THE WIND HAS A NAME
On Mykonos, you learn to ask about the wind.
Usually before going to the beach. Sometimes before taking a boat. Often before choosing a table.
It can be difficult to explain this to someone who has just arrived. The sky is blue, the sun is out, the sea looks much as it did yesterday. And yet everyone seems to have an opinion about which side of the island you should be on.
More often than not, the reason is the meltemi.
It blows across the Aegean from the north in summer, bringing cooler air and, on certain days, enough wind to rearrange things. Towels, napkins, ferry schedules, hair. Occasionally a hat heading towards the next table.
After a while, you stop being surprised. The wind is simply part of the day.
Mykonos is usually described through light. The hard white of Chora at noon, the blue between buildings, the pinkish hour before the sun disappears.
Stay a little longer and you start paying just as much attention to the wind.
Sometimes you hear it before you feel it: shutters moving, grasses rustling, the sound it makes around the corner of a house.
The windmills above Chora make the relationship wonderfully literal. Wind once meant work. Elsewhere, the relationship is less obvious: low walls, sheltered corners, buildings sitting close to the land.
Then there are the habits.
Someone checks the forecast over coffee. A boat captain changes the plan. At the beach, a local suggests trying the other coast. A restaurant quietly moves whatever is likely to end up on the floor.
None of this seems particularly remarkable when you live here.
Tomorrow the wind may soften and everyone adjusts again.
The meltemi belongs to the Aegean summer. It is a northerly wind associated with the larger pressure systems of the region, most familiar during the hottest months, when it can be both a relief and a nuisance.
Some days it simply takes a few degrees out of the afternoon. On others, the sea gets rough, swimming plans change and ferries have a harder journey.
Meteorologists can explain the pressure systems behind it. Around Mykonos, the more immediate questions tend to be simpler.
Can we take the boat?
Which beach?
Outside or inside?
Usually, that’s all you need to know.
At Kalesma, the wind is easy to read.
The sea lies beyond the terraces, with Delos across the water. The wind doesn’t move through the property in quite the same way everywhere. It catches fabric, runs through the grasses, crosses an open terrace and then disappears behind a wall a few metres away.
When the wind is strong, you notice shelter more. A courtyard can be unexpectedly still. The chair in the right corner becomes the one everyone wants.
By evening, things change again.
The heat drops, the light starts to go and people begin to gather at Aloni. On Saturdays in summer, those evenings have their own name here: Meltemi.
It could have been just a name, except the real thing is usually somewhere around. In the fabric moving beside the table, perhaps, or the cooler air after sunset. Sometimes it’s strong enough that someone reaches for a glass before it goes over.
Music starts. Dinner carries on.
A few days into a stay, you may find yourself doing it too.
You wake up and look outside, not so much at the sun, which by then you almost take for granted, but at the water, the grasses, whatever happens to be moving.
You ask which way the wind is coming from.
Somewhere along the way, you’ve started reading the island.