Flashes of Greece

            Weeks later, my memories of Greece are a blur of turquoise waters, blazing sun, and the smell of gyros wafting from street vendors. We left for Rhodes, Greece—the eastern-most island of the country, just a few miles of ocean away from Turkey—a few days after our program trip to Naples. After having spent so long in the dreary grey cloud of Bologna, we were desperate for some sunshine and we found it. Maybe a little too much of it.

            While I think of my other trips in the form of a timeline (one tourist attraction to the next), Greece is best thought of in moments. I think of our beautiful terrace in the apartment we rented, right in the center of Old Town. It was on that terrace that, on the first day, I woke up before everyone else and spent the first hours of daybreak looking out across the rooftops of what used to be the homes of the Knights Templar. These led down to the blue waters, across which were the hazy forms of other islands and, most exciting of all, Turkey. It was on that terrace that I also, shamefully, got so sunburned (along with Lily, Krystal and Sami) that I resembled a nice pink lobster.

            When I think about Greece I think about the food. Oh, the food. We woke up every morning and went to the center of town to get frozen yogurt with strawberries and kiwi. We ate our weight in gyros (chicken or lamb and beef with onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, French fries and tzatziki sauce wrapped up in freshly-made pita bread). Writing about this now is making me incredibly hungry.

            I think about the hours we spent late at night, taking advantage of the wifi and watching Say Yes to the Dress with Krystal’s iPad and Netflix. For days we debated the pros and cons of certain wedding dress designs and the ridiculousness of reality television shows…all the while obsessively pressing the next button.

            I remember being able to wear shorts and flip flops and best of all, tank tops. I remember the incredible feeling of getting to wear a sundress as a light breeze flitted through the ancient streets of Rhodes.

            I remember laughing incredulously the first night we got there. I laughed at the taxi drivers who struggled to communicate with us in Italian and English as we struggled in return, with our very limited knowledge of the Greek language. I laughed, completely shocked, when we left Old Town to go into New Town in search of a gyro stand that was open late and we realized that the division between and Old Town and New Town was not like in the rest of Europe, in which the city center is usually the historical center. No, Old Town was, indeed, a completely separate entity from New Town—divided by its original medieval walls, a bridge, and a moat. I laughed as the men who stood outside of the touristy restaurants, yelled to us and called us “sexy ladies”  and invited us to eat at their venue (which is obviously the best way to make people want to eat at your establishment).

            I love to think of the history of Rhodes—a beautiful combination of classical ancient Greece, the medieval ages, steeped in the tradition of the Christianity of the Crusades, Jewish synagogues, Turkish architecture, and beautiful mosques that pierce the skyline. There are little alleyways with cobblestones that have grass growing up between their edges. Doorways are studded with pebbles and seashells, forming a mosaic in front of every household. From there, ancient, wrinkled yaya’s (grandmothers) sit on their wicker chairs and watch as the city strolls by. The shops all open out to these ancient streets, as they must’ve done a thousand years ago, selling their goods and calling out to customers that pass them on the street.

            I have those few pictures that attempted to capture the pristine, turquoise waters that surround the island. The waves rocked gently beneath the gleaming hulls of sailboats and the rusty bottoms of fishing vessels. The water was too cold to swim in, but we walked across the pebbled beaches, stones and shells sticking between our toes, and let the waves lap up onto our ankles. The sunburn on our shoulders and the warmth of the sun still beating down kept us warm, despite the fact that our toes slowly began to go numb.

            I enjoyed the feeling of sleeping in and staying up late. I liked taking part in the cultural experience of Greece’s siesta (that extends from 1 pm to about 6 pm—nice life they have) and napping as the sun was at its highest peak. I liked not rushing from class to class and not worrying about the future. The stress of college has never been further from my mind. Here, the lines between fantasy and reality blurred. Never again will I be twenty-one in my rented apartment in an island in Greece, waking to the sounds of laundry on the clotheslines, snapping in the wind and a man’s voice emerging from a speakerphone as he drives through the city, advertising the fresh strawberries he has in the basket on the back of his moped.

            But most of all, I like to think on the three nights we spent eating at a restaurant called Nireas. After the first night, we knew we had to return…an unlucky bout of rough winds kept our plane leaving on our last day and so we came back to Nireas for a third time, always welcome. I remember studying xenia in high school—the generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home. It is often translated as “guest-friendship.” Theo, the owner and head honcho of Nireas, and his wife and father (Pappou!) were a true testament to this idea of xenia.

