five red balloons

we travelled the world a year ago

These are just random excerpts from the travel notes we wrote a year ago as we backpacked through the Mediterranean - this part is just about our time in Greece.  We wrote about our lives every single day, for almost 3 months, and it drove us crazy.  They’re not especially interesting to anybody except ourselves, and I don’t really expect anybody to fully read them.  It’s more like a way of pinching my arm and saying, This really happened!

In Which We Arrive in Greece

·         Getting into Athens—the roll of heat, and dusty road.  Amy coming to meet us, in her breezy bright green pants and awesome white shirt.  Hot car and parking lot and carrying backpacks and sweating and sticking to the seat and Em and Amy talking in the front.  Driving, narrow roads, signs everywhere, everyone honks.  The hills, all rocky with weird tiny shrubs.  Her street is like an alley, only one lane, and you walk straight off the street to the door—marble stairs, and a door into huge empty apartment at top.  Red and white decorations, so many cool random things.  The frosted glass jar of water with mint.  Amy telling us stories about her kids.  Taking showers.

·         The walk in sunlight.  Heat and wind everywhere.  Narrow streets and prickly bushes, all of the signs in Greek hieroglyphics, impossible even to pronounce.  Wearing sundresses, no makeup and the good smell of cleanness and shampoo, feeling so free.  Finding the sunset field with two fences, all the trees and light, and it is like a place where we must go, but we can’t get through the fence.  There are supposedly horses back there.    Greek guy who was yelling at us from car.  Walking down the wrong road, but we can’t tell it’s the wrong road because we can’t read the street signs.  Everyone wears white.  And green pants.  It’s a thing.

·         Greek people LOOK Greek.  We stand out like sore thumbs.  Especially without tans.  Men’s arms are SO hairy—enough hair on one wrist to cover whole arm.  T will eventually look Greek with her tan and brown eyes.  Em will never look Greek.  Blue eyes major impediment.  Must learn to swagger like Greek men and possess confidence like Greek women.  Also wear sunglasses.  This seems to help.

In Which There Are a Lot of Bullet Points

·         Wake up in our individual wooden beds in our blue and white room on the island of Alonissos, sun in our eyes; first thing Em says to T is “It’s really too bad you don’t like pasta because it’s cheaper.”  T very confused.  So confused it takes her a full ten minutes to tell Em her dreams.  (This usually happens within the first 23 seconds of opening her eyes.)

·         HAVE BREAKFAST IN PAJAMAS!!  This is the first time we have done this.  Liberating.  Craved fried potatoes, but intimidated by the fact that there were no potatoes.

·         Fried four eggs.  Two hard, two soft. 

·         Earned lots of Points doing good things, such as serving food to others before ourselves.  This is a system in which whoever offers each other the food before they take it themselves, or whoever helps Cathie set the table, or whoever makes the other person’s bed, or whoever lets the other person shower first in the morning gets a certain number of points.  It could also be called a Reward System, except there is no reward, and the point values vary from time to time.  It’s more for our personal enjoyment than anything.  This time, Em comes out in the lead.

·         Breaking news: T has TWO tan lines on her back.

·         I might have three actually.

·         We try to swim out five feet; T does.  Em panicks and heads for touch-ground-able water; she hurt her foot between two rocks and twists it or something.

·         Watched a little girl telling her dad exactly how she wanted her towel tied, and he was very careful to follow her every instruction.

·         Went shopping!  Bought junk food and felt virtuous.  For not buying junk food before this.

·         Took pictures on the way home of sunlight on the road. 

·         We sit in room and throw our empty water bottle at things.  T can’t catch it with her foot.

·         T stands on the balcony looking at herself in the mirror.  It’s a silly obsession I’m trying to talk her out of. 

·         Em loses points for typing that paragraph.

·         (Em made T look at herself in a mirror for a photo idea she was trying out.  Em is a bad person.)

·         Em’s foot starts to hurt and hurts progressively through dinner and dessert.

·         Cathie tells Em she shouldn’t be allowed in the world on her own.  Wonders…who with?

·         Watch a terrible movie. Also, that guy…. You know, that guy… the one from Star Trek.  Well, he should get a haircut.

