Once upon a time, when I was quite young, the world really was at my fingertips. I was standing at the airport with my friend Alisa (a ficticious name) when we learned our flight to London had been postponed for 24 hours. On a whim, we decided to go somewhere else. So we picked up a world map, pointed our fingers at a random spot, and said, “That’s it!” My mother had just passed on and I was in a weird frame of mind I had never experienced before. My father told me he would send me anywhere I wanted to go with a friend. This helped relieve my depression–and so began our adventure of world exploration, food and fun.
We stood in line at the ticket counter to change our tickets and head for Greece. When it was our turn, we told the counter clerk we had decided to change our flight to one leaving right away. A few hours later, off we went! Luckily, I had been to Greece several times before. It was my favorite place–each time I had a brand-new experience on a different island.
Alisa was the perfect travel partner. In fact, she was perfect in many ways–brilliant, warm, funny, flexible, gorgeous, and meticulously clean. And she had a natural gift for making anyone who was with her feel at home. Even when I had traveled a long way with her, I felt at home. And no matter what country we were in or what language was spoken, people were attracted to her.
This did not begin as an ordinary trip, and it did not end up as an ordinary trip. Once we arrived in Corfu, my favorite Greek island, we checked into a little villa in the main village. We dropped off our luggage, showered and changed, and went straight to the local taverna, where Americans, Canadians, and Europeans were partying, drinking ouzo (the Greek national drink) and retsina wine, eating moussaka, and imitating the Greek dances taught by the natives. We would watch in awe as the Greek fishermen lifted the table with their teeth and danced around with it, then threw plates into the fireplace. This was Greece back then!
And that is when we noticed a young man around our age wearing a loud yellow shirt. He was no different from any of the other young men hanging out in this little village taverna. But his shirt was so bright that you couldn’t help but notice him in a crowded room of white T-shirts. When you looked closer, he was not the handsomest and he was by far the dirtiest-looking. He had long, brown, tangled hair and wore dirty blue jeans. Like Alisa and me, he was an American in Greece. There were many others, but he, or should I say his shirt, was where the eyes were first drawn. He introduced himself as Tony.
Each time I traveled–even to the same place–the experience was different. This one was unlike any of my other trips to Greece. It was tinged with the sadness of missing my mother. I saw her face in the elderly women who cooked meals and offered me a taste, in women walking with their daughters, in women in my dreams. On this particular evening, an elderly Greek woman was cooking for us in her taverna kitchen. Everything was homemade, and it was some of the most delicious food I’ve ever had. She gave us samples of moussaka, souvlaki, dolmakadia (stuffed grape leaves), horiatiki (Greek salad with feta cheese and Greek olives), and more!
The Europeans and Americans were partying so hard—guzzling ouzo and retsina, dancing and switching to rock-and-roll in the late-night hours—that we were half out of our minds. To get around on this tiny island, everyone rented motorbikes. But because many of the young travelers would become inebriated and hardly slept, they were crashing the motorbikes. So the Greek islanders cracked down on the rules for renting them and made it harder to obtain drinks and other items. This was an era like no other, and Greece and Greek partying took it to the highest level. I watched as this phenomenon unfolded, a distant observer while being part of the excitement of the island.
Alisa helped me get through a very rough period with her broad smile and constant laughter. And it was this laughter that attracted Tony to her. Just as his yellow shirt stood out, Alisa’s laugh did the same for her. The two exchanged pleasantries, and this turned into dancing and then more dancing. At a certain point Alisa became tired from all that dancing and went to our room to go to sleep. I mingled with the other travelers and danced some more. I hung out with my new so-called friends until we all became overtired and decided to call it a night and see each other the next day.
I walked to our little villa and tried to get into the room. The door was locked. I figured Alisa would be sleeping, so I knocked softly. There was no answer. I had no way to get in without knocking loud enough to wake her, and I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I walked across the street, sat on the curb in the pitch-black night with the full moon above, and lay with my head on the sidewalk, covered with my sweater. I watched the moon over the island and was happy that the weather was so warm and comfortable. I couldn’t wait for morning to be able to get into a bed and take a shower. At last the sun came up—the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen.
And then I saw it. To my shock and horror, there were graves all around me. I had slept in a graveyard and didn’t even know it! It had been so dark, and I had drunk so much wine that I didn’t even see the landscape and gravestones. They looked very different from what I was used to in America. And I knew I had a story right there: how I mysteriously slept in a graveyard right after my mother passed away.
I went to the room as fast as I could, hoping that by now Alisa would be up. If not, I was OK with the idea of waking her, since it was morning. Alisa opened the door and let me in. When I told her the story about sleeping in the graveyard, she belted out her distinct, warm laugh, and we both started cracking up! Then it occurred to me–a memory of how nice it had been the last time I was on Corfu’s Pelicus Beach. I remembered it as a place of ultimate beauty.
So for old times’ sake, after my nap I convinced Alisa to take a walk to Pelicus, which I remembered as being very close by–maybe a mile away. We reached the top of the hill nearby and were told by a Greek resident that Pelicus was only a short walk down to the bottom of the hill. We walked. We walked some more. We continued to walk until Beth could barely breathe and started complaining, saying she thought she was going to have a heart attack! We knew she was kidding, but both of us felt we could walk no more. At that very moment we looked up, and there was a nice old man riding a donkey. We knew what we had to do.
