The view from the home I am staying in on the Greek island of Serifos
I arrived on the island of Serifos safely if not without challenge.
My ferry came in at 8pm by which point it was after dark. My contact left keys for me at a small excursion service near the pier.
Upon arrival, I introduced myself to the owner who made a big show of pretending he did not expect me. While I’m sure he had much work to do, he could not have been anticipating business to swoop in the door at 8pm on a Tuesday in the off-season.
He called around for a cab, but there is only one taxi driver left on the island, everyone had returned to Athens for the fall. The cab driver had turned his phone off.
The owner finally agreed to drive me himself. He took me up a long series of switchbacks to an unlit stone staircase across the street from a unassuming white building marked “restaurant” in hand painted letters.
I called my contact on the phone and she attempted to guide me to the house.
“Did you reach the fork in the path?”
“Yes, I reached the fork in the path.”
“Turn left.”
“But the path goes in three directions.”
“You want the path that runs parrallel to the street.”
That happened to be the path on the right.
My contact was being very helpful considering she 1) knew nothing about me 2) was directing me to a whitewashed building in a city of identical whitewashed buildings from memory 3) was giving the instructions in a second language.
She named the colors of the neighbors’ doors but I could not see any using only the ambient light from distant road below. I unpacked my flashlight, but the blue cast of the l.e.d.s made green doors and grey doors as blue as some of the blue doors.
After a ten minute, $30 phone call and then another where I attempted to follow her instructions from the road higher on the hill I gave up. I decided I would pull out my sleeping bag and flop somewhere along the path.
Then, my contact brilliantly arranged to call a local friend who knew the way to the house. I had to leave my luggage to the innumerable mewling stray cats and work my way back to the road. From there, I hiked the rest of the way to the top of Kano Hora where I asked and found Louis’ Bar.
A fit fiftysomething man named Stratos got up from his Ouzo to help me. We descended into the maze of the Hora and found the house 20 yards from where my intial instructions last left me.
It had been two and a half hours since I arrived. I walked back to Louis’ with Stratos and the locals conducted an inspection of me in Greek, which I only understood fragments of.
One woman in her seventies teased me about the fact I was drinking Coke instead of Ouzo and ate no meat. She called me her baby and began hand-feeding me some lovely vegetarian bites including a pancake of lightly fried cheese (which I have since been attempting to replicate.)
Later, she rubbed Ouzo on the teeth of an actual baby to much laughter. I told her she could be my yaya (grandmother) and she said she would rather be my girlfriend. She said if it wasn’t for my beard she’d ask me out for coffee.
I walked back, surprised I remembered the way. The cats, now familiar with my suitcases, followed me back to the house. I have been trying to shoo them from the front door ever since.