·         He kept looking at the camera like, “You see these eyebrows? I do them MYSELF.”

·         T leaves a few crumbs of Pringles for me.  That’s 1 point.

And We Pause for a Recipe

·         A few days later.  It is night on our island of Alonissos in Greece.  We have just finished watching Ratatouille.  This is the reason we are creaking down the steps at 2am and concocting a feta omelette in hushed whispers. Recipe follows.  (Kindly edited by T.)

How To See An Omelette in Colour

4 eggs

REAL FETA CHEESE (way more than you think you should add)

Potatoes

Minced onion (not cut large like T cuts it)

s&p

Mince onion (not cut large like T cuts it) and fry in oil.  Not soya oil, incidentally.  Be quiet because you heard Terry cough upstairs, and you don’t want to wake him up.

Resume activity.

Add potato and wait pointlessly for it to actually fry.  It will not actually fry.

Beats eggs and add amazing amounts of s&p, as well as feta substitute (which was good, but not good enough).  Whisk together.

Finally onions are fried.  Test and reject idea of turning on stovetop fan because it might be too loud.  Smell of onion becomes too much.  Turn on fan.  Hope Terry is not still awake.  Think of how blessed their life will be when we are gone.

Check clock.  2:15am.  Right on schedule.

Add onions/potatoes to egg mixture, then heat butter and a dash of olive oil, and wait for it to heat up.  Add eggs.  Depending on level of skill with omelette flipping (nil), either chop it up or actually wait for the bottom to fry and flip it. 

EAT WITH TOAST and a dollop of cheese on top .  Clean plate.  Make yummy sounds.  Rub stomach if you must.  Use thumb as knife.  Other person must not mind. 

BEST 2AM SNACK EVER.  See colours when you close your eyes like Remy did in Ratatouille.

Once you’re done eating this amazing culinary achievement, open the fridge and examine today’s leftovers.  If there are any stewed plums left over, be sure to test at least one spoonful.  Yes.  That hits the spot.  Drip onto pajamas.  Anything this color is good for you!!

In Which We Truly Travel The World Alone

·         We are leaving Alonissos today!  So excited to travel for real.  Weird how it just hasn’t felt like we’re world travelers until today.

·         Cathie makes us TEN SANDWICHES.  We assume initially that she means this to last us the next few days, but further conversation informs us that she expects us to eat them all for dinner.  Feel like our appetites must appear larger than they are.

·         Forget to paint chipped toe nails.  Butterflies in stomach.  Lots of coffee.  Cathie tells us again that coffee will rust our stomachs.  Have weird mental image of rusted stomach sitting in used parts car garage. 

·         Our ferry to the mainland.  Miscommunications, and we miss our bus!

·         Lots of guys ready and willing to help us, in our new role as damsels in distress.  Lots of advice.  Without exactly knowing where or how, we are in a taxi heading for the next bus, which was all quite cheap, although the bus took the roundabout way, visiting all its friends and relations on the way.  For like four hours.

·         Fairy light, sun setting as we drive past waves on beaches, crashing, and huge crab catching nets that looked like inside out trampolines on the water, and the sun was so long, so much time it spent going down.  Faint pink. 

·         Not knowing when the bus would get to Athens, having to stay awake because of it.  So much uncertainty.  T says we will know we are in Athens when we see the Parthenon.  Em wisely observes that it is dark.  T hopefully says, “Maybe they light it up?”

·         They don’t.

·         We cross a bridge, start getting citified, lights and lots of taxis and shops with some English.

·         Bus driver KICKS US OFF THE BUS.  We are pretty much just sitting there, and then he looks in his rearview and says something that was likely the equivalent of “Hey you!” and tells us we have to get off now.  We had no options.  I tried to get him to tell me where the address of the hostel would be, he says, “No metro, taxi”…and that was the extent of the information we had when we were stranded on the sidewalk. 

·         “Everything is going wrong, but we’re so happy!”

·         The woman on the side of the road!  We were standing by the taxi sign, wondering whether to actually get a taxi, how expensive it would be, where in the world our hostel directions were and how long it would take, and if anyone would understand our English.  We were strangely at peace, but in a strange city full of strange people, and we were praying about it.  Then this woman just appeared out of nowhere, asked where we were going, looked at our directions, talked to 3 different taxi drivers, found us a good driver, told him where we were going, and then walked away.  It was a God-thing. 

