It's All Greek to Me

"In Greece one has the desire to bathe in the sky." -Henry Miller

I've been lucky and have traveled a fair amount already, from Montreal to the Bahamas to Jerusalem, but this summer I realized that I have never gone anywhere all by myself. Since I turned 20 at the end of August I decided that a solo trip to Greece would be an excellent birthday present to myself: I could lie on the beach and tan, but also do some soul searching or something.
So I found a Ryanair flight from Frankfurt to Corfu and back again from August 27-September 3. For some reason that I've already forgotten I decided to wing it with sleeping arrangements for the first three nights and then make online reservations at a hostel on the Western beach for the last four, which was either the best or the worst way to get my bearings, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

Unbeknownst to me, Greece is actually an hour ahead of Germany. This wouldn't be a problem except it meant that while I was happily waiting outside the airport for a bus to take me into the capital, Corfu Town, the last bus for the night had already come and gone an hour earlier. Luckily the two German boys I was sitting next to were in the same predicament. So when a nice old Greek man asked us if we needed rooms and offered the guest houses on his family farm we decided that was the best option. The man's name was Giorgos and apparently he did this quite often during the busy summer months. The guest houses were adorable and I got to wake up to roosters crowing and an authentic Greek breakfast.

My little room. All beds in Greece are rock hard, but I slept wonderfully on them, surprisingly

The outside of my little room

Figs, tomatoes, mini apple thingies, crackers, coffee and milk. Later there was oven roasted bread with butter and feta cheese (the best is made from sheep and goat milk mixed, apparently)

The Old Fort in Corfu Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

 



I ended up staying 2 nights at Giorgos' little pension on the eastern coast, near the capital. He was a great host, tour guide, chauffeur, and, it turned out, philosopher. Giorgos had many strong opinions on the world, but his favorite topics were the "catastrophs" or the things that make his life difficult. These included the Internet, his dog who bites the neighbor's donkey, people from Southern Italy, Albanian gangsters, Angela Merkel, the birds who eat his olives, Jehovah's Witnessess, and many, many more. He was a very nice man, but he had lots of worries, like many Greek people right now I think. I decided to move on and spend my third night on the west coast. I'd read about a cute little hostel in a town called Pelekas that was run by a family who fed guests food from their organic farm, so of course I wanted to check it out. Giorgos was worried about me taking the bus and insisted on driving me, but since I didn't know exactly where I was going and wanted to explore a bit, I asked him to just drop me off in town. As I paid him I remarked, "I'm sorry my money is cold and smells like salami. I thought the fridge was the safest place to put it."



So on Thursday morning I found myself all alone in the main square of the tiny mountain town of Pelekas with no definite plans of where I was going to sleep and no need to be anywhere. I had a backpack with tennis shoes dangling by their knotted laces and a loaf of bread sticking out of the top and felt every inch a real backpacker. A sign pointing further up the mountain (away from the beach, where I should have been heading) that read "Kaiser's Throne" caught my interest and so I began to hike. I think this was the exact moment that I began to love traveling alone. I had never felt so free. I didn't have to worry about if somebody else didn't feel like climbing a mountain with their luggage in the heat and I got to do what I wanted when I wanted. I didn't have a schedule, nobody knew where I was, and I couldn't have cared less if I slept on the beach that night. It was awesome.

So worth the climb

 

I eventually made my way down and spent a nice afternoon tanning on the beach and making friends with the guy who ran the beach restaurant. He was another old Greek man named Giorgos (this one had bigger eyebrows) and when he heard I was American said "thank God, not another bloody Canadian" which I thought was very nice of him. He also offered me a bicycle, a scooter, some pretty shells, and the cutest puppy I've ever seen. I accepted the shells, but politely said no thanks to the rest.

The hostel turned out to be great. We ate delicious moussaka and I met some interesting people, including a Kiwi documentary director, an art historian from Amsterdam, an Danish girl working as an au pair in Italy, and two British boys strumming their guitars all over Europe. It was my first time in a real hostel; I had to use my t-shirt as a towel, I lost my hairbrush for a while, and I even had one of the Brits sleeping on the top bunk of my bed. He snored like a devil and I was terrified all night that the bed would break, but don't worry, it didn't. Despite that, I really liked the experience - it was the continuation of the little fantasy of actually hitchhiking through Europe that I'd started that afternoon. That night was also the first of five breathtaking sunsets over the Mediterranean that I would get to see.

As the sun began to slip below the horizon everyone's jaw dropped and their cameras rose simultaneously. Everyone except for the old bartender who leaned back, sipped some ouzo, and remarked philosophically, "it will never look the same." Indeed, Spyros, indeed. 



Friday morning I navigated the local bus system to get to another town on the west coast, but further south, called Agios Gordios, where my final hostel was located. Luckily I didn't have to climb the gigantic mountain again to get back to Pelekas from the beach - a kind couple saw me struggling and, even though they didn't speak a word of English, gave me a ride straight to the top!

The hostel I had booked was called The Pink Palace and, although it was the end of the season, there were some wonderful people there. And some Italians. (Just kidding, I thought the Italians were hilarious). I met two Australian boys from Melbourne, a Canadian guy from Montreal, and two Canadian girls from Ottawa at dinner and the six of us hung out for the next few days and had some fun adventures. On the second day we rented a little Fiat van and drove up north to a secret little beach one of the boys had found.

Those mountains in the distance are Albania

 

The coldest beer in the world

The secret beach

The Green Machine

Some of us in the group are still traveling around Europe, so hopefully if it works out we'll be able to meet up again soon. Everyone I met in these hostels was doing such interesting things and I really enjoyed meeting people who love to travel as much as I do.

I joked before I left about going to find myself on a Greek island. And I thought about ending this post with a quote from my favorite philosopher, Avicii: "All this time I was finding myself and I didn't know I was lost." But with all seriousness, this trip was one of the best things I've ever done. I've always considered myself to be pretty independent and adventurous, but it's one thing to use those words to describe myself in a job interview and another thing entirely to find out that I was perfectly okay with being in the middle of a foreign country, by myself, with no plans. I spent a lot of time by myself and a lot of time making new friends and I equally enjoyed both. I highly recommend travelling alone and I absolutely loved my vacation in Greece. Yamas!

PS On Tuesday the 3rd my flight got in to the airport too late at night to take a train back to Schweinfurt. I got to sleep in the train station, on my backpack, feeling filthy, just like a real backpacker! It was awesome!

Leaving for Paris in the morning!