I lived on crete for many years, sometimes in the homes of various cretans and sometimes in the caves and olive groves. i speak passable greek and spent many nights in tavernas and bazouki bars from sfakia to rethimnon with a lot of bizare characters.some of these guys i was very close to or thought i was!
i never once saw any acts of violence,they spoke about it many times but i think the possibility of starting a vendetta with another family put them off.All the men i knew bar one had fire arms ranging from pistols to automatic rifles and some even had old weapons from ww11.They all derived a lot of pleasure from boasting about how dangerous they were and how no one should mess with them but from my personal view not that many were a menace.
The only one who stands out was a guy from Mirthios who once threatend to kill me if i touched his cousin,this was after he pushed me into dancing with her!On two occasions i saw him take a pistol out and threaten an american who lived in the hostel whom he thought was disrespecting him.Despite this i spent many hours in his company and allways thought of him as a nice guy.His brother was one of the nicest people you could ever meet and had nothing to do with guns etc.
in all my time on crete i never heard of a tourist being bothered by a local,so i guess if you leave the local girls alone your safe.
To summerise. they all have guns,like shooting and telling tall tales to gullable touristas but your safe as houses so dont be put off by dodgy tales.cretans are great people,who stand out in this day and age,we should celebrate the fact they do it their way and dont let athens or anyone else tell them what to do.
ps once me and the dangerous guy from Mirthios were in his pick up going to Plakia at night when he pulled over and produced a pistol from his glove compartment.He then invited me to try it out by shooting holes in the road sign,this i did thinking how cool was that,only for him to pull a pump action shotgun from the back of the truck and blast two holes in the sign. i often wonder if the Mirthios sign still has the two giant holes in it as well as my smaller ones.that is how the holes get in the signs high spirits.
regards the cretan runner
