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# Greece without Travolta and Imparare Volta
- URL: https://vaughan.ai/blog/greece-without-travolta-and-imparare-volta/
- Published: 2001-10-11T00:04:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-07T23:19:23.000Z
- Author: Vaughan Fergusson
- Tags: Greece, #medium-import

Long time no hear. No we haven’t dropped off the face of the earth, but I will get to what we have been doing shortly. Or is it Longley?

I cant remember where we got to last but it must have been when we had just left Turkey for Greece. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we left Turkey by boat to Samos, Greece. Its not that we don’t know what we do but these long weeks of doing nothing with our brains has left some holes. Samos was nice, a busy tourist town-island-whatever.

We spent the first night wandering around looking for a place to stay with a Japanese girl we met on the boat. We met her on the bow of the ferry as the waves slammed against the hull and drenched us totally. Oh the fun you have bow riding. When we got to Samos and it was one of those cases where the girls sat with the bags and I wandered all around town trying to find the pension we had in our guide book only to find an hour later next door to where the girls were sitting waiting. This became a common practise for us on our travels. We would always find the place we were looking for right next to where we started our two hour treck. But I digress. As I was wandering aimlessly and talking to Greek people in bastardised Greek a kind lady approached the girls and offered them a room in her house. It was the most economical option so when I returned we wandered aimlessly around the small winding lanes trying to find the house. It was of course at the top of the hill and we happily dumped our bags and we stayed here for a few days with the hospitable lady and her two daughters. There wasn’t a lot to do in Samos except walk up and down the main street and eat lunch so Mel and I decided to rent a car, as we do, and bid farwell to all for the other side of the island and hopefully something to do. Day one, we filled the car up and drove a full circuit of the island and still had a full tank. Once we had done the main roads we took the dirt roads around the coast. Finally we decided to find a place to stay and stopped at a small town with a population of about 12 and stayed at a nice pension on the beach. That was about it for Samos, probably a nice place to visit if you needed a break from it all and wanted to relax, but after 3 weeks in Turkey we felt restless. So we enquired about a boat to another, hopefully more adventurous island and left. Well it wasn’t that easy exactly. Lets just say the travel agents in the tourist areas and not the friendliest and most useful. The day of our imminent departure we went to the first travel agent and was shuffled next door (because there were about to close for lunch), then somewhere else because they don’t do boat tickets, then somewhere else because the person who did ‘that sort of thing’ was not there and if we came back tonight they could help, somewhere else because … well I cant remember but we began to feel this was a little game they played with the tourists in the low season. Finally we arrived at the agency right by the port who were the most accommodating, helpful and friendly people we have ever met (on Samos) and answered all our stupid questions and our one slightly intelligent one too. We bought a ticket to Icarius, some 4 hours ride away.

We were off, deck class, on the car ferry. One thing the travel agent got wrong was the arrival time in Icarius and we got there some two hours after we thought we were, at midnight. But no worries in Greece where midnight is just late afternoon due to their midday siesta. The next day we caught the bus to the village on the other side of the island, which unfortunately consisted of 12 houses and one hotel but fortunately we met a very nice German lady, Kristiana, who was on the bus with us and suggested we all grab a taxi to the next village which apparently had nice beaches. So we did, or rather we tried, as it appeared the island had only two taxis and they were both busy. After an hour we negotiated with one taxi as it passed through town (Mel literally jumped out in front of it) that he would come back in half an hour and take us. Well we thought that’s what we negotiated but we weren’t entirely sure, but true to his word in exactly 30 minutes he returned and we were on our way to Arministis. This was our idea of Greece, a small town on the sea and nice quiet beaches. This was a spot out of the way and it was the end of the season so we almost had the village to ourselves. We found a pension above the restaurant and had amazing vies of the bay. This was great. We went to the beach, got burnt, came back to our room for a siesta and then ate at the restaurant. We had a choice of three beaches and each one a beautiful as the others. The water was flat and clear and not too cold but as the longer we stayed the weather stared to get worse and the winds started to pick up. One by one the shops and restaurants closed up for winter and the waves got bigger and bigger. We actually preferred it with waves, much more fun in the water. Especially when the fast car ferry cruises by at insane speeds and sends a 6 foot wake onto the beach. Wheee heeeeee. One day when the water was quite calm, we were walking along the waters edge watching the car ferry go by. This was the first time we had seen it and apparently the first time all the other people sitting with their ankles in the water had seen it too. 5 minutes after it passed we saw the wake coming and moved up the beach as we walked. It seemed like a logical thing to do and we were about to let one guy in on a little secret, who was relaxing on the water line but were too late. Splash.

