Fair
Greece! Sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more: though fallen,
great!
Lord Byron
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Early the next morning, there was a knock at our cabin door
– a wakeup call for Dabney in the other upper birth.
I lay in my bunk looking out the round porthole. During the night, we had crossed the Strait of
Otranto, between the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea, and were now passing slowly along the
northeast shore of Corfu. Homer praised the
island's beauty and it was the background for Shakespeare's "The Tempest”. In the dim morning light, the island looked
beautiful, like a mermaid lying on her side wearing sequins of lights. Corfu was indigo blue against a slightly lighter
blue sea and a still lighter gray-blue sky. The
pine trees and the rocky shoreline put me in mind of Vancouver Island (where I am now writing this story).
It seemed that backpackers were sleeping everywhere on the ship. I learned from a girl who was part of a group of
students studying art in Greece that there had been a storm during the night. Many of the backpackers disembarked at Corfu. I walked the green-carpeted deck near the gold
smokestack and sat on a white bench. I watched
a now higher and sparsely treed shore as the Lydia
slipped by it. My ticket would have me carried
me to Patras but I decided to get off at Igoumenitsa, a mainland port near the Albanian
border. The Lydia would not reach Patras until 5:00 p.m.,
rather late, I felt, to disembark and hunt for a campsite in a strange new land. Besides, I had already been enchanted by the rugged
beauty of the shores of Greece and felt I would have missed a lot. A black-hulled tug named the Alexandros escorted us into port.
My map, put out by the Greek National Tourist Organization
(GNTO), was difficult for me to follow. While
there were a few explanatory notes in English, all place names were in Greek. Corfu, for example, was Kerkira , Crete was Kriti
and Athens was Athina.
No matter. By ship,
the coast of Greece had been beautiful to see; by scooter, it was awesome to experience. And my first image of a Greek came just outside
Igomenitsa – a man burning twigs and branches in an orchard of ancient, gnarled olive
trees. I thought of Dad and the clearing of
our building lots – before the building of our last home together in Ridgeway and the
cottage at Gooseneck Lake. The road went
inland for a way and then returned to the coast.
Melawend and I rode along winding roads in drizzle through the
coastal range of the Eprios Mountains. Where
at last the road came back to the sea, I saw a hopeful sign – we were under a very
large shelf of black clouds and you could see the bright edge of it on the southerly
horizon, where we were headed. This gave the
bare empty landscape in between a spooky, almost surrealistic atmosphere. This made me nervous.
I shivered from the dampness. I
wanted Grecian sunshine. It continued to
drizzle through to Preveza.
I bought bread and chocolate cookies in a small bakery. A break in the land allowed the Ionian Sea and the
Amvrakikos Kolpos to join. There was a short
ferry ride between Preveza and Aktio that saved you from going the long circular route
around the inland sea. I barely made it to the boat. People on board shouted, "Queek, queek!"
Goats ran across the otherwise empty road near Mitikas. Two rams were butting their heads on the roadside
beside the dark blue sea. The goats would
scamper with incredible ease up steep craggy slopes at the edge of the Akarnanika
Mountains. The air grew warmer. The overcast sky broke and I looked under
smoke-gray cotton-ball clouds out to a conical mountain on the small island of Kalamos. The mainland mountains were gray and brown rock,
sparsely covered with rich green scrub and a few small trees. The soil of the foothills was orange-brown. This shore was devoid of humanity except for the
odd truck that rumbled by. Greece was awesome
in its lonely scenic splendor. And it was
utter joy to roll through such seascapes on Melawend.
By now, Europe had overwhelmed me with its long, action-packed
and overlapping histories. After all, I was
from Europe’s offspring, North America. Our
history – beginning with the European discoverers and colonizers – was short and
thin: a mere few hundred years, covering a gargantuan and initially pristine landmass of
7,600,000 square miles. Ours had been largely
a history of explore it, claim it and deal the natives off of it, overdevelop it and
violate it with pollutants. We were the bold,
industrious frontiersmen!
But then most of our forefathers had been raised on the old side
of the Atlantic, where many torturous histories had made up the tapestry of their lives.
Those histories covered a mere 1,900,000 square miles of territory (excluding the European
parts of Russia and Turkey) but were measured in thousands
of years. Being so close together, Europeans
had always been pushing each other around – where else could they go? Colonies, of course!
(And they were still going at it, though colonialism now took economic form
through land purchases and asset grabs through corporate takeovers.) Europe was one convoluted mass of invasions,
assimilations and rebellions – the rising and falling of empires. No wonder our North American forefathers and
foremothers got the hell out of there! (And
the natives of the new lands had so much less power to oppose invasion.)
Greece had seen waves of conquerors that included the Dorians,
the Ionians, the Persians, the Romans, the Norman Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, the
Albanians, the Venetians, and the Egyptians. And
now Melawend and I were riding in the wake of the ancient barbaric invaders (the Dorians)
that took over western Greece.
The road left the sea and we rolled up and over the wooded
mountains of Arcanania, coming back to the sea near Gulf of Corinth. We skirted Missolonghi where in 1824, Byron, after
having taken up the cause of Greek independence and being appointed commander in chief of
the Greek forces, succumbed to a recurrent fever and died.
He had recently completed Don Juan,
his epic satire of English society.
We were heading toward Patras, the third-largest city in Greece
and the bustling port on the Gulf of Patras, near the Sea of Corinth. It was a rebuilt city as the Turks had completely
destroyed it in the 1820’s during the Greek War of Independence. As I neared Andirro, where a ferry would take us to
Patras, Melawend and I passed by a few new homes that were under construction. My father had been a residential developer and I
had helped carpenters on a few of his projects, so I took a particular interest. As in Italy, what stuck me was the absence of wood. On the poured concrete foundation and floor of one
house, forms of used wood planks and re-bars (reinforcing iron bars) stood like a
decimated forest on the concrete floor. When
the concrete inside was hard, the forms would be taken down and bricks and mortar would
fill the spaces between the square columns of concrete to form the walls of the home. How I wished that my Dad was here so we could
explore these Greek construction sites together.
I agonized over insurance – my coverage, bought in England,
was to expire in a few days. I had to get to
Athens quickly. Rushed again!
Prices here were cheap, however.
I paid 50 cents for two loaves of bread and filled Melawend's gas tank for
$3.00, about half the price it was in Italy.