·         The hostel is awesome too.  Looks so expensive even though it’s just a hostel, with a marble archway and slippery steps, and tall oval mirrors in the hallway.

·         The confusing man at the front desk, handing us a card.  Lots of sentences we don’t quite understand.  “Put this card in the box and everything will be alright!  K?”

·         I love putting the card in the box.

·         We haven’t figured out what putting the card in the box does.  We never will figure out what it does, but so it goes.

·         He gave us a private room even though our booking was for a 10 bed dorm!

·         Now to explore! It’s almost midnight, but we walk out bravely into this city that is so full of the orange streetlight glow, dusky and warm.  Discovered we are not near any shop immediately next to our hostel, and that there are no girls out at night, only VERY obnoxious guys – very vocal.  There is a moment of indecision about exploring, since we don’t know our way around.  But for once, Em has confidence in confidence alone, so we continue! 

·         Every single car here will honk at two girls out at night.  Or maybe during the day too.  Haven’t tested this theory.  Puzzling over the lack of democracy when a BUS DRIVER honks at us walking down the sidewalk. I mean, what if the people in the bus disagreed? He’s their driver.  How is that by the people, for the people?

·         Injustice at every corner.  No wonder everyone’s striking in this country.

·         We find broken down buildings in between fancy hotels.  Shabby next to upper class everywhere. The night is warm and beautiful and well lit by lamplight. There are urine smells everywhere and lots of massive garbage piles.  We saw a stack of items that seemed to be a homeless person’s PACKAGE, like it could have been labeled Homelessness for Beginners or something.  Later, walking back we saw a homeless man delving through the pile.  I think he agreed with us.

·         More guys talking to us.  “Hello, excuse me, EXCUSE ME!” (We walk past, ice queens, heads frozen, noses poised upwards.) Then, in a moment of desperation, just in case excuse me wasn’t in our language, “EXCUSEZ MOI?!”

·         We like to think we look French.

·         But never Greek.

·         Eventually the number of men talking to us and saying disturbing things at us begins to get a little frightening.  We realize we actually are in a foreign country, with no human being to protect us, so we call the exploring a night, and find our way back perfectly, thanks to a sudden sense of direction that Em developed.  Scientists will be calling us tomorrow to start lab testing on her to find out what has caused this unprecipitated growth in her brain.  Such things are just not natural.

In Which We Ride the Metro in Athens

·         Several days have gone by, and it is our last day in Athens, and we are very thankful to be leaving this place!  Tourist duties done, we head out to explore the city, which we already know we’re sick of, based on our experiences yesterday.  But our ferry to Santorini doesn’t leave until tonight, so we ride the metro just for the power of riding the metro.  Every stop is unexpected. We are like hobos, riding the train with no destination.

·         We jump off the subway at lots of random places which I now cannot remember.  It is 50 degrees Celsius, and our clothes are sticking to our skin in the humidity.  We wander into stores, pretending to be interested but really just exploiting them for their air conditioning alone.  At one point, we come across a furniture store and try to play house, while the saleslady follows us around smiling and enjoying her surroundings.   She was particularly enthusiastic about the lazyboy, but she was enthusiastic in Greek, not in English, so there was a lack of genuine communication between us.  Still, she follows us around. We find this is an impediment to recreating that scene in 500 Days of Summer where they explore the furniture store (“I don’t know how to tell you this, darling, but there is a Chinese family in our bathroom!”) and leave, feeling guilty even though we’ve done nothing wrong.

·         We find much amazing graffiti, and make some of our own with blue and red markers.  We wrote happy things on that wall, and drew pretty pictures, but many people here don’t speak English, and perhaps they thought we were being rude, even though the wall was already defaced by much less beautiful words.  Someone was possibly throwing fruit at us while we do this; we weren’t sure.  And a nice guy in overalls took our picture.  There were lots of compliments from the many many men of Athens.  We start to dread encountering their eyes.

·         At one point we were sitting on the floor of the subway station resting our very dirty, very tired feet, and a lady in uniform told us to “GO!  Don’t sit!  GO!”  Sitting is dangerous.  So we rode the train some more.

