Our story
Yrs trly arrives at 1:30am on a strange island with a strange language.
He dreads the ordeal of several hours climb on a cold windy night, up
to
the only town likely to have accomodations at this time of night in
winter, for winter is a time of hibernation on a major tourist island.
He is spared the ordeal when a fellow passenger asks "Do you need a
room? My family owns a hotel etc."
Is the bear catholic? Does a pope
poop in the woods? Her price is cheap. To her relief and mine,
her car starts.
Strange Land
I wake the next
noon or so in a nice enough motel in a land that looks
remarkably like the Mojave desert, only with more and prettier houses,
few of them nearby. No sign of my benefactor, Katya, to whom I
had
given 2
nights rent, leaving me with €5 and not a clue where to find an ATM on
Sunday. Or
a store for that matter.
By this time,
I have decided that Katya is definitely a
bullshitter and possibly a nut case, which just means that she
bullshits
herself too. But she has delivered the cheap digs, though I cant rule
out
the possiblity she is faking it with somebody else's property, unoccupied for the winter.
Not my problem. My problem: find money and a store to buy food.
Later: I still think
Katya is nuts, but she did show up
later, sweep the dirt off my balcony, try real hard to persuade me to rent a
car, foist (successfully) a glass of her father's home-made olive oil
on me in case I
cook, offer me a cup of coffee, which she then charged me €2 for... The
nut case is harmless, and goodness knows she has been helpful.
She even claims to have rooms in the main town, Firá,
which she'll rent me at the same cheap rate.
Destination:
the largest
cluster of buildings I can see from my balcony.
Mission:
food, and an ATM to pay for it.
My side road tees into a larger road, where signs tell me that to the
left my destination is Emporio,
the smaller beach town to the right is Perissa, and behind
me is Perivolos
beach.
So I hope to be shopping in Emporio!
Y'know what? The name bodes well.
There is a supermarket open on the near skirts of town. Now I just
need
an
ATM.
Further into town, a sign says Post Office and points up a side street.
In some countries post offices have ATMs, so I take the side street.
The (closed on Sunday)
P.O. has no ATM.
I push on uphill and stumble into wonderland.
Palia Poli (Old Town)
Like Adriatic
towns, Aegean ones have an ancient city at their heart. There the
similarity ends. What a lovingly, expressively human place.
I wonder
whether the modernist architect Gaudi
ever visited the Aegean.
Gaudi was dedicated
to humanizing the industrial architecture of the twentieth century. One
of his principles was no
straight lines. Another was unexpected detail,
for beauty or surprise alone, just to express human quirkiness.
This stuff enchants me. Before I am done with Greece, you may get very
tired of these
kinds of images. If so, you are free to skip them. I am a complete
sucker for this stuff.
Hmm... ever see the movie The Five Thousand Fingers Of Doctor
T?
When I finally left the old town, there was my ATM on the very corner
where I emerged on to the main street. The staff back at the
supermarket
found a
clerk who spoke enough english to be very helpful, though I had
asked for no such thing, and was prepared to pay the price of my
linguistic
ignorance.
Next Day: Perivolos Beach and Perissa
My guidebook talks about the black sand beaches of eastern Santorini as
if the remarkable thing is that they
are black. This is the Mediterranean,
people! The remarkable thing is that they are sand. The
first real sand beach I have seen in the Med. (There are supposed to be
some in Montenegro between Budva and Sv. Stefan)
From all the boarded up bars and accomodations, this must be a jumping
place in summer. In winter it is a ghost town worthy of its look-a-like
the Mojave.
Perissa does have a single open business: a 24-hour (and apparently
365-day) bakery with a friendly
english-speaking owner, some sinfully huge sugar donuts, and what
appears to be olive bread. A french bread with an olive green tint to
the inside, and a hint of olive flavor. Tasty stuff.
Excellent for dipping in
Katya's daddy's home made oil.
Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Bulf