After riding over several rough patches of inadequately filled
potholes, including one that could still have swallowed a Harley Davidson, (well, it was big) I would stop to record the bells of goats as
they crossed the road. The goats would stare
at me, pause and head way over to the far side. I
was so enamoured with the beauty of this desolate coast that I often made like a mountain
goat myself and scampered up the rocky slopes to take photographs. As I turned away from the sea, we came upon a huge
bull that was strolling up the middle of the road. I
gave him a blast on Melawend's rather toyish horn but he paid no mind. I rode around him.
The land flattened out and was irrigated and I saw steel grain
bins.
I reached the coast again just north of Andirrio. The road was high up on the coast and the sun was
beginning to set beyond the headlands. A group
of headlands cast a silhouette image of a monkey's head lying in the water at the edge of
the sea. It was a beautiful sight and I
grabbed a few photos. I knew more spectacular
light was coming and would render magnificent this seascape with a flotilla of gentle
clouds overhead, but I had to find a place to camp. The
road wound down toward Andirrio. Near the
base, I found a muddy farm with olive trees. I
rode up the driveway.
An old peasant woman in black was standing outside the house. I asked if I could camp. She spoke no English but she knew from my gestures
what I was after. It was okay to camp here. I pulled Melawend off the gravel onto the ground
around the trees. It had been ploughed but
rain had smoothed it and weeds were growing up. Melawend
sunk into the soft soil up to her hub, so I unloaded her on the spot.
I went up to the house and met a guy in his early thirties and a
beautiful blond-haired girl with hazel eyes. They
did not speak English but clearly motioned for me to bring my tent up closer to the house. I also understood that they wanted me to come in
for coffee. A 60ish man and a skinny young guy
with a bushy black beard came to the house as I was putting up the tent. He and the fellow in the house, both handsome men,
looked like brothers. Another guy rode in on a
scooter. I finished up and we all sat on the
front porch. I was relieved that the guy with
the bushy beard spoke English. He had worked
on a ship for many years and had been to ports around the world, including ports in the US
and Canada that were on the St. Lawrence River. He
learned how to speak English during his travels. He
had married a girl from South Africa and lived there for a few years.
The beautiful blond-haired girl brought me out a piece of apple
cake with a cherry on top – it was delicious. The
younger of the two brothers brought me some cognac. Everyone
talked. When there was a language barrier, I
would gauge acceptance of my presence by the amount of laughter I generated. I was obviously welcome here. But I talked mostly with the bushy-haired guy. Then they all got up to leave – only the old
woman stayed. The bushy-haired guy said that
if I needed any food, just come up to the house and ask.
They got up to leave and I felt my shyness as I received several pats on the
back as they made their way to their vehicles.
After they left, I found that I needed some drinking water, so I
knocked on the front door. The old woman
shouted something from inside. I thought she
wanted me to go to the back door. I did. She shouted something else so I went back to my
tent, grabbed my cameras and rode Melawend back up to that marvelous vista and got my
sunset shots.
I marveled at how I had been in a cabin on a ship one night and
found welcome on a muddy Greek farm the next – I seldom knew where I would spend a
night when I traveled.
I awoke at 3:00 a.m. to the sound of a truck passing by. Then there was silence save for a soft breeze. I listened to my walkman and savored a Greek song,
a ballad, I assumed, that a girl sang beautifully.
The next morning, Melawend and I boarded the ferry at Andirrio
for the 10-minute ride to the Patras at the north end of the Peloponnesus. My objective was Olympia, birthplace of the modern
Olympic Games, ancient hippodrome to the gods. Melawend
and I rode on a modern highway and at Pirgos turned away from the sea. We rode through the mountainous hinterland and
found Olympia nestled among trees in a remote valley.
Olympia was not a town but a sanctuary for the ancient Greeks. Here, the ancients had built temples, altars,
theatres, monuments, statues and a stadium.
The day was sunny and mild and there was the lightest of breezes,
perfect for a stroll amid some ruins. It was
pretty here and there were few tourists. Like
the sites of most ancient ruins, Olympia had the look of a crumbling old cemetery. It rested peacefully amid trees against the
backdrop of the low green mountains of Elis. But
the buildings of Olympia were in rough shape. Most
everything had tumbled down. Carved stones and
blocks were scattered like the remaining debris of an earthquake. Other bits of buildings looked like they had been
carefully laid over the grounds as if in a life-size jigsaw puzzle that you were supposed
to assemble in your mind.
The most notable example of this was in the sacred precinct of
Altis where I found the Temple of Zeus. I
walked around on the mammoth square blocks of its foundation that also formed its floor. Next to the foundation were many huge fluted slabs
of columns that had toppled over. They were
lying rather neatly on the ground, leaning against each other like colossal cookies that
had been gently poured out of a bag. People
strolling among them looked tiny. The Olympian
Games (that’s what they were called when this temple was new) were dedicated to the
glory of Zeus, the supreme god of the ancient Greeks, and his temple was considered the
centerpiece of Olympia. Inside it had stood
one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the 40-foot (12-meter) Statue
of Zeus – made by the great Greek sculptor Phidias in about 435 BC. He
fashioned the god’s robe and ornaments from gold and carved the body out of ivory. Now
the Olympic Flame began its quad-yearly odyssey from this temple.
Next to the
Temple of Zeus you found the ruins of the Heraeum, a temple dedicated to Hera, the wife of
Zeus. In this oldest of Doric buildings there
had been a table on which were the garlands that were prepared for the victors in the
games.
I focused in on
the tremendously understated archway that led to the stadion, (the Greek word that gave us stadium). Really, you expected a far grander entrance –
colossal statues of Adonis – something! This was just a simple narrow arch of badly
weathered, tapered stones that seemed to hang in a state of imminent collapse over the
entry to a small roofless corridor. On both
sides of this stone passageway there was fill so that you had coarse tall weeds sprouting
up around the ends of the arch.
I walked through
this ancient passage that had been used by ancient athletes running into and out of the
stadium. What a disappointment! (I was an
idiot. I had not done any research prior to my
arrival here.) I was expecting some grand
amphitheater, an Olympian Colosseum – it was just an empty field of grass lined with
some stone blocks! Banks of grass-covered fill
and a bit of forest at the far end bordered the field.
That was it! It was less
impressive than many third-rate high-school track and field yards. But the Greeks gathered here to watch the most
honourable of men compete in the footraces that began the second day of the games.