·         We find a playground!  We swing on very short swings.  And we both accidentally bruise our feet by letting our legs actually dangle for a minute.  And there is grass nearby, and a tree, and a good place for two girls who have been riding the subway all day to just lie down and sleep.  It seemed really safe there, no obnoxious men or dust or crowds, and we were surrounded by children playing.  Two little girls who held hands wherever they went.  A little boy playing with his brother.  One boy accidentally hit himself in the head with his pong paddle.  There is a grandpa who looks miserable, but actually turns out to be a pretty friendly guy who just sits in a despairing stance.  Bells ringing in church nearby, and a lot of time is passing and we’re not really noticing.

·         Heading home, we stop to get coffee, strength for our upcoming ordeal of the overnight ferry to Santorini.  Em orders Greek coffee – bad idea.  It’s basically coffee and water and sugar boiled together, poured into a cup.  She is very subtle about her distaste, but waiter notices anyways.   He was so nice! Told her just a sec, he would get her an espresso!  For free.  Then he brings us out shots.  Also free.  And we talk for a while.  It’s a good way to end a warm warm day.

In Which We Take a Ferry to Santorini

·         We put on our backpacks to leave for the ferry.

·         Yes.

·         We carried those darn things.

·         Those heavy, heavy heavy things.

·         We catch the metro, all the way to the Greek port of Piraeus, without getting lost.  This can’t be happening.  We can’t make it there without any problems.  There has to be a catch! And…there is.  We accidentally, through miscommunications, don’t get on the port bus, and we start walking, looking for Gate E1. The gates are very far apart, as we soon discover.

·         We are walking.  Our backpacks are straining our backs, we can hardly talk.  T wonders if she is breathing or not. But Em is superwoman. 

·         There is a man smoking in the parking lot we are walking through.  Em asks him for directions, and even though he doesn’t speak very good English, we manage to communicate.  He offers us a ride in his truck!  Like, truck driver “pit stop pancakes and waffles” giant kind of truck.  I’ve never climbed into one of those before!  Somehow, we trust this man, even though he has a shaggy beard and smells like cigarettes.  Or maybe it’s that God has taken care of us so many times, and we trust Him above anything else.

·         We are all piled in with our backpacks, and things are suddenly falling out of mine and coming apart, and Em is perched up in the back with her enormous backpack still strapped on.  It’s not too long of a drive, but I am watching the road go past and thinking, Thank you God that I am not walking this right now, struggling to breathe in my very very very heavy backpack!  Thank you!  God is amazing.  All the kind strangers He sends into our lives make me think of meeting angels unawares.  Answers to prayer around every corner.

·         We get on the ferry, slightly surprised they actually let us on, just by looking at our ticket!  Somehow, I keep feeling illegal and I’m not sure why, like, how are we really doing all this travelling on our own? How is everything working out?  It can’t REALLY be okay, when we just went to a random store and bought a ticket, they can’t seriously think we are adults who can take care of ourselves. There must be a catch! But no, he smiles and nods and motions upstairs.

·         We go up on deck, lots of people in chairs watching the cars load onto the ferry.  We feel very unbeautiful.  So many gorgeous people on this ferry and we are exhausted and very sweaty, tangled-hair and smelling like travel. 

·         Toilet is life. (That was T’s mixed-up mind interpretation of signage in the bathroom.)

·         We decide to head to the upper deck.  I climb up on the railing, watching the moon.  The city is glowing and everything is getting dark.  It’s midnightish. 

·         The ferry leaves!  A group of people decide to start smoking right next to us and blow all their nasty cigarette ash on our blankets and/or clothes!  So annoyed.

·         They don’t  leave.

·         We start settling in, very tired –Em can’t find her sheet! Uses two towels.  So much cold out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.  It’s unexpected. There is one point where I am falling asleep, I have even started preparing dreams, and then my head decides to think about whether or not I am comfortable.  BIG MISTAKE. I am not comfortable. I move. I don’t get back to sleep.