            Lily and I had originally scoped out this restaurant because we noticed that the menu included spicy feta cheese as an appetizer. Theo, a man in his 40’s, welcomed us into his restaurant for the first time as if were old friends and gave us a table under low archways and candles. When he took our order, he sat down at our table with us and didn’t just rush us through our food, but was meticulous in helping us chose food we would enjoy or food that was typically Greek. We feasted all three nights. I can’t even remember the amount of food we had: mussels, lamb and crab cakes, grilled vegetables, fried potatoes, Greek salad, prawns stuffed with lobster, olives, bread soaked in oil and then dessert…baklava coated in cinnamon, apple pie topped with fresh cream, chocolate cake so dense that Krystal had to take a break halfway through eating it…all delicious. Theo provided us with free beer each night and free, homemade limoncello and grappa on our other nights.

            But Theo also provided us with conversation. We learned about his life and his sons (studying in America; they speak Italian, Greek and English and are studying to do business and become a doctor). We learned about how he met his wife Constance, a quiet but sarcastic American woman, and convinced her to vacation with him in Paris for a month…and then move to Greece with him. As youngsters, they would sleep in a tent outside on the beach and would be woken by the sun, which signaled the start of a day of fishing in the waters of Rhodes and cooking their catches on the beach. We heard stories from Pappou, Theo’s 90-year old father, who had lived through World War II. He told us about the Italian occupation of the island and how he had been forced to forgo his education in Greek and only learn Italian (hence why we were able to speak with him). He told us about his brother dying in the war and showed us pictures of his mother and her family…and his wife, who had died many years before. We were informed that Pappou had come very close to becoming engaged multiple times as a young man…apparently he had been quite the charmer.

            The restaurant was just so personable and friendly. Other patrons would begin speaking to one another from across the tables and, finally fed up with the distance, would just move their plates over to their neighbor’s table to eat dinner together. Dinner lasted for almost four hours. There, we met a member of Italian parliament and saw an ambassador for the Czech Republic. We were made fun of for our sunburns by Greeks who were eating there and we laughed about it with no worries for the fact that we did indeed look like lobsters.

            By the end of our dinners there, Theo was calling us “his girls” and was trying to set us up with one or both of his sons. He even told us we could work at the restaurant over the summer, if we ever got the chance to come back to Rhodes.

            Hospitality continued onto Italy, where wonderful Paola—a friend of Valeria’s, who stayed with me over Thanksgiving when she was visiting our mutual friend—happened to live in Bergamo. This became very handy when our plane that was cancelled was rescheduled the next day at night, in which we were scheduled to arrive in Rome at midnight. There would be no trains to Bologna at that hour…we would have to sleep in the airport until the next morning. Breaking RyanAir law, we got off early in Bergamo (just outside of Milan), and I called Paola. This angel-of-a-girl picked us up from the airport, drove us to her house, cooked us dinner, helped us figure out train tickets, and then woke up at 5:30 a.m. to drive us back to the train station so that we could get to Milan…and then Bologna…and then our first class of the day at 9:30 a.m.

            I can’t express how much fun I had in Greece. It was a very different experience from any of my other travels thus far and it was truly beautiful. The sunshine, the food, the people…I loved it all. Even if our last forty-eight hours were slightly stressful with the cancellation, rescheduling and delay of our flight, it ended well. It comes back in flashes, sometimes, when I think about the smell of spices at the gyro stand or the burn of sun soaking into my skin. Traveling to Rhodes made me realize, as corny as it sounds, how much of the world there is left for me to explore and how there are places that I must return to someday. There are some places that take root in your heart, calling you back even years later to explore it once more. Rhodes, I know, is one of those places. My home in Gaeta is also one of those places…and it called me back just this past weekend, where I spent a few, precious days with old friends, walking down the halls of my old elementary school. That story, unfortunately, will have to wait. It’s much too late at night and I’m getting up early tomorrow to leave for Barcelona.  So many more adventures to come! And just one more month before I go home to Virginia Beach. I’m not sure how this has all gone by so fast, but I’m wishing that I had just a few more weeks, a few more days of sunshine, if only to return again to Rhodes, to hear Theo yell out “my girls!” and welcome us back under those old archways and talk once more about Greek culture and the freshness of the olives that came in just this morning from his neighbor’s farm.