As I said in the
prologue, I did not do a lot of research before I began my journey in part because I
wanted to let the reality of a place work on me unimpeded by foreknowledge. Still, imaginings
of a place heaped expectations on you. Olympia! Shrine
of the Gods! Well, so much for shattered
preconceptions based on imaginings. I was glad that I had grabbed up some brochures when I
got here and now decided I had better sit down have a look at them. I assured myself that
I would read more about all this when I got home.
Olympia was where it
had all begun. The accepted date of the first
Olympian Games was 776 B.C., when the name Nike referred only to the Goddess of Victory. But the victors then had it just as good as the
endorsement-bestowed gold-medal winners of today – they likely lived out the rest of
their days at public expense. Still, there was
something hopeful in why the games had been created in the first place. Every four years, the Greeks interrupted their
domestic wars to put on these competitions. City-states
were invited to send their best athletes. The
games had been held here for 1,000 years, even during the time of Roman domination. Imagine! But they ended because of increasingly bitter
relations between Greeks and Romans. The games
were buried in memory for 1500 years until they were exhumed in 1896 in Athens. They were revived by the efforts of a Frenchman,
Baron de Coubertin.
The modern relay of the Olympic Torch began here at the placid
ruins of the Temple of Zeus with the run to Berlin to begin the 1936 Olympics. The Nazis used those games to hype their might, and
the games had certainly been used as a political pawn since then. Still, I was confident that the games born here
would eventually help to win the day against man’s inhumanity to man.
In Olympia, I thought it was time to give the Olympic Games a new
name. After all, though they were originally
staged to honour a mythical god, they were more practically used to interrupt wars –
to promote peace. I had not truly
appreciated that. But what a fun way to
exorcise our barbaric compulsion to conquer each other!
It seemed better to cheer the athletic heroes of the playing fields rather
than mourn the dead heroes of the battlefields. I
thought, to hell with “War Games”! On
with the "Peace Games"!
And, Why not hold them
every three years instead of four?
In that optimistic mood, I took a gentler attitude toward
Olympia, and to ruins in general. I walked
about with a greater reverence for what this place symbolized. I left Olympia with a more hopeful outlook on my
species.
At a leisurely 30 miles per hour, Melawend and I rolled in
sunshine along the road between Olympia and Krestena.
It was a nice country road and I saw lots of long-needled pine trees. There
were donkeys bearing white bags that might have held grain or flour. Some of the donkeys bore men in dusty green or
black overcoats. Small towns looked poor. We rolled past a small building called the Chicago
Bar. Road signs were first in Greek, then a
little further on you would see the sign in English.
Home for the night was Camping Chani, at Kaparissia. In the men's washroom, I met a young couple from
the Netherlands. The guy had spent fourteen
months working around North America. They were heading to Egypt and were planning to work
their way around the world. He was tall,
without an ounce of fat, and had typically blond hair and blue eyes. She was slim and beautiful with flawless tanned
skin and the same color hair and eyes. They
took a shower together, talking and laughing quite loudly as they made squishy, fleshy
sounds. He came out wearing swimming trunks. She came out wearing only a flimsy clinging T-shirt
that covered only the top half of her well-rounded bum.
They didn't care. I thought of
how nice it would be to travel with Her. My
attention was later drawn to two girls in a tent nearby.
The camp was closing up in two days. A middle-aged married couple owned it. He was also from Holland; she was from Sweden. Between 1970 and 1974, they made a trip by Land
Rover through Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. They
would visit communities, schools, and make reports to the Ministry of Education (the
Netherlands). The Ministry had paid all their
bills.
We talked about my journey.
"You will probably not be able to get a visa for the
Sudan," he said. "There is the civil
war going on there."
I retired to my camp by the sea and wrote notes under an olive
tree. A cat visited me. I took a walk along the shore of the clear blue sea
and took photos of the gravelly beach and the low scrubby headlands. This was "the life": doing nothing and
having such a peaceful place in which to do it.
I returned to my camp and started to pack up my gear, saving
myself from some work the next morning. The
two girls came over for a visit. Anette
Kristoffersen and Pernille Hertz were from Holbaek,
Denmark, near Stenile where the daughter of Marie's uncle and aunt lived. They had recently graduated from high school. They were fascinated by Melawend and by tales of my
journey so far. I took a photo of them as they
signed the Odyssey Book. We wished each other
well and they returned to their camp. For that
brief time with Anette and Pernille, I was myself when I was seventeen and I felt those
same hormonal urges. But I was twice their age
and so was happy just for the brief cerebral visit with my younger days.
As darkness fell, I savoured what I considered would be my last
night to relax in Greece. There was the soft
sound of Mediterranean. The night sky was
clear and full of stars. Some clouds creeped
along the horizon. You could see lights on the sides of the mountains. This was a peaceful place.
(This was
also very un-spooky Halloween (1986). It had
been almost two months since Melawend and I rolled along the romantic shores of the Rhine. Shortly after midnight, as I was dozing off to the
gentle sound of the Mediterranean Sea, firefighters near Basel, Switzerland, began
battling a fire at a chemical warehouse of the Dandoz company on the Rhine. The Rhine would become a conduit for up to 30
tonnes of deadly poisons – herbicides, pesticides and mercury compounds. More than half a million fish and eels would be
killed and the riverbanks contaminated, severely setting back a 10-year-old fish
restoration effort. It would create a 28-mile
(45-km) -long chemical slick that would drift northward in a 12-day journey to the sea.)
It was mild the next morning as I left. I had thought it was Sunday. It was Saturday.
This gave me an extra day. On
the road, I saw many signs that advertised Ouzo, the Greek liquor that Gerdi (the Baroness
Von Kirchoff-Lintner) had told me about. When
we came to Asprohorria, a little town just before the port of Kalamata, I saw a thickly
treed lot. At least 20 white tents were
pitched on it. There were lots of families but no vehicles.
Clothes were hung from ropes.
Gypsies?
Along the road near Kalamata, I stopped to take a shot of small
old house. It was white-painted stone and had
a red tile roof. It lay on the other side a
concrete bridge over a ditch. An old stone
barn that stood to the right of the house drew my attention. It looked like a perfect cube, a little taller than
the house. The whitewash on the stone was
faded. Two windows had been filled with stone
and left unpainted. But there was no roof. The two massive cracks in one of the barn's walls
should have told me something was wrong here.
Kalamata was the chief town of Messinia, an old but bustling and
growing place. It had the 13th
century Byzantine Church of Agii Apostili and a Frankish castle. In a convent, nuns made silks by hand. There was supposed to be good swimming at the
beach. It was a city of old pastel buildings. But I knew nothing of what had happened here in
mid-September.
