The Plakias Lending Library: Winter Opening Hours

The Plakias lending library - ‘The most southerly lending library in Europe’ is home to over 6,000 books in fifteen different languages. A recent addition is a DVD library, which now has over 1,000 titles in its collection. It really is a fantastic community resource! The library also hosts a variety of community and charity events throughout the year. For example on the first and third Sundays of every month there are ‘fun days’ which start at around 12.30 pm, and include a selection of free nibbles prepared by Femke. All the librarians and support team are unpaid volunteers, so running costs are able to be kept to a minimum; however, to help pay for electricity and running costs a membership fee of just €2 a month is requested.

Winter Opening Hours: During the winter season the library will be open from 10.30am to 12.30pm every day except Saturday.

Directions: For those of you not familiar with this part of Crete, Plakias is on the South Coast, easily accessible by road from Rethymnon (about a 40 minute drive, passing through some stunning scenery). When you get to Plakias follow the signs to the Youth Hostel. Once you get to the Youth Hostel continue along the path towards the “Old Mill” where you will pass, on your left, the shack which was the original library. From there you go a further 400 meters along the path, over a little stream running in a concrete bed across the track.

Books Galore: Plakias Lending Library team faces, once again, the agonizing choice of which books to keep on the shelves and which must be released to make room for new titles. There is space for only 6,000 books in all – 3,200 in English, 1,500 in German, 500 in French, 300 in Dutch and a further 500 in a variety of other languages. Every year it receives donations of a couple of thousand books and, having eliminated duplicates and damaged items, it has to make room on the shelves for about 1,200 new titles. The surplus books are usually given to one of the local animal care charities, but even they are now becoming heavily overstocked. If you can find a good home – or a worthy cause – which would benefit from free books, please email Eddie at alaneddy@otenet.gr with some idea of how many, in which languages, you would like. To give you a rough idea a supermarket carrier bag accommodates 20-24 paperbacks It would be appreciated if recipients could collect from the Library (possibly joining Kate and Luc on one of their visits to our regular Funday Sundays). Otherwise, it should be possible to arrange a rendezvous in the main car park in Rethymnon one Saturday morning to transfer the books from car to car.

Plakias Library, Winter Events: February News

Our friends write:
The sun continued its love affair with the Plakias Lending Library as it continued to shine for the informal gatherings of our large expatriate community at the first two Sunday ‘Fundays’ of the New Year on 8th and 22nd of January. Although the days immediately preceding both had been cold, wet and windy, the weather on both Fundays remained dry and sunny, even if a little chilly in the northerly breeze. Since it is this airflow emanating directly from the Kotsifou Gorge that usually helps to keep midsummer festivities pleasantly cool, we have little cause for complaint!

In February, the Funday Sundays are on 5th and 19th and in March (as this is a Leap Year) on 4th and 18th. Each of these will be enhanced by the free ‘nibbles’ provided by our resident chef and Andy will be on hand to help the gossip along by offering a little liquid refreshment.

After more than three years, Femke retired as our catering manager at the end of January. She will be succeeded by Yve, whose temptations are already well known and much appreciated by Funday regulars.

Readers are invited to join us at any of these events, and, if you arrive early, you may even like to take the opportunity of browsing through more than 150 meters of shelves of books and DVDs. During February, we plan to catalogue several hundred new book titles, mainly in English, German, French and Dutch.

You will be made very welcome!

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