2016.06.04 - Six shots of Raki and a Phone Number

"Now more than ever do I realize I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sundrenched elsewhere." - Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: The diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

The days here pass quickly. This morning my closest friend here at the hostel (a Dutch girl) flew away home which is too bad for me (and for her).

On her last day, we went to the Plakias beach with an Irish barber and a giant Swede. The Swede was intolerable and kept telling me that Americans generally didn’t like him but it seemed very much the other way around. After a few hours of being buffeted by nonstop politics (in an accusatory rather than a debate form) he told us that he had been diagnosed as being on the spectrum for Asperger’s and I was actually really glad he mentioned it. His inability to gauge appropriate social behavior was put in context and my patience in the situation skyrocketed.

After a day at the beach that included gelato for lunch, we went out to dinner at a seaside place. The waiter was hilarious and after a delicious Greek salad and mixed meze, I caught his eye from across the room and asked for the check by pretending to write on my hand (the international sign for this request). From across the restaurant, he shouted, “Oh! You want my phone number?” and then proceeded to tell it to me slowly and loudly. Everyone in the restaurant laughed. Then, instead of giving us the customary shot of post-dinner Raki, he brought us a small vessel of it which held about 7 shots. He sat down and drank one with us. When we finished, he made a big production of bringing us another vessel and making us drink another shot…it was water! He laughed at his trick but then replaced the water with a container of stronger stuff.

By the time we finished, the warmth of the alcohol flowed through our veins and we begged him for the real bill, which, half an hour after we’d initially asked for it, we still didn’t have. Finally it was produced and we headed home to sing happy birthday to a 22 year old Parisian girl and drink one more round.

Delicious Greek Salad

The first of MANY shots of Raki

Daily Spending:

$0.57 - Fresh olives

$2.39 - Local cherry jam

$0.91 - Bread

$3.41 - Cheese

$2.27 - Gelato

$1.19 - Postcard/stamp

$16.37 - Dinner/drinks

$1.93 - Beer

$11.37 - Accommodation

Day # = 6

Daily Total =  $40.41

Grand Total = $311.97

Daily Average = $52.00

Greece Total = $311.97

Greece Average = $52.00

2016.06.03 - Tunnels, Mines and Caves

“’History!’ writes Bokonon. ‘Read it and weep!’” – Kurt Vonnegut, The Cat’s Cradle

I did another hike yesterday with a British guy. It was a hike along a cliff and through some mining tunnels. In order to access the caves at the end of the tunnels, we scrambled down a cliff and swam around to them. It was good fun and my lungs held out well.

A look back at Plakias

Mining tunnel

Natural sea salt deposits

Plakias

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Later that night, I met an Austrian guy and had a good long conversation with him over dinner. He was interesting and had a originally been a refugee at a young age from Albania. They illegally crossed the mountains into Austria to flee the communist regime there. He remembered the trip vividly. It was interesting to hear about.

Daily Spending:

$0.91 - Fresh olives

$5.51 - Round of beers

$14.09 - Restaurant dinner (starters, Fanta, spaghetti)

$11.36 - Accommodation

Day # = 5

Daily Total =  $31.87

Grand Total = $271.56

Daily Average = $54.31

Greece Total = $271.56

Greece Average = $54.31

2016.06.02 - First Hike Post Pneumonia

Between October of 2015 and March of 2016 I was so, so sick with pneumonia. Every single breath was painful. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything and if I tried to, I would just end up back in the emergency room. I had to take sleeping pills at night in order to sleep and each night, my greatest fear was that my roommate would find me dead in the morning. Generally, the worst and most difficult part of my day was the 5 minutes I needed to stand up in the morning in order to take a shower.

And now?

Yesterday I stood on the top of a mountain at a little church overlooking the Mediterranean Sea after an hour and a half climb. It was my first post-pneumonia hike. A Canadian girl named Sofia instigated the adventure and I joined her, a New York musician girl and the Californian author for the trek.