As we rolled closer to town, I saw familiar advertising signs
that included Fisher stereo, Levi's jeans and Toyota cars.
There were clotheslines on roofs. There
were many more of those white tents but now they were in the yards of homes. I stopped at a supermarket. Inside, there was a variety of western goods
including Dennis the Menace drinking glasses. The
stock on food shelves was low. I picked up
Q-tips, cookies, a protractor, two small coil notebooks and two tomatoes. No one spoke English.
At the meat counter, I held up a 100-drachma note and pointed to the ham and
then some gold-colored cheese. The butcher
smiled and cut the right amount. The ham came
to 117 drachma but he wrote 100 on the bag. You
got no ends of meat rolls here; when cuts made for incomplete slices, they were thrown
into a bin. I considered buying apples but I
was wary of my lean budget. Bread of every
kind was gone.
I looked around the
open courtyard of another supermarket. Open-front shops had pull-down steel doors. The butcher shops here were red with hanging sides
of beef and this reminded me of Papa Smith’s store in Ridgeway. At least two of the complex’s concrete support
beams where buttressed with angled steel and wood braces.
We continued on and started to head out of Kalamata. There were still more white tents. I imagine
it’s a fairly common design for tents, I told myself. And, as there were so many of them: Maybe a festival is about to begin. But I did not ask.
And it was odd to even think that way because the atmosphere was very quiet,
anything but festive. There was a swept-up,
deserted look about the city.
My ignorance of the earthquake was shameful! And I regret it still. It is a tribute to the resiliency of people, as the
citizens of Kalamata obviously possessed, that I had not truly noticed. It had struck on September 13th and
measured 6.2 on the Richter scale. At least 19
people were killed and 300 had been injured. The
quake had damaged about 70 percent of the buildings in Kalamata. (Was I blind? But
then I wasn’t really looking – that was my affliction). The quake also leveled a nearby village. The next day, Premier Andreas Papandreou declared a
state of emergency. Several aftershocks
followed on the 15th, and 38 more people were injured. I had only a growing awareness that something
wasn’t quite right here. This had made me
nervous and reclusive and anxious to leave.
On the far side of Kalamata, Melawend and I rolled up into the
mountains. These were very high. On the way
up, you saw many olive trees. In the distance,
you could see lower mountains that were rocky at the tops.
There were palm fronds on ground. You
could see the winding road as it ascended and you saw olive orchards that covered low
mountains. You could see Kalamata and
mountains that sloped to the sea.
The green gave way to the brown of barren rock gorges. The road became precipitous. I had to be wary of steep drops and tight
switchbacks. I stopped on the way to
photograph a three-wheeled moto that was buzzing like an angry bee on its way up. There were more and more vistas. More photos. The
road was rough in places. There were potholes
and lots of rocks on the road from rockslides and there were holes in the pavement that
were caused by large fallen rocks. I had
difficulty talking and holding my little recorder as I weaved around all of this (not
recommended).
The road
to Sparta - above and below...
Finally the barren rock gave way to more greenery on the slopes.
A pocket of autumn-colored trees, provided relief amid this desolate rugged dark land. I looked ahead and saw that we faced more
climbing, right up to the clouds that were sweeping the mountaintops. We rode up and it was much cooler. We were heading
up and up into those ominous-looking clouds. And
then we were in them. I was freezing and wet
but I began to notice that there were homes beside us in the mist. This was the high mountain village of Artemisia. We rolled on and the cloud began to glow a
brilliant white. Then we broke through into
glorious sunlight!
I felt more optimistic about things again and thought of how I
would like to spend more time in each country, at least a month in each one. But my reverie was interrupted as we began to
descend and the houses gave way to steep rock faces. We
were riding down through a bleak canyon. There
were tunnels and bends leading into tiny tunnels and unsupported cuts through steep rock
faces. I felt like I was in Bedrock country
and I would see the Flintstones around the next turn.
The rock was shiny, coarse and extremely jagged. It finally started to level out. The air became warmer. I rode out of mountains and headed along a flat
desolate road toward sunny edge of dark clouds, bound for Athens.
I rode into Sparta, which was the ancient enemy of Athens. Even in its heyday, in the 5th to 3rd
centuries B.C., Sparta was little more than five simple villages in the easily defended
valley of the Evrótas River. Art had
flourished here but the Spartans developed a militaristic mind-set, led by the Spartiatai
(descendants of the Dorian invaders) who were the class of rulers and soldiers who
dominated the Peloponnesus. Rigid discipline
and perfection were the order of the day. Deformed
babies were murdered. Boys began military
training at age seven and had to live in barracks until they were 30. All Spartans between ages 20 and 60 were compelled
to serve as hoplites (foot soldiers). The
Spartans eventually defeated Athens, ending the Golden Age of Greece, but they were in
turn taken over by the Romans. Under the
Goths, their city was destroyed. It was from
their lifestyle that we describe austere ways as “spartan”.
Sparta was still a capital and it was still a small town. Many homes here had trees that had ripe oranges. I asked a lady at a gas station for directions to
the road to Athens. She didn't speak English
and pointed in a doubtful direction. She
probably just misunderstood me. I went the opposite way.
I met two young guys at a corner.
"Athina?" I said.
They pointed in the direction I was headed.
I
planned to stop near Tripoli for the night but rode on to the village of Agiorgitka. On its outskirts, I saw a man who reminded me of
the American actor, Alan Alda. He and a young
boy were crouched as they repaired wooden apple crates beside the road. I stopped and with hardly a word, the man smiled
and pointed to the small course plot near his house. He
spoke no English but he seemed to understand "Toronto" when I said I lived near
it.
It had rained here recently.
I learned my lesson at the farm near Andirrio and unloaded Melawend on the
asphalt road. I carried all my gear about
sixty feet to a level spot on the weedy ground. Then
I rode Melawend up to the site. As I was
setting up, the man's father (I guessed), his son and his daughter, a pretty girl with
round features and dark brown hair, stood by the house and watched me set up my tent. This was the family of George Athanasopoulos.
(I was
going to type here “a Greek look-alike for of Hawkeye Pierce” because many of
you probably know "Hawkeye" of the TV series M.A.S.H., perhaps better than the
real Alan Alda. Hawkeye had wit, charisma,
deviousness, peeves, passion, compassion, strengths, weaknesses, an insatiable libido, and
an unquenchable thirst, and an unshakable desire not to be where he was. He had created that immortal refuge from war:
“the Swamp”. Hawkeye had flesh
and blood and real character. And isn’t
that the essence of a great actor – creating someone so real out of someone
imagined.)