It was like a miracle—as if he had read our minds. As he walked past us, he must have noticed our state of exhaustion and offered us a ride. He put us on the donkey and took us as far as he was going in our direction. We got off and continued walking again. Once we finally arrived on Pelicus Beach, we were grateful to be there, but in the back of our minds we wondered, “How are we going to get back?” We turned and looked toward the top of the hill and realized we had a problem.
It was difficult to relax, but somehow Corfu puts a spell on those who go there in their late teens and twenties, and our problems vanished. We listened to the ocean as we watched the exquisite turquoise blue and white waves. We people-watched and realized just how lucky we were to be there. Then we noticed another man with a donkey, and again we knew what we had to do. We ran up to him and offered to pay him to take us up the hill. We stretched across the donkey as he walked it up the hill—and we somehow made it back just in time to go back to our village taverna for party time!
And there I saw him hiding in the bushes–the man in the yellow shirt! You couldn’t miss him, it was so obtrusive and loud. I thought he must be sleeping there because it appeared he was really roughing it. When we arrived he leaped out of the bushes and went over to Alisa. I was alone again in a very large crowd. But I would find my way to happiness two or three ouzos later with strangers from around the world, telling our stories, eating Greek salads, and hanging out with the Greek fishermen.
I must have eaten my way through this trip. I went home fifteen pounds later. I ate because it was delicious and I ate because being there was like being out of touch with reality. Being there was true bliss, with moments of sadness each time my mother crossed my mind. After a few nights of this routine, something happened that would break the spell. Alisa and I met two Italian men who drove up in an open VW convertible. They were gorgeous! But they didn’t speak any English, and only Alisa spoke Italian between the two of us. She was having a good time talking to them.
They invited us to have dinner with them. We left the local taverna and went about a mile down the road to an incredibly lively, very traditional Greek restaurant. It was dark inside with a fireplace, and men were drinking ouzo and throwing plates into the fireplace. They taught us real Greek dancing. We loved it! The food in this particular restaurant was out of this world. And that’s how we felt–like we were out of this world. The men were fascinating, though the discussion was all in Italian. It didn’t matter. I understood what they were saying, and of course Beth understood much better. There’s a way travelers communicate, even if they don’t speak the same language, and I got really good at it. We ate things that tasted as they never had before.
First were the appetizers, or starters, as they call it: keftethes, a Greek meatball dish made of lamb or beef with creamy sauce and pita bread; tropita, a Greek feta-cheese pie, shaped and rolled into individual triangles; and tzatziki, a Greek sauce made of thick yogurt, cucumber, garlic, olive oil, and dill. I could have eaten all three of these appetizers for a complete meal, but the four of us passed them around the table to share and moved on to our next dish: the famous Greek salad, made of chunky cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, tons of goat feta cheese, and Greek olives, among the best olives in the world. We helped ourselves to portions and dripped on the dressings we preferred–I followed the Greek custom of olive oil and salt and pepper. I didn’t add any vinegar.
Next, the main course. By now I was getting full, but who could stop there? We ordered moussaka, the legendary Greek dish made of minced lamb, eggplant, and creamy béchamel sauce. This was really filling, so we each had only a little and moved on to try the next entree, yemista, a traditional Greek stuffed tomato dish containing rice and herbs. We shared pastitsio, which is baked pasta with ground beef and béchamel sauce, and finished with spanakopita, Greek spinach pie with feta cheese, perfectly baked to crispy deliciousness!
Dessert time! Baklava–full of nuts and butter and sugar, wrapped in phyllo dough and baked with a sweet syrup topping. Melt in your mouth time. Then loukoumades–tiny pieces of fried dough with sweet syrup, walnuts, and cinnamon. And if that were not enough, we each ordered ellinikos, coffee served in long-handled copper pots called briki. In retrospect, we were so full that I’m surprised any of us could walk out of there.
After dinner and dancing, Alisa and I parted company with the men and stopped at the local taverna on the way to our room. We ran into the man in the yellow shirt, who was alone and probably wondering what had happened to Alisa when we weren’t there for dinner. His yellow shirt looked totally ragged.
Alisa and I went on several world trips over the years. We didn’t always stay together; sometimes we would separate for the day. I loved exploring and meeting new people. In those days it was easy to do—Europe was full of travelers. I consider “travelers” to be people who spend extended time in each country and explore and really get into the culture and people. I consider “tourists” to be those who go for a definite short period on a superficial level and stay in hotels on a schedule—and don’t really have a chance to go deep into the soul of the country. Alisa and I were travelers, and there was no telling how long we would be in Greece and where we would go after that.
I don’t remember how long we stayed in Greece. We went through the entire country and met many interesting people along the way, actually connecting with some and traveling with them to the other islands. At last we agreed it was time to go–to Italy, in honor of our newfound Italian friends. Then the adventures and misadventures with food, drink, and dance began all over again in Italy, Spain, and Morocco. But that’s another story!
Yassou,
Sherry Plum
I’d love to recreate those moments and the closest thing is to recreate the food. Here I present my most memorable Greek dishes– moussaka, Greek salad, and baklava.
