PRAISE FORMEETING MR KIM
'a very lively account... invaluable and entertaining reading'
Margaret Drabble
'One woman's touching and humorous voyage to the very heart of Korea... written with real insight and thoughtful reflection'
Anna Nicholas
'fresh, amusing and light-hearted'
Simon Winchester
'don't miss Jennifer Barclay's Meeting Mr Kim'
WANDERLUST magazine
'an amusing, easy read with some fresh insights into Korean culture'
LONELY PLANET KOREA
'Barclay is revealed as an excellent guide, her personal experience of the country reaching into every corner'
PUBLISHING NEWS
'A revealing exploration'
SHORTLIST
'a warm and funny journey an invaluable primer'
BLUE WINGS magazine
'searches for the true spirit of South Korea'
LIVING ABROAD magazine
'She is excellent at painting word portraits of the people she meets'
www.suite101.com
'succeeds where a lot of travel books have failed: it is entertaining, endearing and educational'
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
PRAISE FORTHE TRAVELLER'S FRIEND
'Ideal for armchair travellers, this is an intriguing collection'
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER (UK)
'Dazzlingly eclectic'
WANDERLUST magazine
'Intrepid explorers from all walks of life will be entertained by this collection'
ST CHRISTOPHER'S e-zine
'Intriguing'
ABTA magazine
PRAISE FORTHE WALKER'S FRIEND(as Jude Palmer)
'delightful'
NORTHERN ECHO
'charming little miscellany'
ABERDEEN PRESS AND JOURNAL
'evocative quotations and all manner of advice'
COUNTRY LIFE magazine
'contains a wealth of information an ideal gift'
SCOTTISH HOME AND COUNTRY
FALLING IN HONEY
Copyright Jennifer Barclay, 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.
Jennifer Barclay has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Condition of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Summersdale Publishers Ltd
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UK
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eISBN: 978-0-85765-856-2
Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Summersdale books are available to corporations, professional associations and other organisations. For details contact Nicky Douglas by telephone: +44(0)1243 756902, fax: +44(0)1243 786300 or email: .
I felt once more how simple a thing is happiness: a glass of wine the sound of the sea.
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
When you set out on your journey to Ithaka,
Pray that the road is long,
Full of adventure
Constantine P. Cavafy, 'Ithaka'
About the Author
Jennifer Barclay grew up in a village in Saddleworth on the edge of the Pennines. She blames her family for getting her hooked on travels in sunny places, a school teacher for helping her fall in love with Greek language and culture, and a small newspaper ad for luring her to adventures in Greece after university. She then lived in Canada and in France, and travelled in Guyana and South Korea, before wondering if she might be trying to avoid growing up, and returning to England for a while. She now lives in a village again but not in England and for much of the year works barefoot, to the sound of crickets. She is the author of Meeting Mr Kim: Or How IWent to Korea and Learned to Love Kimchi, her travel stories have appeared in various publications including TheGuardian Travel and Wanderlust online, and she has been interviewed on BBC radio and Korean television. She is often to be found at: www.octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.com.
Note
It's difficult to find a system of spelling Greek words in English letters, but in general I've spelled words pretty much as they sound, except where it would look too unusual. So for example, Yorgos, because that's how it's pronounced, not Georgos.
Male Greek names usually end in -s when they are the subject of a sentence (Yiannis) but drop the -s when you are addressing the person (Yianni!) or they are the object of the sentence (talking about Yianni). For simplicity, when I'm writing in English, I've used the -s form throughout, except in speech.
This is a true story, so I've altered some names and changed identities to protect people's privacy.
Contents
y
Prologue
How I Got
Hooked on Greece
T here's a bee on my arm. I've got used to having bees around, hovering in the flowers and basil bushes, sometimes coming for acurious look in my kitchen when I'm working with the doors open. I can't see or hear my nearest neighbours in this valley, but Ilike to think of it as a buzzing place
Inside the honey factory, Pavlos removes the wooden frames from the hives. 'I'm just the worker!' he says; but without theworker bees, there'd be no honey The frames are like hanging folders in a filing cabinet, and each holds an uneven slab ofhoneycomb. The best ones are almost covered in sealed wax cells. Pavlos takes a heated knife and skims off the outer edge of wax,releasing the clear golden liquid. It gleams as it pours off thickly. 'Here, taste,' he says, and hands me pieces of oozing softhoneycomb.
It amazes me that it's ready to eat straight out of the hive, this perfect food full of goodness it needs nothing from us. Whatwe're doing here is just releasing and gathering it, cleaning it and putting it in jars. The actual making of honey has all been doneby the bees. As Pooh bear said to the bee: the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.
The smell of warm honey is intoxicating. It's thirty plus degrees outside and the hives were standing out there not long ago, thebees happily coming and going, blissfully unaware. When there are flowers in the fields, the bees can fill up a honeycomb in aslittle as a week.
'Here, take some more,' says Pavlos, scooping up spoonfuls of honeycomb that looks like treacle sponge onto a plate. My handsare getting sticky.
'This honey is made from herbs, votana, flowers that are healthy for your body, and thyme. We don't use any chemicals.' Tilos