At their front door the next morning I would meet George,
together with his daughter Christine, and his wife.
For now, I relaxed in my tent, eating the ham and cheese I had
bought in Kalamata. Chickens ran loose around
the farm. I heard sheep in the garage. A fat rabbit shared my food and kept me company
just outside my tent. At dusk, George came out
to the edge of the field. He smiled, waved and
said with enthusiasm, "Good night!" I
thought my presence provided the family with a novelty because he reappeared a few minutes
later with his son and daughter. He gave me
some bread and four apples that he identified by their Greek name. They looked and tasted like Golden Delicious
apples. How strange and wonderful it was to
now have the bread that I could not find and the apples that I could not afford to buy in
Kalamata.
George smiled again and said, "Good night!"
I was lucky to have bread. I
had discovered that bread bins in stores and bakeries were often empty by noon. I had ham, cheese, apples and peanut butter that I
had diluted with added butter. And now I had
apples. And I still had the small jar of
mustard that Dianne had given me in Agincourt, way back in May. (She was right – mustard would keep a long
time.) I pigged out on three open-face tomato,
cheese, ham and mustard sandwiches followed by peanut butter.
I had learned to use my plastic basin when called by nature to do
so. What to do?
You gotta do what you gotta do, right?
I dumped the aromatic contents by a row of trees. I looked up to a clear sky that was filled with
stars. Looking up to the heavens, I imagined Greek astrologers of old. Were they now looking down on me for what I had
just done?
I borrowed some batteries from my tape recorder and used my tiny
flashlight to write a letter to Peter Gzowski who
was the much-loved host of the CBC's daily national call-in broadcast, Morningside. I
was seeing so many wondrous things, albeit in cliché Europe, and meeting so many
fantastic people that I still believed there might be some interest in some calls from the
road for Morningside listeners across Canada. I reasoned this because I had met several people on
this trip that were from across Canada and were interested.
(But I
would never get a reply to this letter nor any other that I subsequently wrote to the
CBC.)
In the morning it was foggy and cold. I heard a man singing in the distance. I heard church bells.
My hosts met me at their front door, as I mentioned, and gave me a small cup
of strong coffee. In my viewfinder, I framed
them with the leafy greenery near their front door. Click. My
flash surprised them because they burst out laughing after I took the shot. Perhaps they were not use to photography –
film was expensive here (about $25.00 for 1 roll of 36 exposure print film). I thanked them and they waved heartily as Melawend
and I rode away.
The road rose up again into low mountains. About 25 miles further on, I came upon a pull-off
where there was a splendid view of a low conical mountain with wispy clouds feathering its
shoulder. What made this sight dramatic was
the foreground. There was a unique structure
anchored to the coarse gravel. I had seen many
of these in Greece. They looked like simple
miniature one room churches of various shapes and sizes, made of steel and mounted on
stilts that were imbedded in the ground at the side of the road. There were crosses atop the gable roofs. Inside there were usually pictures of Christ, some
Apostles, incense burners, candles and spent matches.
Some had pictures of people. This
particular one had a little metal box presumably for monetary offerings. It had been locked but the lock had been pried off. I was told later that these were the sites of auto
accidents where people had been killed. I
imagined that somewhere, someone must have had a brisk business making these crude
memorials.
At Korinthos, we rode
on a bridge high over the Corinth Canal, the deep, steep-walled trench that was cut
through the Isthmus of Corinth in 1893, ending an arduous portage that went back to the
time of ancient mariners. Traffic around the
bridge was just too busy for me to stop and get a photograph. As a deterrent to future revolts between rival
Greek city-states, the Romans had come to Corinth, killed its male population and sold its
women and children into slavery.
I found a general store further on and bought cookies, bottled
water, an apple muffin and round loaf of bread. I
found a stony pull-off on the coast road and had a feast.
As I munched and gulped, I looked out over sea and saw two fleets: one of
islands and the other of commercial ships that were heading to and from the port of
Piraeus.
I braced myself, for I was about to enter the bustling capital of
Greece.
With my stomach full and my courage summoned, I mounted Melawend. We rode through increasingly industrialized areas. This was the industrial heartland of Greece –
50 percent of the country’s industries clung to the outskirts of the capital.
In the mid-afternoon, I spotted a campground about eight miles
west of Athens. This was Camping Dafni, named
after a nearby monastery. It was terraced and
rocky with pine trees that were laden with cones. The
nearby hills seemed barren. Just like Camping
Roma, you heard the traffic of the main road but only in the front of the camp. I went into the office and met the manager. He was short and bald and he reminded me of several
Italian Americans I had met in my time. It was
about $10.00 per night to camp here. He was
not enthusiastic about my staying for free, but he gave me one night.
I set up on one of the terraces.
There were five caravans and only four other tenters here. The terraces went high up the side of a treed hill. There seemed to be room for a few hundred tenters
and maybe a hundred caravans.
(The brochure on Attica campgrounds that I picked up later said
that Camping Dafni had 310 sites, room for 600 people and was managed by Georgios
Karabateas, but from his reluctant signature in my Odyssey Book later – you will
understand his reason soon – I could not tell if the man I had met was, in fact, Mr.
Karabateas.)
I saw a good-looking German couple coming out of a large
luxurious caravan near my site. As in
Kiparissa, I saw the uninhibited nature of northern Europeans as they walked over to the
showers, wearing only small towels. I looked
at the girl and felt my masculinity rising. I
said to myself, What was my crime that I have to be
alone so much? I took a cerebral cold
shower and retired to my tent to rest.
The next morning, it was gray and mild. I packed up for my trip into Athens. As this would be my first entry into a city, I
psyched myself up. I intended to follow the
busses into Athens, just as I had in Rome. But
something happened. In a flash, it altered the
future of my journey. On our way down the
curved paved lane, three stray dogs that had been sitting by the lane got it in their
minds to chase us. No problem, just give Melawend a bit of throttle. But in looking at the dogs, I did not notice the
gravel on the lane. The rear wheel slid under
and Melawend slid off the lane and slammed into some trees behind the showers. Her rear wheel hit a tree. We were spun violently around until we hit another
tree that stopped Melawend. I was thrown up
and off Melawend, landing several feet away with the grace of a Gooney bird of Midway
Island.