·         T’s sheet is billowing around her constantly, very cold, and I keep imagining I’m in some dramatic movie with a see-through dress that’s dramatically flying everywhere in the wind.  Except in this case, there is a metal surface pressing against one side of my body that’s flattening me.  I think gravity has reversed.  Not sleeping.  There is a group of guys who are smoking in the stairwell and keep laughing at our futile attempts to stay warm.   “Hey girls!  What are you doing out here?  Don’t sleep alone, sleep with us!”  Har har har.  Much laughing.  Wish we were sleeping.

·         The sun is starting to rise, and soon the ferry will land!  So windy.  So much pink in the sky.  And the ferry docks!  People rushing past us to disembark.

·         There is a huge cliffside of sheer rock rising up from the port.  Port is crowded with people, and far above us we can see a miniature truck climbing a winding road up the mountainside.

·         We are soon in a van heading for our hostel, with lots of other bleary-eyed people.  Sunrise shadows and dusty roads and white, white buildings. 

·         This is surreal. 

·         We all go for breakfast at a bakery and eat amazing apple turnovers.  Along with gross coffee.  Seriously! How does everyone here stay awake and stuff? 

·         We meet a cute dog and name her Toffee.  She loves us.

·         We head to the beach and decide to just jump in the water fully clothed.  Spontaneity mixed with a lack of sleep.  The sun is rising over the ocean, with black volcanic sand and perfect water.  It was a hallelujah moment.  God’s glory is spectacular.

·         Splashing each other, drenched with salty water.  The floor of the ocean feels good on my sore, dusty feet – solid like concrete.  We realize it is actually hardened lava.

·         20 minutes of giddy joy, and then we realize: WE ALWAYS WEAR OUR MONEYBELTS. 

·         ALWAYS.

·         Oh no.

·         Rushing back to the shore, we hastily empty the contents of our moneybelts out into my purse to dry, unsticking passports, birth certificates, eurail passes from each other, but still feeling giddily happy and a little too irresponsible for our own good.  I rush back into the water. 

·         Toffee is still with us, and has been joined by a black dog we name Jasper.  They’re playing with each other dangerously close to our purses, and at one point rush off with one of Em’s shoes.

·         We illegally sunbathe in some chairs that are left out there on the beach, since it is too early for the manager to demand that we pay him, and we lay out our stuff to dry.

·         We go back to hostel, check in, and shower and emerge like beautiful butterflies as CLEAN PEOPLE. 

·         CLEAN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

·         Second breakfast!  Like a hobbit.  Our waiter is so American, in his all-engrossing boredom with everything he says and everyone he talks to.  Kind of like that ‘or not’ woman from the vet stories I read as a child.  “Perhaps you’d like cheese pie? Or not.  What about carrot stew? Or not.”  The rest of our day is spent at the beach, and what a beach it is!

·         We go for a walk in the falling night, sing 16 going on 17 in operatic voices, exploring a skeleton of a house.  These are all over the place, like people suddenly decided they didn’t want another house after all and so just left it.  It has concrete floors and posts and a flight of stairs leading to the top, and a concrete roof, but that is it.  Everything else is left open.

In Which We Rent a Quad

·         We get breakfast at a waffle place, with real French press coffee!  There are brightly coloured hammocks, sofas, chair, tables painted in primary colours.  Everything is made from scratch, and I want to own a place like this. It’s very expensive, but it clears our minds and souls.  From now on I will have my waffles with gelato and whipped cream.

·         We rent a quad from a nearby place, and set out ON THE ROAD.  I’m FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And going much faster than walking, even though we’re really much slower than everyone else on the road.

·         We head out to Red Beach first; it’s a bit of a hike over rocky red cliffs, and then suddenly the beach is laid out below you.  Gorgeous rocks walls, deep burnt red, like rust, all sculpted.  You can tell this island is volcanic from the shape of all the rocks.  Blue ocean next to red cliffs is stunning.

·         The water is wonderful.  Waves crashing, and a gaspy feeling in my chest when they splash me.  We rent beach chairs.

·         Oh, and here there was a man selling bracelets who fell in love with Em and calls her Miss Canada.  Even though she didn’t celebrate Canada Day.

·         Lots of good people-watching here.  Everything is so touristy here, we see more North Americans than Greeks!  There is a girl standing out in the water reading a novel. 

·         The British are always VERY white skinned.

