My landlady here lost her husband a few years back in an accident. A friend in Kalamata tells me I am paying too much to rent this small house in the low season, but I really don’t care: my home provider has her hands full as it is with three small children devoid of a father. It’s not as if she’s poor: but she is an entrepreneur working more hours than the average German ever imagined on this tiny development – while growing a small (but terrific) supermarket she owns in my nearest village. Encouraging this brand of familial community endeavour is the least one can do.

The widow employs an Albanian couple to look after her children and service the houses she rents. The bloke part of the Albanian couple is beefy, friendly and appears to be exactly the kind of eminently practical bloke vital to the running of such an enterprise. His delightful and pretty partner works hard to service the properties: she cleans my place as well as doing all my washing. All this and the cost of services is included in my rent. If I tell you that the monthly rent I’m paying might get you access to a garage in London for a week, you can tell how lucky I am.

A fortnight ago I met my landlady’s mother-in-law. She was wandering about close to where I’m staying. Through an interpreter she told me that her meagre living consists of help from her widowed daughter-in-law, and sea salt gathered daily from the igneous beaches here. Dressed all in black – her legs clad in rough breeches and her face seemingly chiselled from the rock-hard volcanic environment – this tiny peasant woman emitted everything that represents indefatigable Greek survival against the odds. As I heard the old lady recounting how she misses her son every day, I thought about many things. Mainly, I reflected upon the fact that she was probably the same age as me, but looked at least a century older. Part of me in turn introspected guiltily about things I had only feared for my children…things that had been visited upon her only child with a cruel finality.

I’m growing rapidly to love this community. I’ve been giving some thought as to why that might be, and my conclusion is that the people here testify to the certainty of small purity’s eventual victory over contrived bigness. Unlike many ‘resorts’ that adopt the mores and tastes of rich visitors, this one is a village where the visitors have not only absorbed the local customs, they have stayed to celebrate them. Here in this tiny part of Greece are Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch, French, Italians, Americans and Brits with a passion for the Mani style of building and the Messinian way of life, plus a desire to learn at the very least passable modern Greek. Alone amongst ‘tourist’ destinations, this one stays open and thrives during the winter months. Foreigners do not only ‘stay’ here: many of them live here.

Is there not a lesson for the Brussels buffoons in that joyous reality? This place is a microcosm of what the EU might have been, if given only the oxygen of common sense: an oasis where there is respect for indigenous wisdom, a desire to learn from it….and yet at the same time a humble request that some good learnings from elsewhere might be in order.

Places like this one are flourishing in th0se fiercely independent parts of Greece safely beyond the metro-EU insanity of humiliated Athens. When this ghastly mess is over, they will set an example to Europeans everywhere. A large part of me is minded – against all contemporary advice – to invest in that potential.

Earlier at The Slog: Two days after the establishment of Merkeland, the Truth is out