I more or less consistently subscribe to the belief that it is pointless to look forward to something 'too much'. Such an all consuming desire for things imminent, and the calender watching it entails, can only limit your ability to live in the reality of the present. Nevertheless, I equally consistently find myself counting the days and searching desperately for ways to speed up the passage of time in the pre-summer months.
Maybe it's because I'm a TEFL teacher and that by this time, I am almost convinced that half the words in the English language mean the same thing in the madness of continually approximating meaning through the twin beacons 'good' and 'bad'.
But I had an extra special reason to be restless in the run up to Alonissos, 2007. From late May on it rained almost relentlessly here in Germany such that by mid-July I had begun to suspect that the April heatwave was actually our summer, precocious though it was, and that what we were now experiencing was an equally precocious Autumn. In fact, so pervasive was this sensation that I recall firing off an email to Dave and Gerry, nervously inquiring whether it was 'nice and warm' over there.
In retrospect, as we look back at a summer when Greece was plagued by heatwaves, water shortages and devastating forest fires, this behaviour seems a little neurotic. But in my defence, I would say this: it is difficult to believe sometimes when you are lazing on a quiet island beach in late afternoon, where there is not a breath of wind and the sky above your head melts from deep blue through tourquoise to the fiery red hues of the setting sun, it is difficult to believe in such an environment that the heavy leaden skies of northern Europe could ever exist. The vibrant, heavenly light of the Aegean reveals a very different world.
But finally the day of departure came, and with a somewhat teary goodbye, I left my wife in rainy Marburg and headed south.
The journey from the Eleftheros Venizelos airport to Alonissos can only be described as smooth. After all, I had had about 12 weeks to prepare and had read and re-read (and printed out) Dave and Gerry's advice about this very journey many times. Sure enough we stopped at the Joe 90 cafe and sure enough our departure after much queueing was barely signalled by our driver -- such are the 'hazards' of travelling in Greece that can infuriate the one time visitor, while thoroughly entertaining those who are possessed of a hard won familiarity with the culture.
I should also point out that the trip itself was a pleasure. Even though I was tired from a night flight on which I snatched all of 30 minutes sleep, I found ample energy to marvel at densely forested mountains, (makari na zoun akoma!), lakes and craggy limestone outcrops whose smooth pink to yellow rock and dark fissures stood out in stark contrast against the morning sun.
Only one, slightly awkward part of the journey deserves comment: the bus to boat transfer in Agios Konstantinos. I knew that it would be tight: the first bus rolls in to Ag-Kon at 8.45, the exact time that the first ferry leaves for Alonissos. Now this might not be so bad... if the bus dropped you at the ferry terminal and there was the opportunity to buy tickets quickly from a port-side kiosk for example... or the next ferry left within, say, an hour of the first; but neither of these were the case. As it happened, the next ferry left at 10.30, alright for some, but I really didn't want to wait. And as for the ticket office, well it was in a square on the other side of a busy dual carriage way (in fact the main road north of Athens) with no opportunity for a pedestrian weighed down with a 20 kilo ruck sack to make it across the barrier of the central reservation by any means other than hurdling. As usual, it is that quintessentially Greek approach to organisation where the right hand doesn't know (nor give a shit apparently) what the left hand is doing.
In the end I made the connection,... precisely because I chose to hurdle.
But like I said, after years of travelling in Greece these things only serve to entertain... Besides, if I had got stuck for two hours in Ag-Kon I would have been hard pushed to find anything to do bar sip a frappe and read a magazine whilst looking at the sea... and isn't that what holidays in Greece are all about?
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