I lay on the ground with a burning sensation in my groin. I managed to get up and brush myself off. I lifted Melawend up and leaned her against a tree. Her rocker panel was dented, the right turn signal
housing was cracked and the brake handle was now floppy.
Otherwise, she was alright. The
three dogs sat nearby, wagging their tails.
Though there were people in camp, no one came to see if I was
okay. I began to walk Melawend back to the
lane when I realized that something was terribly wrong.
The pain became intense and I could hardly walk. I knew that the nature of my injury made my walk
seem comical, but I didn’t give a damn what I looked like. It was all I could do make it over to the office
and hoist Melawend onto her center stand. I knew I had been injured. I had to see a doctor, an expense I could ill
afford.
(I was soon
to learn a valuable lesson about pain.)
I limped over to the office and told the manager about the
accident and then I asked if I could stay for four or five days. He seemed nervous, possibly worried that I would
sue.
"I am not the director," he said. "You are welcome to stay one night but tonight
you must make registration.”
I sat in the office for a time.
I called the embassy and was connected with a very kind woman who talked
with me in the friendly and helpful way of Franca Mazzolani in Rome. This was Marie Economou. She said the embassy had already made appointments
for me with officials of Athens, but she was most understanding about postponing them when
I told her of the accident. She said they had
a doctor on staff.
Thank God! Now if only I can get there.
“The unforeseen does not exist.”
That was what Phileas Fogg had said in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. And to that I would have said,
“Bullshit!” Since that slippery ride
into Dartmouth, back in Canada, the feeling that something painful was going to happen had
often haunted me. The unforeseen did exist – especially if you aided it by
imagining it! But how could you have prepared
for something like this?
I had to leave Melawend behind.
I staggered out to the bus stop and rode to the main terminal. I could hardly step out of the bus. No taxis stopped at the station. A man pointed over to a busy intersection where
cabs congregated. I hailed about 15 taxis
before I found a driver that spoke English. He
had been a seaman for over 20 years and had visited 60 countries, including Canada.
He got me to the embassy and I just about crawled inside. Finally, I met Dr. Lichtenfeld.
He was a kind German man, about 50, bald, had rounded features and wore
glasses. He told me of the Greek hospital
system: the prices were high for the private system, but there was a low per diem rate
(about $15) for the state system.
"Unless you need a nurse, you are better off to stay at the
Hilton for fifty to sixty dollars per day."
I told him about my journey.
“You would make quite an endorsement for Honda,” he
said.
I had torn a groin muscle, but it was not torn through.
"Pain is your friend, " Dr. Lichtenfeld said as he
prodded me, summoning my newfound companion. "It
tells you what you can do and what you can't."
He gave me 20 - 222's for the pain.
He told me of his work with lepers, who had no nerves – they could feel
no pain.
“Rats would eat their flesh when they slept…some would
loose hands, feet, even legs.”
So I was lucky to have this new friend. But I was dismayed to learn that this friend would
likely be around for a few months. I would see
Dr. Lichtenfeld at the embassy when the friend seemed to get out of hand. He gave me injections for the road ahead including
a large gamma globulin shot in the rear that made me dizzy.
(This was for hepatitis and was good for six months). He told me how the body reacts to antibodies and
how they can often do more harm than good. He
gave me advice on travelling in the tropics. He
gave me some diarrhea pills that he said were more effective than Pepto Bismol.
"The body takes of itself," he said. Even with cholera, the body's antibodies compete
for the food that you eat. If the cholera
wins, you're in serious trouble. If your germs
will out-eat the cholera, the cholera will starve and die.
If you take antibiotics, they can destroy the cholera – or your own
antibodies. But this is very rare."
He was glad that I took the needle so well.
"I had a 300-pound RCMP officer who nearly fainted on me
when I gave him a shot," he said.
I moved around the embassy like a crippled old man. A girl named Ruby typed a letter of recommendation
for me to take to the Egyptian embassy to help smooth my request for a visa. I learned that our Ambassador to Greece wanted to
see me tomorrow.
At the entrance to the embassy, a guard wrote a note for me to
give to a cabby to take me back to Camping Dafni. I
struggled gamely to the corner but no taxi driver was willing to take me. At 3:00 p.m., the embassy closed and I saw Ruby
walking toward the bus stop. She hailed a cab
that took me to the bus depot. I didn't have
the right change for the bus. A friendly
German man who was about to board took my 100-drachma note and stopped passengers before
they boarded to make change for me.
It rained that night in camp.
The next morning, I walked to the reception office. My leg felt better but not enough to risk venturing
back into the city. I called and cancelled my
appointment with the Ambassador. I needed to
rest, to keep off my feet. I was given a new
appointment with the Ambassador and they felt they could also take care of my municipal
appointments as well.
It was just a well because it rained off and on all day. I packed up a parcel to go back to Canada. The manager, who I now called Bill, seemed anxious
for me to leave, though he would always greet me, "How are you, my friend?" He said he had orders to close up the camp
tomorrow. But the widow across from me said
she was leaving soon but did not know when.
In pouring rain, I waited for buses to take me to a branch office
of the OTE (the Hellenic Telecommunication Company) so I could make a phone call. Rain
was forecast for the next several days – a great time to have to move, eh? I slept uneasily as it was difficult to roll over:
my right leg felt like hammered lead. I was
stiff in my left side and neck. I wrote notes
in the tent in the light from two candles and used Melawend's platform for a desk. I thanked God I was alive and could dream and work
to make dreams come true – and I was thankful for all the help I had been getting
with this dream. But I also wished that I had
a 1987 Playboy desk calendar. That part of me
felt just fine.
The next morning, I rode painfully into Athens. On the bus there
were young guys in black leather jackets and girls in tight jeans and bright-colored
sweaters. They had mostly dark hair, brown eyes and the clear olive-coloured complexions
that was typical of Greeks. A few guys were
clowning and some girls were giggling and I wished I’d had to nerve to talk with
them. I looked out the rain-spattered windows. Under a lead sky, I saw men with moustaches and
combed-back black hair. I saw salvage yards
littered with wrought iron doors and gates, planks, thin bricks for walls, window frames,
and signs in big squared Greek letters, painted mostly red on light backgrounds. In another yard, I saw rusting cars parked tightly
together, looking like so many old people sitting grimly in an institution, waiting for
someone to do something useful and fun with them.
In Madrid, I had sent a letter home requesting that supplies,
including spare tires and motorcycle parts, be sent to me in Athens. The supplies had not arrived. I made calls to Canada. They would be coming as soon as possible.