On the way up, the beautiful, young musician girl went on and on for a bit about a woman at the hostel who was a few years older than me and in great physical shape. She kept reiterating how that was the goal. I looked down at my own, out of shape, imperfect body which was decidedly not the goal of these young girls, but I looked down on it with surprising kindness. This body has taken me far. This body lived through pneumonia. How could I hate it? It’s easy to imagine a life of perfection when you are 19. I guess it is expected that you will.

But in the end, despite my weakened body, I did it. I stood atop the mountain. Then I walked down to the bottom of the mountain and Sofia and I climbed down onto a little, secluded beach where we dove in the aquamarine sea and swam for an hour. I felt empowered (to say the least) when we arrived back in our little village of Plakias that evening, 5 hours after we’d left.

That night was a hostel BBQ where the musician and the author played their guitars and serenaded the group with an incredible array of beautiful songs.

I am the absolute worst at water selfies. This was the best of the bunch.

Daily Spending:
$0.56 - Water
$5.58 - Hostel BBQ
$1.90 - Beer
$3.35 - Gelato (Cranberry and Banana)
$11.15 - Accommodation

Day # = 4
Daily Total = $22.54
Grand Total = $239.69
Daily Average = $59.92
Greece Total = $239.69
Greece Average = $59.69

2016.06.01 - Philosophizing, Cultural Objectivity and Thoughts on the Rural American Traveler

The days drift lazily by like they can only in beachfront island villages.

The day is swimming, reading, sunning and eating local foods. The evening is drinks and conversation with travelers from all ends of the world. The night is silence and stars. And this life is beautiful and good.

Despite the goodness of things at the moment, my winter of pneumonia is never far from my mind. Seven months sick, thinking I would die and now I sit in the fading light of day, staring at the sea, eating fresh olives and drinking homemade wine. I’m fortunate to have lived. I have long forgotten the majority of my brushes with death, but this one was so protracted that its memory refuses to dissipate. So I remember and fear death more and more even as it stalks me less and less.

Death may haunt my nights, but during the day I am focused on the characters of this place who are slowly beginning to emerge and, oddly enough, even mingle with the characters in my book. Zorba the Greek is what I am reading. Written 80 years ago, it is about a man here on the island of Crete who spends his time philosophizing and wishing he was more impulsive. One of the men here on the island (a man from a rural area not 5 hours from my own small, logging town) is obsessed with this author, in love with Greece (if not the actual place, then at least the idea of the place) and writing his own novel.

I never meet rural Americans so it is strange that I should be staying in the same place as one. He seems to have (somewhat bitterly) rejected the culture of our homeland. I thoroughly understand this sentiment but I believe the final understanding lies in realizing how arbitrary it all is. No need for rejection, just objectivity (which is far more challenging but ultimately more peaceful). He seeks the magic of the exotic and imagines it to be found somewhere on these islands. When I briefly told him about my travels he played the guitar and sang a song in order to process the information but while this description might make him seem like something of a hippie, he does not, in real life, come across as one.

Orientalism, or exoticizing the ‘other’, only works in books and movies. In real life, neither humans nor land are magical and in my opinion, to imagine that they ought to be does a disservice to both them and oneself. He does not seem to understand people enough yet to know this, but it is impossible to imagine that someone who tries so hard and seeks so genuinely won’t eventually learn this truth.

No lands are magical, humans are only exotic if you don’t bother to get to know them and life is so, so much more than a novel. On that note (and with a hypocritical wink) I will introduce other characters later.

Daily Spending:

$4.69 - Lunch at Restaurant (Tzatziki, Garlic Bread, Tomatoes)

$0.39 - Fresh Olives

$0.43 - Tomato

$0.28 - Pear

$0.25 - Cucumber

$0.90 - Bread

$2.69 - Canned Dolmades (rice wrapped in grape leaves)

$3.69 - Gelato (Strawberry and Strawberry/Chocolate)

$11.19 - Accommodation

Day # = 3

Daily Total = $24.51

Grand Total = $217.15

Daily Average = $72.38

Greece Total = $217.15

Greece Average = $72.38