Transport and Accommodations
We landed at Chania International Airport, a small place but not surprisingly so. I mean, Crete’s an island after all, how big of a need was there for airports? We grabbed our rental car just outside the terminal, briefly tried to get the navigation working, but were foiled by “Attaching with USB and starting your navigation app.” We settled on me holding up the iPhone while Google maps did its thing and got on our way.
An oddity we noticed during the half hour drive was how folks perpetually pulled over until their cars were overlapping or even entirely in the shoulder when there was space. Faster traffic then would buzz by in the partial lane. It took a few minutes to realize this was the driving cultural norm, not just some weird tentative driver ahead of us. Amber did her best to follow suit.
Greeks using the shoulder
The JCrete unconference which drew us to the island was held in Kolymbari, off almost to the western tip of Crete. By the time we entered the sleepy little seaside town it was already getting dark. The apartment we had rented was on the furthest end of town towards the Orthodox Academy of Crete (OAC) where the unconference would be held. Following the map, we turned up a narrow one-way street with cars parked along it. The buildings were almost entirely unnumbered, and the map pinned a location that very plainly wasn’t our apartment. We fumbled around for several minutes, walking up and down the street until we realized that a big wooden sliding gate we’d passed by was our entrance.
Our rustic apartment
The apartment was a rustic place. Behind the gate was a porch with a long table, barbecue (which we never ended up using), an outdoor shower, and some loungers. The walls were made of stone which kept it somewhat cool inside, although we did kick the AC on when we were in. The living and bathrooms had plainly been renovated not long in the past, with a nice modern flair that suited the space well.
Modern touches in the apartment
Once we’d dropped the luggage off and gotten the apartment cooling, we trekked out in search of dinner and groceries. There were a couple of small general shops that we’d passed on our way in, and near them some tavernas. We picked the one that looked least bar-like and were pleased with the tasty lamb and, you guessed it, Greek salad. The whole place was pretty slow, and one older man was doing all the waiting, complete with a rattling plastic cart that he used to roll out whatever goodness he was delivering and take the dishes away.
A “feature” of the apartment that we weren’t really prepared for was the cicadas. While present almost everywhere we went in Crete, they seemed to especially congregate on our porch. We referred to it as the “cicada sex club” given it’s popularity. Twice while we were there I wrote a little at the otherwise wonderful outdoor table, but the noise was right on the edge of headache-inducing so we didn’t spend much other time there.
Cicadas getting noisy
JCrete Day 1
The first day I woke up, ate some yogurt for breakfast, and then trooped out past the edge of town and uphill towards the OAC where JCrete was set to begin.
Path up to OAC
JCrete is an unconference. Unlike the traditional conferences I’ve attended in the past, at an unconf there are no planned speakers, no prior agenda, lots of healthy chaos. The day begins with people proposing sessions, which then get voted on, and the sessions with the most votes get scheduled and happen. Adding to the yearly chaos, the rooms were named after Norse mythology. Just what you’d expect for an event in Greece, right?
As the “J” in JCrete suggests, the central programming topic is Java. It had been about a year and a half since I was using much Java in my professional context (moving from New Relic to GitHub meant trading my backend Java for Ruby, TypeScript and a smattering of Go), but I found it was like riding a bike. I quickly immersed, and ended up proposing a couple of sessions even that got selected.
My session that first day was about “Surviving the AI Hype” and was a discussion
forum for folks who’s roadmaps are overrun with AI features. I enjoyed the
various perspectives on how to work with the hype and not burn out, how to push
back when things don’t make sense and engage where the tech fits. Other
highlights for the day included hearing about some of the new on-ramp features
to make Java easier to start with – less ceremony for getting a program
started, no shade to public static void main – and structured concurrency.
Lunches were at one each day, and partners and family, which are highly encouraged to come along to JCrete, were welcome at that point. The food was always an excellent variety of Greek dishes, and the conversation at the tables lively. The first day featured an evening meal at OAC as well, which made for easy planning. Our friends Ben and Anna arrived during the day, and we finally caught up with them there.
The first day of JCrete being about the third day since arriving, the jetlag hit hard in the afternoon. I knew the pattern well enough to struggle through, though, knowing that I’d feel better rested soon.
Unconference planning
JCrete Day 2
The second day at JCrete brought some wonderful sessions exploring new APIs in
the JDK – Gatherers and stable variables in particular. The sessions were
often just someone interested cracking open an IDE and writing some code live to
demonstrate the newness. This was refreshing versus the usual conference polish
and prep.
View from OAC
That afternoon one of the other attendees had mentioned that they needed a ride to the airport. Amber and I, being who we are, gladly agreed to give them a ride in the afternoon. Little did we know until following up that Crete has not one, but two airports. And the flight was from the second airport, Herkalion, which was two and a half hours drive away. At least we got a chance to see a large part of the length of the island. In fact, we’ve now seen more of Crete than Ben and Anna, who have attended the conference for years.