·         We drive to Fira.  There are labyrinths here, labyrinths of stores after stores, and most of them are too full of tourists.  A girl at one store is very disappointed I don’t play basketball.  I feel somehow guilty for this.  As if height means you must play basketball.  I get that feeling from people a lot when they ask me about this.

·         We use an amazing bathroom with such cool stone sinks and lotion that smells like heaven and flowers.  The doors have quotes about men and women on them, instead of male and female signs. 

·         Finally we head back, T drives with her amazing quad skills all the way to Oia, where we will watch the sunset.  Our quad does not have the option of reverse, so we get out and pull it backwards.  We are such MEN.

·         We walk down the pathway to the rocks, pass all the waiters offering us their restaurants, not sure why they’d want us near all the beautiful people in couture clothing, dining with pearls and sunsets. 

·         We head onto the rocks. The sun starts to set.  We keep seeing pirate ships sailing past the sun, sails high.  We wave at them.

·         The waves are starting to splash more and more – Santorini is much windier than Alonissos.  The sky turns pink; T climbs out onto rocks for me to take photos, we start to take a million photos, the waves are glorious, our hair smells like salt, and we can suddenly fly.

·         Then I climb out as far as I possibly can.  The wind steals my breath, and I feel like an acrobat on these rocks, so sharp they hurt my feet.  I stand on the very edge of the rocks.  Out here, the water is deep, and the wind is almost pushing me into the swirling waves.  There are all these dried on salt crystals in the crevices of the rocks far out on the water.  It smells kinda funny – stinky but not.

·         My hair also smells like that. Not my best smell.

·         We head back and start driving into the night, but we want to find somewhere to eat.

·      Go through every single menu in Oia, finally find a restaurant with amazing food!  Lots of repetitive music though.

·         Em encounters a lobster.  It was hanging out in my pasta.  Not sure what to do about this. Decide that dissection of this sea creature will have to wait.

·         We feel uncouth with our napkins always blowing away and Em always hitting at least three corners when she gets out of her chair.  How do people ease gracefully out of chairs at restaurants? I always wonder.

·         Finally Em dissects the lobster.  From now on she will have to live with the knowledge that she ate one of God’s little creatures.  Also, she finds that extracting the lobster meat leaves bits of shell in ALL OF HER PASTA.  She decides the best technique is to brush hair in front of face so no one could see her, delicately remove the shell with her figners, and hope no one at the other tables noticed.  It’s becoming a battle between hunger and uncouthness.  T is not helping, giggling every single time. 

·         T draws awesome illustrations in the book, showing our amazing quad skills. 

·         Our waiter gives us free shots.  Male waiters seem to do this.  Weird. 

·         There was this American couple next to us with a curly haired little boy, and they were awesome.  So sweet and genial and…American.

·         We leave, despite protests from the water, “You stay and have more schnapps with me? Yes?”  No.

·         We start to head off, find our quad, drive the starry road back to our hostel.  It’s a long drive and we get a bit turned around by the party crowds in Fira, but find our way.  T almost hits a sign.  And a barrier.

·         Crazy driver.

·         People pass us a lot.

·         We got really cold, eyes got very pink from the wind.

·         Sleep well tonight

·         The next day is a lazy day.  We do trip research and talk with Cliff from Brooklyn who has travelled all over the world.  He shows us a video of him dancing with people in over 40 different places.  He is friends with two girls from Norway.  He gives us drinks in exchange for using our laptop internet for Skype.  There is still a bartering system alive and well in the world.

·         Decide to go down to beach while Cliff has our laptop, and scope out the situation for sleeping there.  This brilliant idea was formulated while we were sitting on beach chairs watching the last of the sun sinking in the sky, and eating baklava, while the stars shine over our leafy umbrellas on the chairs we are illegally using.

·         The beach seems balmy.  Perfect for sleeping. 

·         We collect sleeping stuff, head down.  The chairs are comfortable, and I fall almost instantly asleep, that seamless kind of sleep where you don’t even realize you’ve been sleeping, only to wake up like an hour or two later with THE WIND.  The waves are awesome though; I close my eyes and can hear the slurp of the water as it crashes and then sucks back the shiny black pebbles on the edge of the beach.  Stars everywhere.  So bright. 

