Business in Sparta

When I am back in Sparta, Dimitri invites me for coffee the next morning and tells me about his life.
He emigrated with his parents from Mystra in Greece to Canada as a child, finished high school there and then became a broker on the stock exchange. When the opportunity arose, he bought a factory that produced smoked salmon. When the Canadian government called for ideas on how to improve exports, Dimitri came up with the idea of a non-profit organization (CEMAC) to represent a number of Canadian companies abroad, so that interested parties would only have to deal with one person rather than many. This also includes concepts of financing, marketing and sales. The whole thing was probably quite a big success, as it is attested to me in numerous newspaper articles and was financed by the Canadian government. When the financing finally ran out and a change of policy had taken place in the meantime, the project was stopped altogether.
Dimitri then went to California and worked there again for a bank, in real estate financing. When the bank's real estate department was transformed into its own company, he started working as a real estate agent.
At some point he married an Italian woman and lived with her in Italy for 7 years. After his divorce he went back to New York.
Since his parents are now over 90 years old and it is their wish to die and be buried in Greece, he left America together with his parents and his sister and came back to Greece. In all this time his father had fortunately never sold the land that he owned between Sparta and Mystra, so Dimitri now looks after the olive trees and little by little he makes the overgrown land usable again.
He is now also working here again as a real estate agent.
He is also in the process of building up a similar organisation called SEMAK as the Canadian CEMAC for Greece.
He even offers me a commission for all business I arrange for him in Germany.

For all his projects he would like to have a website from me.
He is also very enthusiastic about my drone and would like to have aerial photographs taken of all the places where he has real estate or land for sale.

When I present him with the first draft of the website for the sale of his olive oil on the evening of the following day, he is so enthusiastic that he not only sends the link to all kinds of people, but in the following days presents the website on his mobile phone to everyone we meet. And so it doesn't take long and I also have an order from the olive oil cooperative in Krokess for another website.

In the following days, my daily routine will look like this:
After getting up, first drink coffee with Dimitri. Then we drive to the places where he has real estate for sale to take drone pictures and/or we visit the companies of his SEMAK group. This way I get to enjoy an exclusive tour of a fruit juice factory, a cheese dairy and several cooperative olive oil mills. Punctually at 12 o'clock we are back again, because Dimitri is having lunch with his parents and his sister.
I sizzle something in my apartment and afterwards I go to work with my laptop and do my orders from Germany as well as my new orders.
At 6pm I meet Dimitri in his office again and we work together on our projects or discuss ideas. Around 9 pm we usually go into the city where Dimitri invites me to dinner / drinks.
When we are finally back, I'm usually too tired to write my blog, so I'll do it now.

In the afternoon Dimitri usually goes out to do his own business, but when the weather is nice he usually went out to his father's olive trees to harvest olives. When he asks me if I would like to join him and help with the olive harvest, I don't hesitate for long.
The next day Dimitri, a helper and I load an old, rickety Mitshubishi transporter, which only starts after a lot of coaxing, with baskets and all kinds of harvesting equipment and attach the "donkey" at the back. "Dimitri calls "Donkey" a small cart with its own engine, with which one can transport not only the whole equipment but also later on the full baskets through the rough terrain in the olive groves. "In former times this was done with donkey carts" Dimitri explains the name "Donkey" to me.
After a short, fast ride towards Mystras, we turn into a dirt road and bump through the almost endless olive groves until we reach the final destination.

I quickly learn that two large nets are first spread out under the tree awaiting harvest. Then Dimitri, who is over 60 years old, climbs up the tree with a ladder and begins to saw off the inner branches and the branches that have already grown too high. He explains to me that otherwise the inner branches would get too little light and would not carry olives and thus only waste the energy of the tree unnecessarily and the tree must not grow too high, because otherwise one cannot reach the olives anymore.
The most strenuous work, however, is shaking down the olives with a kind of rotating claw, which is attached to a long pole and is powered by electricity from our "Donkey". To shake down as many olives as possible you have to drive this claw around the tree through all the branches, which is quite a feat in the long run as the thing is not really light. Fortunately, most of the time our helper, an old soldier from Russia, who has been living in Greece for a long time now, does the job.
Most of the time my work consists of combing through the branches sawed off by Dimitri with a kind of big fork in order to scrape off the olives. The sawed off and combed out branches are then placed under the previous tree and later chopped up with a shredder to serve as fertilizer and, as Dimitri says, this also keeps the moisture better in the soil.
Unfortunately many olive farmers still burn these branches, although it is forbidden nowadays and actually does not make any sense for the reasons mentioned.
In this way one goes then from tree to tree and harvests the olives. In between the nets are emptied again and again. This is done by first lifting the nets so that all the olives roll together in one place. Then the whole crew kneels around the pile of olives and picks out the small branches by hand, which also fall down inevitably. Finally the pile is tilted through a coarse-meshed sieve to filter out more branches and leaves. The remaining olives are then tipped into the baskets and packed on the "donkey" for transportation.
Dimitri never does the whole thing for more than 4 hours a day, because he thinks that this would otherwise be too strenuous and laborious, which I can fully understand, because I can hardly move the next day because of sore muscles.
But other olive farmers do it for 8-10 hours a day, which I wonder how you can keep up.

In spite of my sore muscles I help the next day again with the olive harvest, firstly because Dimitri promised that we will go to the olive mill and press our olive oil afterwards and secondly because the Russian helper unfortunately has no time to help. Instead Dimitri organizes two more students and his sister also comes along. So I also get to know his sister, who is very nice and we have a very pleasant conversation.

Since there are only 3 seats in the small Mitsubishi transporter, the two students have to find a place between the harvesters the next day. Then the five of them go out into the field again. First the two pupils take over the task that the Russian had yesterday and shake the olives from the trees (Dimitri has two of these electric hooks), while Dimitri saws again and his sister and I comb through the branches. Finally, one of the two students loses his strength and it is up to me to shake the olives down.
When the last basket is filled towards evening we pack everything together and bring first the students and then Dimitri's sister home. Dimitri and I then stow the harvesting equipment in the garage and instead load the full baskets from yesterday into the van and drive to the olive oil mill. There we have to wait a while until it is our turn. Luckily there is a small waiting room in which cauliflower seems to always sizzle in the pot and fresh bread is available for free. With some fresh olive oil and salt over the cauliflower we enjoy it. Afterwards the remaining olive oil is of course dunked with the bread, after all one cannot waste such a delicious thing.
When it's our turn we tip our baskets into a big funnel. And as Dimitri shows and explains to me, the olives first run over a conveyor belt into a kind of big vacuum cleaner that sucks the remaining leaves and branches. Then the olives are washed and finally crushed to a pulp which is heated in a drum for a certain time. This pulp is then pressed out under great pressure. From the "juice" flowing out, the remaining water is separated and finally the pure olive oil is left. It is important that each of these steps is carried out strictly separately for each olive farmer, as otherwise not only the danger of contamination is reduced, but also the quality of the olive oil. 

 It is important that each of these steps is carried out strictly separately for each olive farmer, otherwise there is not only the risk of mixing organic olive oil with non-organic olive oil, but also the risk of great differences in the quality and freshness of the olives.
So Dimitri explains to me, for example, that he not only does not water his olive trees and does not use bought-in fertilizer, but also does not use any artificial fertilizer. On the one hand this makes the tree healthier and stronger, because it has to develop much deeper and bigger roots. Apart from a smaller harvest, however, the olives do not become so large either, as they can store less water. Although this would be unfavourable for consumption, it is advantageous for olive oil production because they contain a much higher percentage of oil.
The freshness of the harvested olives also plays a major role. Thus Dimitri brings its harvested olives e.g. at the latest after two days to the olive oil mill, even if there are then only few. Other olive farmers shy away from the additional expenditure of time and often wait up to one week until they have harvested enough to make it worthwhile to drive to the mill. The olives are often stored and transported in large sacks stacked on top of each other, so that the lower olives are already mushy and have long since begun to be attacked by bacteria.
So I could learn a lot about the olive harvest and the production of really good olive oil during these two days.

Shortly before my planned departure, I remember that it is now time to refresh my Hepatitis A+B vaccination. I got the first injection before I left for my trip around the world. Now it is time for the first refreshment. In half a year, I will need a third injection. Only then the vaccination is really effective for 10 years. So I ask Dimitri whether he could help me to find a doctor who could give me the injection. To my astonishment Dimitri explains to me that in Greece vaccinations are always carried out by the pharmacist. So he accompanies me to a pharmacy the next day and helps me with the translation of my request. And indeed, the pharmacist leads me into a back room and gives me the necessary injection and charges 40 Euros including the medicine.

The following day I notice a scratching in my throat in the evening, which is getting worse and worse, which is usually a sign of a coming cold. But Dimitri and I suspect that it could possibly be a side effect of the vaccination. At night I get strong headaches and fever. When finally on the next day, one day before my departure, my nose is running as well, it quickly becomes clear that it is more likely to be a flu. Probably the vaccination has weakened my immune system, so that the flu viruses had free way. So my planned departure the next morning will not happen for a while. Instead I spend another three days in bed.
When I finally feel better and the weather forecast predicts only one day of sun, then one day cloudy and a whole weekend of rain, this is the sign for me to leave, because I don't feel like driving on in the rain.
Despite a running nose and some coughing, I finally say goodbye to Dimitri and after a long time I finally continue my journey.