olives at our Stone House on the Hill. It is a hard day's work, I think our volunteers would tell you, as we, like most in the area, harvest by hand. Olives are beaten from branches that remain on the tree and are stripped from those branches cut from the tree. Harvest and a first-round pruning go hand-in-hand here.

Sorting the fallen olives from twigs is an important step

The olives fall on plastic nets, enormous carpets, that drape over our steep terraces. As each tree is completed we crawl on hands and knees raking them into piles and pulling out large twigs and branches.

Mary and Ulysses had at work

This year's harvest was made more fun by having a team of volunteer harvesters join us for varying amounts of time during the day. Our harvest team consisted of expat friends, Chuck, from Kirkland, Washington, Jean and Mic from Portland, Oregon and visitors to the area, Mary and Ulysses, from the Seattle area. Coordinating the efforts were two local harvesters - the two who know how to harvest and directed the operation, I might add.

Fellow expat Mic at work

Real verses Imagined

I still laugh at the vision I once had of olive harvest, formulated in part by Frances Mayes and her 'Under the Tuscan Sun' book. In my imagined world, the day was more of an outing punctuated by a lovely lunch served with wine, perfectly matched tableware under those magical trees. After a few hours toil we would enjoy a repast of fine food and wine that would fill the afternoon.

A quick break then back to work!

That couldn't be further from reality here as our volunteer crew will attest! We work about three hours; about the length of time it takes to be unable to raise our arms above our heads or whack the branch hard enough to loosen the olives any longer (we are all boomers, after all). Luckily we fade about noon. Then we gather for cold cuts, cheese and lots of water, served on disposable table ware.

Nets drape the hillside and are slippery

The break lasts less than an hour though and it is back to the grove where the pitfalls of harvest include falling on your fanny because the nets are slippery or whacking your forehead into an unexpected tree branch and seeing stars for a few minutes. (Do I have you lining up yet to volunteer for next year's harvest?)

From Olive to Oil

Our harvest at the oil processing plant

Our harvest was smaller than had been expected as this was the alternating year in which we should have had a heavy yield. We harvested 294 kilos of olives - filling seven and a half 50-kilo burlap bags. Our crop produced 40 kilos (equivalent to liters which are close to quarts) of oil. Some of which we sold to the processor, some we will distribute to friends and family in the U.S. and some was earmarked for our volunteer crew.

And here comes the oil!

For those new to TravelnWrite, when we bought our Stone House on the Hill on a rural, olive-tree carpeted hillside in the Peloponnese seven years ago, what we knew about olive oil would have fit in a table-sized dispenser of the stuff.

As it turned out the property on which our stone house sits also had 17 olive trees - and unbeknownst to us at the time, a whole new segment of this expat world was about to open.

Our Stone House on the Hill at the top of the grove

Slowly, slowly, or siga, siga, (see-GAH) as we say in Greece, we've come to learn about the seasons of the olive. There is the early spring pruning long before the trees flower, the cutting of the grasses after the wild flowers are spent. After the olives begin to grow we move into the spraying season (bio, we are told) to combat attacks by those dakos.

Harvest, the crescendo of seasons, begins in the lower elevations where we are the end of October and will continue through the end of December and early January as crops on the higher elevations ripen.

Our olives heading to press

Freighters are now marking time in the Messinian Bay, waiting to be loaded with oil that will be taken to countries like Italy. Find that surprising? Well read this article from Epoch, pure Greece (there are others to be found on the internet, if you still find this a remarkable fact):

Is your Italian olive oil really Italian?

The world seems to love Italian olive oil, and many bottles of oil seem to be packaged to display their Italian origin. But here comes the crunch, when you buy a bottle of oil that says Italian on the label, if you check the small print on the label you may see that what you are really getting is Italian oil blended with olive oil from other countries, especially with premium quality extra virgin olive oil from Greece.

Italy uses and exports more olive oil than its farmers can grow. Natural olive oil from Greece tastes just as good, if not better, than olive oil from other countries, but it is cheaper to produce. Italian brands buy Greek oil, mix it with their own and sell it to you, quite legally and stated on the label, as Italian product. Greek olive growers grow and press more olives than home consumption can use and so they can sell their excess olives to Italy.

Our fresh pressed olive oil

Thanks for being with us and welcome to our new subscribers! We've been busy changing our world in Greece the last few weeks and next week I plan to tell you about it. . .hope you'll be back then!

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