Karolina's Mountain Spa

When people hear about olive oil soaps, essential oils and mountain herbs, they often assume I discovered these things after moving to Crete.

The truth is a little different.

I grew up surrounded by herbs. My grandmother had a large herb garden, and making syrups, drying plants and using what nature provided was simply part of life. Long before I knew anything about Crete, I already knew the smell of chamomile drying in the house and the pleasure of picking herbs at the right time of year.

What living in Crete gave me was not a completely new world, but a new perspective on a familiar one.

I began to notice how different cultures often solve the same problems using different plants and traditions. Many of the things I knew from the Czech Republic had their Cretan equivalent. The names were different, the climate was different, but the connection between people and nature felt surprisingly familiar.

I became fascinated by traditional olive oil soaps, by the distillation of essential oils and by the knowledge that local families carried from one generation to the next. Not because it was exotic, but because it reminded me of something I already valued.

The more time I spent on the island, the more I realised how much these traditions had in common. Whether in a Czech garden or a Cretan mountain village, people learned to observe nature, work with the seasons and make use of what grew around them.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons I felt at home here.

Crete introduced me to new plants, new landscapes and new traditions, but it also helped me recognise something I had brought with me all along.

A curiosity about the natural world and a respect for the knowledge that is passed from one generation to the next.