By the way he drove bus 880, on my return to Camping Dafni, I was
sure that the driver’s dream was to race the first bus at the Indy 500.
My intentions in Athens were primarily to get out of it. I would take in the Parthenon, of course, but
Athens was to be my springboard to the Middle East and to Africa. I had wanted to take a ferry to Israel and ride the
east end of the Mediterranean to Egypt but I felt thwarted.
“If they see an Israeli entry stamp in your passport, they
will not let you enter Egypt.”
That is what a traveler who had just come from Israel had told
me. He was referring to Egyptian Customs at
the border with Israel. This was not new to
me. In Canada, it was suggested that I get two
Canadian passports. After visiting Israel, I
was to backtrack and use the other passport to enter Egypt from Greece. But I thought there must be a more legitimate way
to do it. After all, I was on a mission of
peace and did not want get myself arrested for any border-crossing shenanigans – not
good for my diplomatic résumé, either.
But that was the paradox: the best place to promote peace was in
a place of war, or to at least visit a war-torn area and report on it to others who
enjoyed peace and perhaps took it for granted. I
toyed with the idea of getting a second passport here in Athens, but my cautious side won
out and I very reluctantly decided to give up going to Israel. I told myself,
I will go to Israel, someday.
While I was dealing with this, I wandered the streets of Athens,
looking for supplies. On Athinas Street were
there were many small shops that were crammed with every imaginable bit of hardware, a lot
of it carried out to the sidewalk in front and displayed so that you had one contiguous
row of everything from air pumps to lawn rakes. I
bought a bread knife. I also bought two
crucifixes at a religious artifacts store, one to carry and one to put up in the tent. Since the accident in England, I had increasingly
come to believe that Someone truly was with me.
Melawend and I passed a small grocery store that had garlic hanging
from string and pastry shops with clear plastic bags filled with baked goods.
I went to an OTE office and called Dad. As I was waiting for the call to be put through, I
reviewed my mini-portfolio of 5-inch by 7-inch photographs.
A pretty hazel-eyed Polish girl sitting next to me leaned over, with her
face just inches from mine.
“Beautiful!” she said.
“You give me one?”
I was saved when my name was called.
“How are you, son?”
It was great just to hear Dad’s voice.
I finally kept my appointment and met our Ambassador to Greece,
Mr. Andrè Couvrette, a distinguished middle-aged man dressed in a gray three-piece suit.
We shook hands and he signed the Odyssey Book. He
was concerned about my travels through Sudan.
"Your only way through the South may be to fly from Khartoum
to Nairobi."
While I was at the
embassy, I was given some reading material – a copy of the September 8th
issue of Time.
Perhaps it was just coincidence that its cover story was about Honda. I took it back to Camping Dafni, made a sandwich,
and turned to the article. The more I read about Honda and the "Honda Way", the
more fascinated I became, and more intimidated.
Honda Motor Company, which Soichiro Honda started with 20
employees in 1948, was now the largest Japanese firm launched since the end of World War
II. By 1960, it was the world's leading
motorcycle and motorscooter manufacturer – and it still retained that position. It was Japan's biggest engine-maker. The company
flourished in the 1970s when OPEC quadrupled the price of oil and the demand for small
cars skyrocketed. Honda now had 58 assembly
plants in 32 countries. The company had
recently moved into its new 16-storey headquarters building across from Akasaka Palace in
Tokyo. But the two top executives –
Chairman Noboru Okamura and President Tadashi Kume, did not have the luxurious offices one
might expect – they shared a "spacious carpeted room" with 31 other senior
executives, with "not a partition in sight."
All 1,300 employees at Honda HQ shared the same cafeteria – there were
no executive dining rooms. It was a company
that did not seem to recognize individualism. I
remembered learning in school that conformity was the general rule in Japan. So I wondered, Why would they even want to meet someone like me?
But apparently Honda differed from other Japanese companies by
its openness. At its headquarters – where
I planned to go – it had a glitzy showcase lobby (what I would discover as their
"Welcome Plaza"). Visitors off the
street could come in and paw new cars and motorcycles in an entertaining and informative
atmosphere that included a 12-panel movie screen. Even
from the top, it seemed Honda did have a desire to reach out and welcome its customers. (Perhaps even a scooter-riding ambassador in blue
jeans?)
In a tent on a terrace above me, there was a young couple from
Melbourne, Australia. She was about 5'1",
and had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smooth tanned complexion. She had a nice smile and a soft voice (I could hear
the couple talking but was not so close that I could understand what they said). I met them later.
They had been travelling in Europe for two years and had worked briefly in
England. They had saved for this trip and were
living on the cheap. They planned to be back
in Australia in about a year, after going to Egypt and India. These were the first of many Aussies that I would
meet who would tell me about long-term trips they were taking.
“It’s really expected that you will lash out at least
once for a year and travel,” a girl from Sydney would tell me. “It’s because we are so removed from the
rest of the world that it is so expensive to travel outside of Asia.”
I called Iphigenia, a penfriend of three years. She too had a nice energetic voice. Indeed, I learned that she had married and become
pregnant since my last letter several months ago! She
told me that she was lying down all the time. She
had been staying with her aunt for the last two and a half months, and would be until she
had the baby. She told me of the time she and
her husband went picnicking in the mountains and their car broke down.
When I went over to her aunt's apartment and met her, she was
lying on a couch. Work had taken her husband
away briefly to another city in Greece. Her
graying aunt served us dinner of peas, beans, white cream cheese, boiled egg, sardines,
white wine and cookies and Greek tea. I ate
while she talked. She reminded me of a girl
who, as soon as she learned she was pregnant, took to her couch and expected to be waited
on hand and foot for the duration.
It was late in the afternoon when I got on a bus to and headed
back to camp. About half way through the city,
the bus was stopped by a group of shouting protesters who were tying up traffic with their
march. I jumped out and tried to record them
but realized later that the pause button had been on.
(I had not learned my lesson from the
cookoo clocks in the Black Forest!). A
young guy in the noisy crowd said that the protest was about the government closing up a
factory.
