Greece

Having endured the trip from hell, and sworn a lifelong devotion to vengeance against the region known as Kosovo, I was finally in Meteora Greece. After 28 hours experiencing pretty much every transport system available in the Balkans I was ready for a long hot shower and some heavy slumber. There was a momentary moment of panic when it appeared that the hostel my Japanese friend, Yusuke, and I had traveled to was now closed for the off season, but luckily just as we began walking away, the lovely old Greek couple who owned it turned up and we were saved any further travel. It was a bit of a surreal hostel, as we were the only two guests in what was essentially a three story antebellum mansion, but the heating was on, the showers hot, and the beds good enough, and so neither Yusuke nor myself were complaining.

Meteora was a good entry point to Greece, and ended up being worth the detour before I headed to Athens. Meteora is famous for its' combination of amazing weathered sheer cliff faces and the monasteries built upon them. Apparently the monks who built these churches took the phrase 'closer to God' a little too literally, and I imagine it was a pretty common sight to see monks plunging into the valley below while they were building the most ridiculously inaccessible, yet undeniably in the clouds, churches in Greece.

Upon learning that God is in fact inside us all, the extremely literal minded  Monks decided to abandon their plan to build more stories on their monasteries and instead began brewing blessed beer.

The monasteries are undeniably impressive, however once again, for all of mans' efforts, nature still comes out trumps as far as the impressive sights go.

The scenery was so impressive it totally put me off my jump shot game.

Yusuke and I did quite a bit of trekking around the valleys created by the cliff faces shooting up either side of us, and we ended up picking up a third member of our group, Mike, who joined us as we went off track for a bit and tried to climb to the top of one of the rocks. Mike is a Peruvian who grew up in Sweden and now lives and studies in Texas. If he were only gay or transsexual or something, he could have won diversity bingo. I actually have a photo of how we met Mike:

That's him on the left there being cruelly distorted by my wide angle lens. Anyway, this ended up being the first of Mike and I meeting randomly through Greece and then Turkey, as you'll read later later. Anyway, the three of us ended up trekking around for the rest of the day and grabbing a few beers in the pretty dull nearby town of Kalabaka. As impressive as Meteora is, it's definitely a day trip kind of town, and the following afternoon the three of us hit the road for Athens.

One of the aspects of Greece I'd been looking forward to, albeit as a kind of morbid curiousity, was to find out what the nations' financial collapse looked like from within. It's all well and good to laugh at the Greeks demand for loans from Germany that have no stipulations or austerity measures, and to joke about the cliches involving the Greeks either being corrupt or lazy, but as I'd seen from my time in Spain, it's never a linear black and white narrative, but often a problem with more deep rooted social conflicts which only play out on an international stage when it effects international financial markets.

Unfortunately for Greece, it appears most of the cliches are correct. Corruption in this country is rampant. I was lucky enough to stay with and meet many locals, and the story from pretty much everyone here is the same; if you play by the rules you will get nowhere in Greece. From what I was told, pretty much every building project is technically illegal, with permission granted by either corrupt government officials, or from corrupt real estate companies. I actually drove past a place whose main advertising line was that they would approve any development proposal that had previously been denied (obviously with a bit of money to grease the process). From what I could tell from my short time there, it's a country where there is zero incentive to do the right thing, and most of the countries' problems stem from that fundamental issue. The government seems as inept as it is corrupt, there seems to be very little pride in work ethic, and even the little things, like the rampant littering, show just how disillusioned the nation is. I think that putting any outside investment into anything that doesn't incentivise the removal of corruption would be ultimately futile.

I can't help but think the presence of all the ancient ruins is partly to blame. Where in Italy it seems to inspire them to reach their next great age (do I need remind you of their invention of the drying rack/cupboard hybrid?) and to bind them in pride, whereas it seems the Greeks have taken it to mean that so long as Greece's  grand ruins remain, so to does Greece's' grandiosity.

But that's just their socioeconomic issues. Luckily everything else is Greece is awesome, and I don't want to portray that the corruption and the associated problems are something perpetrated by a majority, because Greek people are awesome, and they live in one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. I was lucky enough to couchsurf while I was in Athens, with a lovely local girl called Anna. Anna showed me around the city quite a bit, and introduced me to the local version of Raki. As I mentioned before, Raki is the favoured drink of the Balkans. I was first introduced to it in Croatia, and have been constantly exposed to it in every place in this region. It is brutal, and tastes like cheap vodka without the charm, and with a bit of methanol added to flesh it out. But somehow the Greeks managed to make it palatable, by adding honey and spice to it and then heating it up. The bizarre thing is they don't drink it as most other countries would. Whereas in Australia Raki would be used to accelerate a nights' drunken state, the Greeks just sit there having the odd shot every half an hour, and drink it more like it was green tea served at Dim Sum, sitting around a table casually chatting.

Anna took me to a Scottish bar that does a pub quiz in English on my first night in Athens, where I was to have my second small world meeting with Mike. He'd gone off to stay in a local hostel, and we'd decided to meet up at some point in the next few days if it was convenient, but when Anna and I rocked up to the bar, there he was at our table with the rest of our team. Apparently he'd met one of Anna's friends who had invited him along. Anyway, this random meeting ended up being quite educational for both of us as the guy who had invited Mike turned out to be an anarchist, and he told us all about the annual demonstration that was taking place the next day, which we immediately decided to attend.

Unlike the many riots you've no doubt seen on the news of late, this riot was actually an annual protest. The reason behind the protest is to commemorate the deaths of student protesters that occurred in 1973. The students had barricaded themselves inside the Athens Polytechnic University, and were killed when the protest was broken up by a tank bursting through the doors and running over most of the protesters. At the time Greece was ruled by a dictator who had been installed by the US, and so every year on the anniversary of the killings, tens of thousands of people march from the Polytechnic to the US embassy. I'll be honest, it is a little odd that people still protest, especially when 95% of the crowd wasn't even alive back then, but more than anything it gives the Greeks a reason to protest, and boy do they love a good protest.

This ordered unidirectional marching is all the more impressive when you see how Greeks drive.

Classic protest act.

You do have to feel for the US embassy workers who were most likely in their infancy, or not even born when the event that caused this protest happened, and you really have to feel for the cops who I'm sure for the most part are just as disillusioned and angry about everything that is going on in Greece at the moment and are having to deal with the brunt of the populaces' anger about once a week. I also got the feeling that while protests can definitely be used for good, having an annual protest for something so distant, when the problems currently facing your nation are so great, is a tad esoteric. As if to prove this, the protest then marched from the US embassy to the Israeli embassy to protest the Gaza offensive that had started a couple of days earlier. I can understand young Greeks having anger, but for god's sake, how about a little focus. Maybe they could learn from their forefathers, or in particular, this guy:

This fella went at it for a good hour or two before the rest of the protest showed up, and while I think his agenda may have been equally irrelevant, I'll be damned if he didn't stay on message, even after he lost his foil hat meaning the aliens could read his thoughts.

Despite feeling a little uneasy about being entertained by tens of thousands of peoples' outrage, I did have a really fun time marching along side, and sometimes with, the protesters. This was made even more fun when I had my second 'small world' encounter in as many days, bumping into my Icelandic friends from Salzburg amidst the thousands of angry Greeks. I still have no idea how that happened, considering the mass of people we were surrounded by, but it meant that Mike and I had two more mates to crack open a beer with and watch the crowd go by.

Having seen the modern Greece cliche tourist attraction, I then set out to see the Ancient Greece attractions. Athens is a beautiful city, if a tad gritty, and a perfect combination of new and old. I managed to catch all the sights, including the Acropolis, the old Olympic stadium, and, located just south of the city, the Temple of Poseidon. The Acropolis was quite impressive, although I think more for the view you get of the Athens sprawl and the Mediterranean than for the ruins that now remain. The ruins are still very impressive, and quite a testament to the grandeur of what the city once was, but just how vastly spread out the modern city is, is equally, if not more impressive, especially given how the mostly white buildings contrast the deep olive green hillsides that occasionally peek through the suburbia.

Still not finished with construction after a few millenia? Pretty standard for Greek labourers.

The sun setting over the Mediterranean

Not a bad centrepiece for a city to have.

I also checked out the old Olympic stadium and made a short trip south to the Temple of Poseidon as well as a few other archaeological sites around the city. While impressive, and quite beautiful, they're much better to look at than to hear about.

Temple of Poseidon

Poseidon's view, lucky god that one.

When they say 'Don't lean on the columns', this is why.

While I was obviously expecting to find old stuff made out of marble and Greek people protesting, Athens did have a couple of pleasant surprises. My favourite was the Anarchist district. This is a whole area of the city where there is essentially no police intervention (police intervene, Athens protests). This of course leads to a tonne of graffiti (a majority of which was brilliant, furthering my belief that banning street art leads to more tagging and less art), a whole mess of junkies, some truly excellent bars (punk was the main soundtrack!!), and quite a lot of trash and faeces (not all of which belonged to dogs). The place didn't feel any more dangerous than the rest of the city, and we finished a couple of our nights out here without any drama at all, but it did have somewhat of a more on edge vibe to the rest of Athens. However, my favourite part of the Anarchist part of town was something surprisingly beautiful, as is the story behind it.

Apparently a few years ago, a city block opened up for development in the heart of the anarchist neighborhood. The locals wanted to turn it into a park, whereas the city wanted a parking lot. Realising that dealing with the corrupt city officials was the equivalent of banging your head against a wall, the locals just came out one night and turned the block into a park. The city was naturally pretty pissed off, but whenever they try to intervene and start development on the block, the anarchists threaten revolt and so the park remains. The park has now become symbolic of the anarchist cause, and they really show some pride in it. It is regularly cleaned, and the plants are all tended to with a lot of love, and it's quite a nice place to be, especially considering it's in the middle of quite a bit of squalor. Just in case you think this is merely an example of anarchists bullying good, honest, law abiding citizens, every time there is a protest in the city for any other reason, the city sends police around to vandalise the park as retribution. I personally think anarchy is up there with libertarianism in ideologies that on the surface have a few good points and ideas, but are quickly shown to be very shallow and impractical ideologies, but in Athens I can definitely see how you'd be willing to give anything else a shot over the current status quo.

Oh yeh. The street art. You didn't really think I'd forget about that. Athens is like Berlin, except Berlin's art is inspired by history, whereas Athens' wounds are fresh. The art is incredible:

They may be anarchists, but they still have the manners to welcome you to their town.

Another of my favourite spots was Lycabettus hill, the highest point in Athens. I hiked up here at sunset, and while not the tallest of hills, it was big enough to grant a truly beautiful view across the city. It also has a quaint little orthodox church located at it's peak and was a great place to watch the sun go down and the city light up at night. However, if I were to be a real stickler for perfection, I'd suggest that the city revisit their decision to make this the site of all the cities' cell phone towers. And if that's impractical, and you want to utilise the highest spot in town for improving cell phone reception, then maybe don't anchor the wires for the towers from the spot that overlooks the Acropolis...

'You can really feel the energy of the city from here can't you.'
'DAD, YOU'RE LEANING ON THE WIRE!'

It's still an amazing view.

But now that I think of it, that's Athens in a nut shell. It combines one of histories' most important, and most beautiful, geographical locations, with some of man's most lasting, epic, and inspiring bits of architecture, but unfortunately it is now the site for rampant corruption, dissent, and vandalism. I'm not sure what the city emblem is, but it should be a coat of arms bearing an olive leaf, a marble stone, and a spray can.

Or just this building.

While I do think the city is doomed for the foreseeable future, I really did love my time there, and it is easily one of my favourite places from this trip. While I was staying in Athens, I made a day trip out to Delphi, a place made famous as a preferred destination for those seeking out Oracles. Delphi itself is epic. You can see why the Greeks thought this was a place fit for communicating with the gods. For one, it's set up amongst the clouds, so you're nice and close to any holy cloud dwelling beings. Secondly, it's spectacularly beautiful, with the city set on the side of Mount Parnassus and overlooking the Mediterranean. If you were a god, this is where you'd hang out; it's not like you're going to be seen somewhere like Oklahoma.

Before heading to the ancient ruins of Delphi I checked out the museum which houses the artifacts found by the archaeologists who unearth the site. It was pretty standard fare, with lots of impressive statues, the odd bit of armour, and a few plates and bowls, but there were a couple of pieces that stood out, like the fact that the albino twins from the second Matrix were around in the ancient Greek times:

These two are still more animated than Keanu Reeves 

and there was a pretty cool marble diorama of a guy getting eaten by a lion:

Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays

and there was a statue of some guy who was apparently considered the Brad Pitt of the day, and was held in such high esteem thanks to his beauty, that when he went for a swim and drowned, they decided he was a God, and began worshiping him (and people think we're superficial now? Where's the statue of the ugly guy who drowned and is now a God, huh?).

That's the Greek version of cold steel he's pulling there.

But the best part of the museum was learning about the Oracle, who has been depicted in many historic texts and Hollywood movies. As tends to be the case with all religions and acts of mysticism, I think there may have been a bit of over reading of the Oracles' predictions. The Oracle was in fact a peasant woman who was taken from the population and then housed by herself in the temple in Delphi. She would then come out onto her rock and mumble what to most people was gibberish, which would then be interpreted by the priests of the temple, and given out as prophecy. There are a few theories about how she would have her visions, with some suggesting that the rock from which she would make her prophecies was above a fissure in the mountain which was spewing out toxic volcanic fumes, which would then induce hallucinations. Legend says that these fumes were actually from some snake that the God who chats to the Oracle slayed and buried on this spot, but I have a feeling something different was going on. Also, I don't know why, but whenever I picture this scene everyone turns into someone out of a Dickens novel.

Instead of God talking to some chick through snake vapours, I think what was really happening was that the Greek equivalent of some Cockney lass, who has been taken from her slum, was made to sniff paint fumes, then stuck on top of a mountain. Once there she would say something like:
'Oi can see Troy frum 'ere Guvna'.
The priests have then said:
'What one eaaaarth did she just say?'
'How should I know? I don't speak pikey'
'I think she said something about Troy'
'Maybe she means Troy will fall?'
'TROY SHALL FALL!!'
'INDEED BROTHER, TROY SHALL FALL, THE GODS HAVE FORETOLD IT!!'
It might sound crazy, but religions have been built on sillier *cough* Mormons *cough*.

Anyway, I then headed up to the ruins. They are quite well preserved and set in such an amazing location that I wandered around the site for about three hours without getting at all bored. It's all quite impressive, and you can still see the track that housed the precursor to the Olympic games.

Greek ampitheatre, something required in every Greek ruin site.

Where the Ancient Greek version of Usain Bolt tore it up.

One thing that does set the Delphi site apart from other Greek ruins is that instead of it being destroyed by earthquake, or an invading armies' Trojan horse, it was apparently leveled by a Trojan war head:

Visiting the ruins of Delphi only took up half of my day, and since modern day Delphi is a tad dull, I headed up the mountain that overlooks the town to see another temple and a cave, both of which were on my town map which the nice people at the tourist office had given me. This pursuit ended up teaching me a very valuable lesson. Never trust a map that's been done by a cartoonist. There may be scale issues.

I set off for the throne of Apollo and Corycion cave with just a small bottle of water and an empty stomach. I figured that I'd just check these place out then pig out on a Gyros when I got back down. Unfortunately for me this ended up being one more in a series of my ill prepared hikes. I ended up hiking for about three hours, mostly uphill, before realising I had to turn around or risk descending in complete darkness, having not reached either of my destinations. I later learnt that they were about 20 kilometres hike from Delphi, of which I had only covered the better part of about 13km. Luckily it was a beautiful hike, and I managed to get down to the bottom of the hill with the last of the fading light. I then proceeded to eat my body weight in Gyros, and get a snap for Movember with one of the best moustaches in Greece.

Want to see a magic eye trick? If you cover my moustache I stop looking creepy. Sadly it doesn't work with the other guys' moustache, but only because no one has ever dared try cover it.

Actually I should probably touch on that. I had made the decision while in the Balkans that since I was to be travelling through two of the most moustachioed locations in the world (the Balkans and Turkey) I should assimilate, and as a bonus raise some money for charity. Now I know most of my avid readers like to picture me as a heroic, strapping, Bond like guy, however for the entirety of this blog (and  the end of the last one and beginning of the next one) you should have been picturing a guy with a dirty, slightly ginger, porn 'stache and a haircut that makes Hugh Jackmans' at the beginning of Les Miserables look good. Replace the 007 lady killing style and swagger you used to picture me as having, with the panel van owning and 'probably kills ladies' skeeziness that my new hair choices gave me and you've got the right idea. But what the hell, it's for charity.

As much fun as it had been in Athens and Delphi, and despite the fact it was now the off season and they were all deserted, I was off to the Greek Isles. Sadly, thanks to the reduced ferries available during the off season, I was limited just visiting a couple of the islands. Greece and Portugal had been the two places I'd had to sacrifice seeing in the summer due to the Schengen visa restrictions, and will be the first two locations I come visit on summer holidays should I ever live in Europe. Luckily the Greek Isles don't lose their beauty in the winter, and I still enjoyed my time there.

My first stop was Crete, and the city/coastal town of Chania. The ferry from Athens was an eleven hour overnight trip, but thanks to getting an entire couch to myself, my sleeping pills, and six brand new episodes of South Park, I thoroughly enjoyed it, although thanks to the 6am arrival time, I still felt pretty groggy when we docked. This made it pretty surreal when I then heard someone from behind me call out 'Caedyn' while I was lining up for a bus ticket. Thanks to my truly diabolical haircut which had now grown out from a mohawk into some sort of side parted mullet, I was apparently quite recognisable from behind, however it's still pretty remarkable that my friend, Kylie from Canada who I met in Budapest, would be on the same boat and recognise me among a swarm of Greeks.

After recovering from the shock of being recognised somewhere so foreign and new, and making the realisation that I was apparently carving a particularly predictable path through Europe since I kept on bumping into people I knew, I headed into town to meet my couchsurfing hosts. I was staying with a local girl and her Russian roomie. They were quite different but this was a good thing as together they showed me  both sides of Chania and Crete. The local girl, Kalli, was a big fan of the outdoors and was one of the few people I've met who gets close to my level of restless hyperactivity. While I was in town we went for a bike ride along the coast, which in true Balkan style was a picture of paradise, and hiked up one of the mountains halfway between Chania on the north coast and the south coast of the island. This was one of my highlights of Crete, as we were treated to a surreal looking flat bank of clouds encapsulating the rocky moonscape valley below.

The clouds were nice enough to lift when we got to the top, before closing back in once we started our descent.

The hike was pretty amazing, although it was a new experience traveling with someone who actually prepares for hiking and heeds caution signs. I was kitted out in my usual outfit of runners, jeans, a tshirt and hoodie, and my camera bag, whereas Kalli came uber prepared. To go with her hiking boots and head to toe outdoor activities clothing, she also packed enough rations to see us through a small odyssey, and hiking poles. We even turned around when we reached the cloud line, just like the park ranger told us to, in case it got too dangerous! So I guess, there's a chance that she saved my life, and I know I was not complaining when she whipped out a thermos of hot tea when we found momentary shelter from the ice cold wind that managed to cut right through us when we were near the peak.

While Kalli was all about getting up early, and making the most of the day by putting her body through various manners of physical torture, her room mate, Yianna, was the other end of the spectrum. Yianna and her friends loved to honour the Greek past time of drinking and chatting till all hours of the night. As I mentioned earlier, Greeks drink at a much more leisurely pace than most other countries, spacing out the occasion with Greek delicacies like Olives, Sardines, other finger foods, and lots of lively conversation. I really like this Greek style of partying. Obviously it changes somewhat in the summer when the tourist from the West flood in, and the quiet low key lounging is replaced with DJ's and disco biscuits, but it was really nice to experience the other side of the Greek isles. It also helped that all of Yianna's friends spoke English and were cool as hell.

Apart from hanging out with my hosts, I spent most of my time just wandering around the town. I really love the pace of life in the Mediterranean islands, and the mentality. Chania is the kind of place where people are passionate about their local produce and culinary creations, place more emphasis on socialising than finances, and there is a real sense of community. It doesn't hurt that the city has some seriously picturesque locations, and to top it all off there are orange and lemon trees just growing everywhere, which you're free to eat from. It's not gold lined streets, but it's close.

Chania harbour.

Sadly even somewhere as isolated and beautiful as this has to deal with the ugliness of the rest of the world, and by ugliness I mean neo-Nazis. In what has to be one of the most obvious cases of favouring distraction over reality, the neo-Nazi movement in Greece is surprisingly large, with the fascist party gaining something like 15% of the vote at the last election. While I was in Chania the main street was locked down for a day thanks to a pro-fascism speaker coming to town, and the ensuing demonstrations. You have to love the logic behind focusing on immigration as the main problem at a time when your economy is bottoming out. For starters, immigrants have had absolutely nothing to do with the ingrained corruption and financial delusion which has brought Greece to its' knees. Secondly, on what planet do you have to be from to drum up anti-immigration talk when half of your work force is likely going to seek to emigrate in the very near future in pursuit of work? The last thing Greece is going to want is tighter EU migration laws! But I guess anyone who looks at Hitler and his ideologies and thinks 'Hmm, That went well' isn't going to be too accomplished in critical thinking. But after seeing some of the fascism supporters I have a new theory:
Small penis + Money = Ferrari
Small penis + Broke = Neo-Nazi

Luckily one pro-Nazi rally does not make a town, and I left Chania with a very fond opinion of it, and headed to the largest city on Crete, Heraklion. One of Yianna's friends, Raluca, who I'd met while drinking till all hours in Chania, happened to be from Heraklion, and I ended up travelling to Heraklion and staying with her. Raluca is insane, but in the funnest and nicest possible way. Together with her house mates, and her spazzy dog, I had an unbelievable time in Heraklion. The city itself isn't anything particularly special. It's not a bad place, but it wouldn't win any tourism awards, or particularly stick in your memory, if it weren't for how fun it is. There's a quite large university population in the city, and there are tonnes of bars and restaurants to be frequented, and while we did spend quite a bit of time visiting some of these, most of the best times I had in Heraklion were at Raluca's place, or just chilling out around the town or on the beach. A couple of highlights were a spontaneous disco on my last night, just involving her two roomies, a friend who was in town staying with them, and the dog, and chilling in the town square, drinking beers, and trying to find willing guys with moustaches to take photos with me as I'd promised photos with local moustachioed men for anyone who'd donated me money for Movember; an off which a lot of people had taken me up on it. The best photo we got was of a Greek guy originally from Germany who after taking the photo asked me 'Will this now be put on a site for gay people with moustaches or something?'. This cracked us up so much that Raluca ended up jumping in the photo as well.

If you like this photo, you can find more at www.gay-europeans-with-moustaches.com 

One thing that did kind of take the gloss off the whole Movember thing was that the other guy staying at Raluca's place as a guest had Alopecia. If you want to feel like a prick, try hanging out with a guy who would love to just be able to grow an eyebrow, while you walk around sporting an outgrown mohawk/mullet and a dirty moustache. I felt like someone who'd flown to Ethiopia with a plate full of steaks and then thrown them all to some crocodiles while the starving locals watched (I care not for any errors contained in that analogy).

That's the awkward smile of shame I'm wearing there.

My time on Heraklion was made memorable thanks to my awesome housemates, especially Raluca. Even when we weren't drinking and spontaneously discoing, we would hang out on the beach, or just wander around town.

I think Raluca and her friends were a pretty accurate overall representation of Greeks. I know I've spent a lot of time telling you why Greece is screwed (and it is), but this doesn't change the fact that Greek people are awesome. They are true southern Europeans, and really live life to the fullest, albeit at a slow speed. This didn't really surprise me, as all the Greek expats who've been a part of my life have been amazing people, and I'd highly recommend letting a Greek person show you how to party, eat, or do anything that involves being social or fun. Just be wary if one of them runs for mayor in your town.

After leaving Crete I had one more destination in Greece, the island of Rodos (or Rhodes). Sadly the Colossus no longer spans the harbours' entry (I really should get more up to date guide books), but I didn't have much time to kill on the island, so wasn't too disappointed. I was visiting Rodos because it was the only place I could catch a ferry to Turkey from, and while the walled old town centre was quite beautiful, and the island would have been amazing in the middle of summer (especially if you owned a sailboat), I managed to do everything I wanted to in the few hours I had there. By this I mean I had time to pose as the Colossus:

For those of you with keen eyes, you will have noticed my one slightly wetter leg. Turns out that posing as the Colossus, while by yourself, using your cameras’ timer, and standing on slippery rocks, is a recipe for disaster.

The only other event of note that occurred in Rodos, was as I was squelching my way back to the hotel to pick up my bags and catch my ferry, I ran into Peruvian, Swedish, Texan Mike as he was leaving the same hotel on his way to the same ferry. I'm not joking when I say there's only one route through the Balkans.

The ferry ride was pretty standard, and quite short compared to some of my recent trips, although I did have a moment of panic while waiting for my passport to be stamped going through customs. The lady stamping it gave it a very thorough check, and after a few minutes of checking my many many European stamps, she wandered off with my passport in hand to a back room, where in my imagination, a large angry man with a rubber glove and a big black stamp was sitting. Luckily it turned out she was just going out back to get a piece of paper to stamp, because, as I had a stamp from Macedonia, which Greece doesn't recognise, she wasn't allowed to actually stamp in my passport, which means I now get to carry around a passport with this in it for the next two years:

And I can't lose it because it proves I honoured my Schengen visa terms. Awesome.

I hopped on the ferry with quite a heavy heart. After about seven months traipsing across Europe I was finally leaving the schengen region for the last time in the foreseeable future. I had spent my last Euro of my trip, and was a bit sad about that fact. That sadness rapidly disappeared when Turkey greeted me with this.

I loved Greece. I mean it's doomed, but I loved it. The people were amazing, the food and drink was delectable, and it is one of the prettiest parts of the world that I've visited. But there was also something about it that made you feel like you were seeing something special. I think one fact that illustrates just how awesome a country it is to visit, is that so many backpackers I met chose to visit Greece before they checked out places like the Amazon or the Iceland glaciers. Greece's appeal is so great that people will risk missing natural wonders that may or may not be there in a few years, just to go see a place that's been the same for thousands of years. I mean it's not like anything would be majorly different if you visited it in a few years time...

Hmmm, or....