The View from the Balcony I found an apartment in Χανιά’s Topanas Το!ανάς quarter. It was above a little trinket shop whose name in Greek looked like Αρ-ονία Κερα-ικά, Armonia Keramika, which translated to ‘Harmony Ceramics’. It proved an apt name because the view from the balcony was certainly harmonious. I gazed down Odos Zampeliou, Οδός Ζα-!ελιού, to the right as it stair-stepped downward toward Mihalis and Anya’s Roka shop, while directly before me Οδός Θεοτοκό!ουλου, Odos Theotocópoulou, angled leftward and out of view on its descent to the sea. The sitting room and kitchen were on the second floor; the bedroom, bath, and a balcony occupied the third. The balcony was well above the street, inconspicuous to the trinket-trolling tourists below. They took little notice of the balcony world above where the locals lived, an oversight to which the balcony world above responded by paying little attention to them. I could observe both worlds at once for hours at a time whilst seated at my tiny outdoor table concealed behind a lacy grill of sixteenth-century ironmonger’s art. The dramas of life that unfolded across these hours could have kept Proust going for two more lifetimes, one below, where the madeleines were baked, the other above, where they were nibbled. The apartment was called 'Honey Moon Room’. I hesitated when I first saw the name. I couldn’t rid my mind of the image of arriving alone with a backpack at an inn in the Cotswolds and asking for the bridal suite. But the owner—a charming woman named Maria—said a writer living there for several months would bring in far more Euros than newlyweds who might stay, at most, three
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