I was standing in front of a small cinema and on impulse, I
decided to go in – I just wanted to see a movie, any movie. I did not even look at a movie poster, marquee or
studio card. A man in line said he was a
seaman and had been to Canada. A 60ish
witchy-looking woman was in the ticket booth. After
I paid her the 250 drachmas for admission, she said, "Present, please.” I didn't
know what the hell she meant. I gave her 20
drachmas more and that seemed to satisfy her. I
went into one of the small theatres where the floor swooped down under the few rows of
seats and up to the small screen. I was in the
company of perhaps 50 men of various ages. Some
men wore business suits but most of the audience looked like sailors who were on leave. They were wearing battered jackets and dull rumpled
clothes.
I had not known what kind of theatre this was.
*****************
WARNING TO PARENTS AND MINORS:
The following paragraphs are sexually explicit.
On the screen there was a tall, dark-haired stud with an
extraordinarily long dick and he was busy putting it into several women. In once scene, he was with three beautiful girls. He had them go on their hands and knees by a
fireplace and show their asses to him (even Shakespeare used the word “arse” in Romeo and Juliet).
He chose a busty shorthaired Caucasian girl and entered her from behind. He took a Negro girl missionary style, and then the
third girl sat on top of him. In another
scene, a woman was smiling as her face was torpedoed with semen. There were numerous scenes of women performing oral
sex on him, and he on them, and close-ups of him penetrating women. When one woman was nearing climax, he rolled her
onto her side, thrust his himself into her and pumped like a revved-up internal combustion
engine. It was as intimidating as it was
titillating.
There was no plot and not much variation except that you
sometimes saw women doing each other, or alone, using dildos. Mostly it was very graphic pumping, licking and
sucking. No condom was used. There were Greek subtitles to dialogue that I also
did not understand, but who cared? My
fellow patrons were silent and rather stern-faced and kept their eyes glued to the screen.
I left the theatre feeling that I had, to some extent, comprmised
my own morality. But I also took from it
something good – in the sense of one man and one woman in an exclusive and enduring
passionate relationship – a reminder of what I was missing, and looking for.
(Okay, back to PG
rating…)
*****************
Back in Camp, virtually everyone had left. A couple across from me was setting up a tent by
car lights. It was cold in camp. You heard the echoes of dogs barking. One of the three stray dogs involved in the
accident walked slowly up the lane with its head hung down almost to the ground. I patted the dog and it responded by relaxing. It seemed that dogs got lonely too. Bill had said it was common for pets to be
abandoned.
Maria Economou was diligent in trying to arrange meetings for me
with someone at City Hall. She got me through
to the secretary to the mayor. This was an
awkward time to see the mayor of Athens in part because he had been defeated in a recent
election. The new one was not to assume power
for two months. I was sent over to the
headquarters Greek National Tourist Organization (GNTO) and met the Director. He was a stoical man seemed puzzled by my presence.
“Cannot our regional office in your area handle your
request?”
I did not feel optimistic about asking for any form of
sponsorship here. I was told that their
director in Toronto would be notified of my request for information. The concept of an information exchange was lost here. Someone suggested that I be included in upcoming
“familiarization tours” of the kind that are provided to travel agents.
At City Hall, the mayor's assistant accepted my papers.
When I left City Hall, it was raining. I stopped at an OTE branch on the way back from
Athens and learned from Mike Carroll at Peace Bridge Brokerage that the shipment had not
been sent out – the motorcycle parts I had ordered by phone from Madrid six weeks
earlier had not come in. But I did get good
news from Lynda Sykes, Manager of Tourism for the Greater Fort Erie Chamber of Commerce.
“We have received tons
of materials from the UK, and Scandinavia...you should see the posters from
Switzerland!” she said. “The
shipment from Cannes came first-class.”
Lynda was enjoying
the packing up of materials about our area and sending them off to those places.
I was still having difficulty walking but my groin was on the
mend. I was, as Hemingway put it, “happy
in feeling the pain lessen.” I felt that
my “friend” had already overstayed his welcome.
(This was
something I was to learn about myself as someone’s new friend. It would become particularly evident with future
American hosts when I would feel estrangement from having stayed with them too long. I guess I became something of a pain to them, as
you will see…)
I learned that the Adriatica Line had a ferry that sailed to
Egypt every ten days. I had time to make
arrangements: get my visa, get $300 together, get supplies, request my shipment be
forwarded to Cairo, get film ($20 per roll). The
biggest challenge is that I would have to try to get a pass from Adriatica, worth about
$180. ($140 for me and $40 for Melawend.)
I looked at my map of the world and realized just how much world
there was ahead of me. I had zigzagged through
Britain, Scandinavia and Europe. I estimated
that if that line were straightened, I would have covered the distance from London to
Beijing – but I was still in Europe.
I needed more time to heal. I
felt now that Jimmy Bedford was right when he had suggested that it might take me a bit
longer to get back than expected. So I set my
sights on returning in the autumn of 1987. Besides,
I was enjoying all this diplomacy and article writing and the taking of photographs. I was even getting out of my shell and meeting
people. I was in no hurry to get back.
And I wasn’t
helping the healing matters any either. I
hated being restricted in my movements so I did my best to evade my friend, or at least
ignore him. On one trek, I walked up the many
wide steps to the summit of Lycabettus Hill and took in my first view of the Acropolis and
of the congested city that sprawled around its base. I
took these photos from the white Byzantine church on the summit – St. Georgios. But I would pay for these excursions with intense
nightly visits from my friend.
Bill was curiously absent when I packed up on November 7th
and moved out of Camping Dafni. I rode out to
Voula, on the southeast outskirts of Athens, and found Camping Voulas on the coast. My GNTO guide said that it had room for 297 people
in 99 sites (43 tents, 56 caravans) and it was open all year.
Great!
The place was nearly deserted.
It was flat with small leafy trees. I
chose a site near the washrooms. Many sites
had a leafy hedge for a border and enough room for a tent and a small car or a scooter. About five sites away, my nearest neighbour was a
40ish, short, busty, big-assed German woman who wore sweat pants, a sweatshirt and a
bonnet. She was always jabbering to herself
and to anyone who crossed her path. She had a
small tent at the corner of the lane and it looked like she had been there for some time,
alone. Rocks and branches wer piled around the
edges of her tent as if to hold it down.
I soon discovered that the camp was near the flight paths of
Athens International Airport. I thought, Oh well, I won’t be here long anyway.
(Wrong!)
I settled in. The
next morning, I finally did some laundry, using the camp’s washing machine. There was a couple from Windsor, Ontario nearby and
they were listening to Casey Kasem's Top 40 Countdown on a radio. When I heard this, I felt that I was still very
much in the Western world. It was comforting,
but also frustrating because I was supposed to be on a journey around the world.