·         I keep willing myself to sleep.  Finally the idea of going back to the hostel becomes irresistible.  People heading home at 4am walk past; I guess they were people from our hostel because they see our shiny white sheet/pillows on the edge of the beach and call  at me, “CANADIAN?!  Crazy Canadian!”  It’s interesting how at hostels, you’re known by your nationality.  Names don’t count.

·         We watch the hostel people playing drunk soccer with an empty water bottle.  Highly strategic and entertaining.   

In Which We Leave Greece

·         A bunch of us from the hostel leave for the ferry!  Lots of goodbyes and waves from everyone else.  Cliff and the guy beside him have a heart-to-heart about an Argentinian girl still at the hostel.  The guy had been sleeping on the bunk above her in the dorm, but, incidentally, had not been brave enough to say a single word to her.  It didn’t matter.  He was in love.  Cliff &co encourage/make fun of him, plan the wedding speech, and continue to give him a lot of instruction in the ways of romance. 

·         Drunk nerds in the van with us!  T has a very difficult time keeping a straight face.  “Dude, don’t the lights down there look like a bonfire?”  “It is a bonfire!  Dude, that would be sweet to have a bonfire right there.”  “We had some good times, we had some bad times… and some crazy shit went down last night… I’m not really sure what.”  These are the same nerds I heard explaining WOW to some British girls earlier the same night. 

·         We all pile out of the van and head towards the port.  We end up walking with Amin and Cliff, who make fun of our huge bags and offer to help.  Amin says to one particularly obnoxious guy, “Goodbye.  I hope to never meet someone so misguided as you again.  I hope you change your ways.”  We wait with Cliff and Amin, with coffee.  Amin explains how he is easily satisfied, but only with the right thing.   He will gladly wait patiently for perfection. 

·         We all get onto ferry together, and it feels good to be part of a group heading to Athens.  Amin plays us romantic songs on a miniature guitar.  We also eat AMAZING sundried tomatoes that Cliff bought. 

·         Together, we make an epic and illegal foray into the first class area of the ferry, where there are (as Cliff points out) purple seats, green seats, and – his favourite – red seats.  We find groups of two and stretch across them.  No guards are checking our economy tickets, and this is much more comfortable than our last time on an overnight ferry.  Warm, for example.

·         Some of us, like T, go to sleep.  Others, like me, watch Greek soap operas that thoroughly confuse us.  There are a lot of people speaking through broadcasting headphones, with very intense dramatic Greek expressions and thick eyebrows and WAY TOO MUCH makeup on the women.  There’s also a flirtatious older woman who seems to be always trying to get it on with a fat old man who looks like a porter.  And then there are a lot of women who all seem imprisoned somehow, but very sure of their rights.  I sense a few hidden, subtle love undertones, such as a guy and a girl who keep almost kissing but then being thrown (literally) apart by the governess woman. 

·         All in all, a lot of confusion and waking dreams, until the boat finally docks.

·         Standing on the bus, Em is sure that her pack will fall and cause widespread destruction to the city of Athens.  Lots of people bumping it.  Cliff and Amin again making fun of me.

·         On the bus, a random man starts talking to Cliff.  Not understanding Greek, but thinking he’s referring to the fact that it’s been several days since he’s showered, Cliff says, “Yeah man, I know.  I stink.  I smell!”  The man is yanking on his shoulder and asking him something very insistently.  He seems desperate to communicate, but isn’t getting anywhere.  I feel like he’s talking about me and T, and it makes me uncomfortable, and I’m glad he’s not talking to us instead. Cliff smiles and nods and laughs but still doesn’t speak Greek, so he offers the guy some of the lotion we’re putting on our sunburns.  This finally seems to crack the guy up, and he smiles and slaps Cliff on the shoulder.  Cliff turns to us and says, “Gotta give him credit for continuing on the conversation when my first words to him were ‘I stink!’

·         Hours and hours of buses and connections, old men who kicked my leg for no particular reason and then started saying their rosary, and drawing doodles in our Book. 

·         And my last memory of Greece is waiting for our ferry to Italy, drinking coffee at a café named Chocolat which, very oddly, had absolutely nothing chocolate on the menu.

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