Again that was about it for Icarius. Beaches and swimming. We discovered that one of the beaches was nudist which was quite exciting. No not like that! But we grew restless again and hoped island to paros. Paros was a more popular destination in the Greek Islands but still didn’t have much to offer us. Again we hired a car to check out the island (only filling it to half a tank this time) and just didn’t enjoy what we saw at all. However this was probably due to night before where Mel and I visited the local bar on the beach. We sat down for a quiet drink at the bar and when we finished it the bar tender (an American Greek, or is it a Greek American?) poured us a couple of shots and one for himself. Cheers, and so started our night. 5 drinks and 3 free shots later we ran out of money and was about to leave. We were at the stage where we had smiles from ear to hear and found everything both extremely hilarious and a good idea. So before I knew it our kind host had me on the back of his Harley Davidson and we were roaring across town to the money machine and back again the extremely long way. I still had my grin from ear to ear but this was partly due to the wind in my face as we hit 90 miles p/h. 5 more drinks and another 2 shots later was stumbled out only having to pay for half of what we drunk and he summed it up nicely. Its not everyday you go to a bar, have free drinks and get to go to the money machine on a Harley. And so our day of driving around the island was tainted somewhat by our throbbing heads and bad tempers. That day we hated Paros.

Again there wasn’t a lot to do. For fun we drove up the mountain, it was there to be conquered, and found a windmill and a car wreck at the top, and also it confirmed our thoughts of Paros. It was brown, windy and everything was closed. Well we couldn’t tell that everything was closed from the top of the mountain. We had to drive around the island all day to figure that one out. But it was nice to be on the top of something and the wind was so strong that you had to shuffle your feet for fear of lifting one foot too high and discovering a new way to island hop Greece, by freefall.

The one thing we did find to do was an ancient marble quarry where the bulk of the good marble came from in times past. Even the Venus Di Milo herself. So we though this would be worth checking out and stopped the car at the sign for the quarry. But unfortunately we couldn’t find it. We walked past some old buildings and saw Another couple was walking ahead of us up a dirt road so we followed them, they looked like they knew where they were going. The road wound up a hill for about 10 kilometers until we were at the top by an old monastery but no quarry. They had a look around and then turned back making as if they had intended to come all this way up just for a nice walk. There was an old fort on the hill so we checked it out, not finding much as it was just a pile of stones, but we noticed a sign painted on a rock in very bad English (just like my emails) that said something like this ‘Interesting welcom monestry, old free. That way’ So we followed the sign until we found a piece of card board attached to a fence that said something similar but with the words in a different order and again followed that sign until we came to a subsequent sign and the monastery itself. It was a big old white building that looked deserted but on the door was another sign that said ‘pull rope for bell open’ so Mel pulled the rope. Some cow bells jangled inside followed by a man yelling and groaning and a dog barking. We looked at each other and quickly walked away looking intently at the trees and rock pretending it wasn’t us that woke the old monk.. At the time we thought it was a practical joke the local kids were playing on both the old crazy monk who lived there and the hapless tourists who passed by. As we quickly footed it to the other side of the hill I noticed a couple of discarded shotgun shells on the ground and hoped I didn’t trip over the one stupid tourist that pushed the old monk too far, lying in a pool of blood. But the good thing was as we looked down the other side of the hill we saw the old buildings we passed and a road straight down and… the quarry. We rushed down the hill passing 5 more signs saying ‘come toris interest monesty welcome’ and found the entrance to the quarry.

It was an underground quarry of course. That’s why we couldn’t find it. But we couldn’t see much anyway as we had no torches so we went home. We came back with torches the next day but the path down into the quarry was slippery and Mel and I were the only people there so we didn’t venture into it. Well I wanted to but Mel talked sense into me, she is very chicken.. oops I mean sensible like that. But you can imagine it if you like, a huge underground cavern carved out of marble with corridors and rooms and piles of carved marble. It would have been interesting if we were with a group with more powerful torches than our mini maglights.

Again we felt restless again and pondered what we should do. The Greek Islands just weren’t doing it for us. We needed something else. Next on our agenda was Italy then Croatia but we were worried that perhaps we still needed something else to do. So we asked each other ‘What is something you have always wanted to do in Europe?’ and we both came back with the same answer. We went to an internet café and performed a quick search and found just what we were looking for. A small Italian language school in Southern Italy. We phoned them up, enrolled and were off by ferry and trains to Otranto, Italy where we are now for a month. A second language was top on our lists and top of mine for as long as I can remember. Also we wanted to stop for a while in a small town and get to know what small town life is like in Italy and Otranto fits the bill quite nicely. It is so small that you can walk from one side of town to the other in 20 minutes. It is so small that no one needs and alarm clock, the church just rings its bells at 7:30 in the morning. It is so small that if you are looking for someone you all you need to do is stop anyone in the street and ask them where they are and they will come back to you with the persons life history, where they will be at any particular time of the day and what they will be wearing tomorrow.

We have been here for three weeks now and already everyone knows us. The school is only small and we share it with Hiroshi, a Japanese guy, and this week Swatii a girl from London. Unfortunately we are the dunces of the class as Hiroshi has been studying full time for 6 months and Swatii can speak Spanish and had been studying Italian for at least a year. Mel and I arrived in Otranto (somehow) without being able to ask for a train ticket and even got ‘Hello’ wrong. But in three weeks it is quite amazing to think back to that first day and then think what we know now. We still can hold an in-depth conversation. But Mel can speak more words than I can and I can understand what people say better than Mel so we work quite well as a team. Someone says something to us, I translate to Mel if she didn’t understand and she replies in broken Italian. We get our point across. Its even more interesting when Mel and I go out with Hiroshi and Ako (Hiroshi’s girlfriend) as Hiroshi will translate to us if we missed anything someone says then translates to Ako in a combination of English and Japanese and its yes, hai, si, all around.

Since being here we have rented two cars and toured most of the region. We have been to Gallipoli (no not the one in Turkey), Monopoli (no not the board game!), Lecce, Santa Maria, and Alberobello. Alberobello was interesting. The town is a UNESCO site as the houses, called Trulli, are all built with conical tops. This we learnt is to keep the snow off, and being winter this came as a surprise to us as we had only brought t-shirts. It was very quaint and very beautiful. We ventured up to Le Grotte di Castlana a massive cave in the ground carved out by a subterranean river many thousands of years ago. There were stalactites and stalagmites galore. The cave was 2 km long and was very interesting. We were in the English and German speaking guide group and our guide had an extremely unusual voice. She was Italian and would speak to us in English with a strange German accent. She sounded like she was shrieking at us and spoke very slowly in a single tone. It was hard to tell when she was speaking German and when she was speaking English. Still us being language students ourselves were very impressed at her linguistic abilities, althought it be between yawns.

Mel has been keeping busy here as well, she has invited herself out with one of the local fishermen, Jean Carlo, for his early morning roundup of his nets. Being too early for me, Mel watched him round up his nets and almost jumped out of the boat when he pulled in an octopus and proceeded to smash the living daylights out of it against the hull of the boat. She is always off to the local villages on market days and returns with more cheese and vegetables than you can imagine. Me I just potter around the town and frantically try and study my Italian until my brain hurts. I have been finding it a little difficult as our teacher is the spitting image of an old girlfriend of mine who made my life living hell. So every day I go to class it like living a nightmare. Every time she asks me something I feel like screaming and running out of the class therefore I try and fit in as much study as I can out of class.

The biggest problem with life in a small town is the boredom. You wont believe how boring it is. I have fared worse than Mel and have gone a little stir crazy. We have no books, to radio, no Tv, no cinema, literally nothing to do. I have been bouncing off the walls of our apartment making funny hats, singing made-up songs to Mel until she slaps me and generally going insane. We have walked every square inch of the town and could probably draw you a fairly detailed map. We know all the shops, how much everything costs, when each shop will be closed and open and when the owners goes on vacation. But it is nice tho. It is nice to have nothing to do and get reacquainted with all those imaginary friends you used to have as a kid. Which is also useful when it comes to learning a new language as you have to regress several years to when you were 5 years old writing stories about what you did on the weekend and how many cookies you baked with Grandma and how her dog called Woof Woof likes playing chasie and eating cats. Mel loves writing her stories for homework and often scribbles out short novels in Italian, whereas I write three lines.

The other thing we have been busy with is teaching Hiroshi and Ako how to play the card game ‘500’. They came around to our apartment the other day while we were playing so we offered to show them how to play. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Not the teaching as such but watching them play. They quickly go the rules and within an hour we were playing real games with them. Every time they trumped each other they would exchange words to each other in Japanese with huge grins on their faces as if saying ‘HA! Take that’ which seemed quite funny to us as normally they are so reserved and calm. Now they were almost leaping out of their chairs and screaming at each other with groans and shrieks. So we showed them how to play two handed ‘500’ so they could play it at home and the next day Hiroshi didn’t turn up to school. Swatii asked him about his whereabouts when they were all around our place last night, and instantly his face light up.  
‘I have learnt a new card game’ he replied.  
‘Yes and we played it all day because I kept beating him’ Ako added ‘One more one more before I go to school he kept saying’ Ako continued. And so I don’t expect to see Hiroshi at school next week. I think they took to ‘500’ with such vigour because they had both been in Otranto for 3 months and there isn’t exactly a lot to do both physically and with your brain. So it is probably a good thing that we all finish our course next week otherwise my emails might actually start to make sense.

So that’s about it for now. If you need anything translated then please send it our way, we desperately need the practise. We will be picking up our travels next week but until then, ciao e buona fortuna.