Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Greece 2000


I transcribed my journal entry last night from my trip to the Greek islands, in May 2000. I went with my friend Liz and we had a fabulous time visiting Mykonos, Naxos, Santorini and Crete, as well as Delphi on the Greek mainland. It was an amazing vacation, made all the more spectacular because I was at a pivotal time in my life -- I'd just accepted the new job that would take me from Florida to New York City. In fact, I had to call my boss from Mykonos to resign my old position!

Unfortunately, this was also the trip where, on our next-to-last day, a taxi driver drove away with my bag in the trunk of his car, never to be seen again. So I lost all my clothing, my camera, my pictures and my souvenirs. Fortunately, I had my passport, cash and plane ticket in a money belt on my body, and I flew home the next day completely empty-handed except for a bag containing three jars of Greek honey that I bought for some friends.

Liz later mailed me copies of all her photos, which is the only reason I remember anything at all. To date, losing that bag remains my most severe travel mishap!

Liz's photo above shows me on Santorini. I believe it was the day we hiked to the ruins of the ancient city of Fira, overlooking the Aegean Sea and the modern towns below. It must have been windy up there -- I'm holding onto my hat!


True to form, I did manage to save my favorite form of ephemera, my beer labels. (I think I had them tucked into our Lonely Planet guidebook when my bag went missing, and I was reading the book at the time, so they survived too.)


Anyway, when I got back to Florida I wrote a marathon journal entry, in which I recorded all the details of the trip -- the restaurants where we ate, the bars we visited, our night disco-ing with Norwegian visitors Roland and Kristina on Naxos, and our night disco-ing with Australians Troy and Andrew in Hania, Crete. Not to mention my night making out with adorable German florist Dirk on a dance floor in Mykonos. It was a crazy time!


We also hiked the Samaria Gorge in Crete, a 10-mile trek through pine forests and meadows studded with wild thyme. On Mykonos we wandered whitewashed streets draped with bougainvillea, and saw pink pelicans and canvas windmills. On Naxos, we visited a pottery studio and were lured by a deceptively friendly older couple into their home -- ultimately, it turned out, so they could sell us embroidery. (Liz bought a few items to be nice, as I recall.) On Crete we stayed in an old house built by the Venetians 800 years earlier -- at least, according to the landlady.

I'm so glad I managed to write down the details of that journey -- especially since the travel journal I kept during the trip went missing with the rest of my bag. (I took solace in the fact that my handwriting is so spidery, no Greek person was likely to be able to read about my escapade with Dirk.) It was great to relive those memories last night!

11 comments:

  1. Even after seventeen years your fling with Dirk could still come out into the open. I can see it now - the front page of "The Sun" - LONDON LIBRARIAN HOOKED UP WITH GERMAN PORNSTAR.

    I first went to Greece in 1979 - sleeping on beaches, skinny dipping in remote bays, dancing like a dervish, walking along rocky hill paths past baying donkeys and remote olive groves. Your blogpost reminds me I should also blog about my Grecian days of yore.

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  2. How young we were in 2000. And yet it seems like yesterday.

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  3. Dang. I already had four children in 2000. I certainly was not skinny dipping or disco dancing in Greece. Although to be honest, once in a while I was doing both of those things in Mexico.

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  4. You'll never regret doing a detailed journal of your trip. I wish I had done more journal writing with my students.

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  5. My greatest travel fear is losing my camera. That is the one thing I always keep with me. It's wonderful that you wrote down your memories as soon as you got home so that you wouldn't lose those too. I was just wrapping up my work in Chicago in 2000 and I'm happy to say I did my share of dancing in night clubs while I was working there.

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  6. Sounds like it was quite a wonderful journey, except for losing your bag in the taxi. It's really grand that you can remember the details and write them all down.

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  7. As I read your post and the comments following it, I realized that my life . . . which I had thought had been exciting . . . is coming up as pretty dull and bland!

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  8. Oh, lordy, I am right there with you when as you stand there, watching that taxi vanish into the horizon with your bag in the trunk. I get a cold sweat: that's my travel nightmare, but so far I've been lucky and the worst taxi calamity I've had on the road involved a very late night cab ride in 1995 to the airport in Sao Paulo, alone, and it dawning on me that I had no way of knowing if this guy would actually take me to the airport or to a dark alley to kill me because I'd heard that you can get killed in Sao Paulo for a Timex watch and under my turtleneck sweater I was wearing a diamond necklace I was smuggling out of Brazil. Looking back, that's the dumbest thing I've ever done.

    P.S. If "young" is under 30, I was not young in 2000. I wasn't all that young in 1995, either, and should have known better.

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  9. once agin I wish I had traveled when I was younger, but my life would have been very different. in 2000 I already had grandkids!

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  10. Hah! In 2000 we had two teens in the house and I was about to go back to work part time after being a stay at home mom for 17 years . . . but in university I was big on dancing and got to do plenty of it.

    I can imagine your dismay when the taxi drove off! What a good thing you had a young and retentive memory so you could reproduce the details for posterity!

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  11. What a wonderful story...Is this other Liz from your time in Morocco?

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