In the evening we ate at an Argentine seafood place down by the beach with Ben and Anna. The beachfront road was frequented by a variety of cats who prowled along looking for tasty treats. They hit the jackpot with our crew, who were unable to refuse feeding a cute kitty.
JCrete Day 3
The third day of JCrete had sessions in the afternoon instead of the morning so folks could make an excursion to some beaches. The downside of this plan, though, was that the approach to said beaches was an unpaved road as specifically excluded on our rental contract. That plus the really early start time convinced us to just stay in town and have a late brunch with our dear friends instead.
The sessions for the day included a rousing discussion of low latency Java – largely in the financial sector with high-frequency trading – some retro gaming on the JDK, and a session titled “Java in Space.” Came to find out that while Java is used plenty in mission control software, it is not actually on satellites. I learned a ton though about low Earth orbit, and the complexities of making sure that even in the vastness of space things don’t run into each other, a growing problem thanks to Starlink.
After sessions we spent some beach time, bobbing in the Mediterranean waters which I have missed a ton since moving away from Barcelona. Up at OAC after that a Cretan evening was scheduled, with folk music, dancers, and traditional food galore. And yes, even I was coerced into dancing (badly) as the video shows.
Dancing _cringe_
JCrete Day 4
The final day of normal sessions started back at the standard morning time.
There was a discussion of JSON libraries, which I found fascinating coming from
other language ecosystems where so much is already in the box compared to Java.
I do hope Java gets an equivalent to require 'json'; JSON.parse(...) someday.
There was also some solid discussion of observability – a topic still dear to
my heart – and a lightly attended session I proposed about writing technical
books.
Monastery near OAC
The evening plan was a full barbecue at the OAC put on by members of the unconf planning crew. The food was tasty, and the socializing fun, with little to no threat this time around of dancing.
The JCrete crew
JCrete Day 5
The last day of the unconference many folks had already left, so typical sessions were replaced by a morning of hacking. It was a joy to spend that time across a table from Ben, working first on a proposal for a refreshed version of one of our books, and then jamming on a retro game ported to Java that he’s been trying to get into working order.
Hacking with friends
JCrete was an exceptionally great time. I will admit to being a little leery of how well the unplanned format would work with a large crowd. I’d done it before with smaller groups, but never with a multi-session output. It was surprisingly rich, often insightful, and always fun. Looking forward to attending again in some future year.
Around Crete
While our time on the island centered around JCrete, we did get out a bit beyond driving folks to the airport. After one of the evening events, Amber had looked up loukoumades, and found a restaurant named Kosmas. We dragged Ben and Anna along for the twenty minute drive there one evening. It was an interesting change, heading into the more populated and touristy stretches of Crete closer to Chania. It highlighted just how quiet and secluded Kolymbari was.
We parked on a busy street, found our way into the restaurant, and cracked open the menus. To our dismay, while it listed all sorts of desserts, there were no loukoumades to be found. Mildly panicked, Amber flagged over the waiter and asked after our favorite Greek treat. Apparently, they’re just gifted alongside a meal rather than being ordered – actually a common occurrence at many of the restaurants we visited, although more often it was a flan/custard with citrus and a shot of raki. Fortunately they were willing to sell us the loukoumades as long as we ordered the baklava too. Minor sadness I couldn’t try because I was doing an allergy test excluding nuts which I’d shown some sensitivity too (news flash: didn’t help and I missed pastries in Greece and pistachio gelato in Italy because of it 😭).
Amber vacationing the right way
The other favorite activity was just getting down to the beach and resting. The apartment Ben and Anna had came with loungers and shade on the small strip of beach in Kolymbari, and the ladies spent a good deal of time there. Ben and I joined when we could after sessions, bobbing in the water and talking for hours.
Little shrines were common all over the place
Back in Athens, Amber had spotted an olive wood cutting board at one of our meals. This gave us our shopping quest on the island. We trotted back on an afternoon to the busier part of Chania, looked at a few shops randomly before doing more Googling and finding a place that specialized in just the sort of rich, natural wood products Amber was after. We ended up buying another suitcase to fit that and some gifts that we received from friends. It was worth it though.
Another very Greek thing that happened during our visit was a music festival down by the water in Kolymbari. I’ve called it a quiet sleepy place, but that only holds most of the time. Many of you will be thinking “Oh, did you go to it?” but realize that live music is not Amber’s jam. She’s a wet blanket at almost any concert to begin with. Once the festival got going – about eleven o’clock at night – it was loud enough to rival the cicadas during the daytime. I’m pretty sure checking the clock that it ran until at least 3 or 4 in the morning before finally settling down. Hilariously the next day the apartment owner contacted us and gifted us twenty euros to buy a bottle of wine. I think he was aware just how loud it had been so very late at the festival.
We flew back to Athens briefly, then got our next hop on Ryanair to Bologna. Needless to say, that last leg was delayed, overpacked, and full of angry crowds pushing as if we didn’t all have a seat assigned on the plane. At least it was cheap. You get what you pay for.
What I read along the way
- Orbital - Samantha Harvey
- Livesuit - James S. A. Corey
- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley