The flip side of the dream setting

While the tourist sights and facilities – hotels and holiday flats, restaurants, bars and shops – are lined up spectacularly on the edge of the volcanic crater’s cliffs, only the swimming beaches or ancient sites are found on the less steep outer side of the island of Santorini. Otherwise, the locals and seasonal workers in the tourism industry live their less picturesque everyday lives there.

Urban sprawl with commercial enterprises, residential buildings and shops, the airport and car hire companies, supply and disposal of drinking water and sewage, electricity and fuel, goods and waste – in other words, the normal infrastructure of a modern civilisation. Added to this is the carelessly discarded rubbish in the landscape or vehicles in a deplorable condition and much more.

This is part of reality and necessary for maintaining holiday dreams, similar to the interior areas or decks below the waterline on a cruise ship where the crew works. This may not correspond to the aesthetic, cliché or artificial ideal of a glossy Cycladic island, but it is precisely here that there is unexpected or authentic beauty and no less warmth from the people.