Carnival, Orthodox Lent, St Patrick’s Day, Catholic Easter….

On Sunday March 9th in Rethymnon we have the GRAND CARNIVAL PARADE! This starts at around 2pm in Leoforou Kontouriotou (main road by Town Hall). If the word on the grapevine is anything to go by, this year’s parade should be something special, even by Rethymnon standards!
Monday, March 10th marks the beginning of Lent, the beginning of the fasting period in the weeks that lead up to Orthodox Easter. Traditionally a day where families clean out cupboards and go and fly kites. Try visiting villages such as Armeni, which has a neat way of ‘subverting the form’.
Monday 17th March is St Patrick’s Day, St Patrick being the patron saint of the Irish. ’ No relevance to Rethymnon, then’, we hear you cry. Well, you’d be wrong. It’s a pretty fair bet that somewhere in Arabatzoglou Street in the Old Town there will be a celebration. Arabatzoglou is the street that is still identified as Thessalonikis on many maps—including the one in the Crete 2007 phone directory, (slogan: ‘INFOTE: Information for All’) even though the street name changed 15 years ago. If you are actually interested in Green Guinness, we suggest you find the Rimondi Fountain, head towards the Police Station, and if you’ve reached the Mikri Panagia (Church at Square of The Lost Tourist) then you’ve gone too far.

Catholic etc. Easter Day is on Sunday, 23rd March. Whilst this event is not celebrated in the Orthodox calendar, observants may like to know that there is a Catholic Church in Rethymnon at Odos Mesalongiou / Salaminas, where mass will be held.

And on a completely different note:
Apparently, in March there are 73 different name days — you can check these out at www.namedays.gr and a link is also posted on the www.rethymnon.biz website (yes, we know there are only 31 days in March). As you can possibly imagine, trying to decide which names to select for publication and which ones to leave out is (in terms of maintaining social relationships) akin to sticking your hand into a vat of vipers. However, if you live in Greece (or somewhere near Alexandria, Egypt; Tottenham Court Road, London, UK; Melbourne Australia; Constantinople; East Jerusalem; Paris, France; Paris Texas, US or even Liechtenstein) it is a fair assumption that on 25th March, Feast of the Annunciation, there will be somebody you know who is celebrating their name day to whom you should say χρόνια πολλά. Not such a sure fire certainty for March 28th (this year), but we could be wrong. In any case, our heartfelt best wishes from all of us here at the Bugle to anyone who has a name day this month.

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BBC: The Next Mission, Minos Winery, 21st March.

Last month, the Rethymnon Wine Appreciation Society — more popularly known as the Bugle Booze Club - had its first group outing (find out more about our visit to Dourakis Winery on the Spotlight Page). The BBC was launched by Anna Capernaros in November last year, and basically the main aims of the club are as follows: ‘To find out more about local wine and spirit producers, to have fun sampling these products and associated local gastronomic delicacies in good company, and to support local producers.’ To further these aims, Anna has set up two types of group activities. Firstly, outings to local producers to see production in action, enjoy tastings and lunch etc.; secondly, wine tastings where local producers bring their wares to us. (See our report of the fabulous BBC wine tasting hosted by Manolis Kalemopoulos in the December issue of the Bugle). Anyone can join the BBC. To register, contact Anna Capernaros, via email at ananke@ret.forthnet.gr or phone 28310 57305 (landline) 6938708410 (mobile). Interested parties should leave names, email addresses, and / or mobile numbers so text messages can be sent out. Events will also be posted on the www.rethymnon.biz website.

The next planned group visit is to Minos Winery, in the Heraklion region on Friday 21st March, date to be confirmed. Numbers will be limited to 20 people maximum—so call Anna ASAP if you are interested! For just €10 per head, Minos Winery have put together this programme of delights for us:

• A guided tour of the winery, in English, giving details of production methods, along with a question and answer session.
• Audio-Video presentation about the production of wine, olive oil and raki, in English.
• Wine tasting of five different premium wines plus a medium sweet wine. This will be accompanied by mezedes: local cheese (Graviera and Manouri), cheese pies and spinach pies (fresh from the local bakery), dakos with fresh tomato, oregano and olive oil, and Kalitsouni (sweet cheese pie).

The winery itself doesn’t serve cooked food, but they do recommend a recently opened Taverna in Peza where we could all meet and debrief for lunch. See you there!

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Mad March Hares and Dinosaurs

We agree, the picture on the left looks more like a moderately scared rabbit than a wild hare — well, hey, what do you do with ‘free for use’ clipart? As for the shark? That’s our own photo (taken when we lived in Headington, Oxford) and Bugle leitmotif, so this is where it goes, OK? So now we are rapidly running out of space for the feature about recently discovered trumpeting dinosaurs. No matter, we’ll start with Mad March Hares and see how we get on. The expression ‘Mad as a March Hare’ means ‘Completely mad’. Why? Well, for centuries it was believed that hares behaved weirdly in March because it was their mating season. Thomas More (head chopped off, Tower of London, 16th Century) refers to this, though Thomas Szasz (The Manufacture of Madness) doesn’t really flag the fluffy type of Hare in his text. Scientists now tell us that hares’ mating season extends for several months and that hares are often seriously bonkers anyway. Hmm. How to tell? Who is the judge of what is normal behaviour for a hare and what is not?! Surely hares should be consulted on this. Vive la difference! Lewis Carroll, we salute you. Wonderland, wonderland….