Sunday Morning Coming Down Part 6 Galini
Sunday Morning Coming Down Part 6 GALINI
Walk down a sun blasted windy narrow street . Tables are out on the street and on the tables are bread, honey and butter. They have blue tablecloths. Sea birds fly in over the rooftops. Young scruffy travelers are AT the tables and I soon learn ...aint' gettin no cappucino or cafe au lait here. You got two choices. Greek coffee which is a spoonful of coffee in the bottom of a demi tasse with boiling water poured on it. It's black as hell and the grounds, ...like sand. There are cans of Carnation instant milk on the table to be used as 'cream'. The greek coffee absolutely requires about 3 grams of sugar to be palatable. The other option is "Nescafe" . Just good old instant coffee in a regular cup...sweetened and creamed with the Carnation. That's my usual choice. The bread is good. fresh. The jam or honey is great. The wind coming in smells of the sea ...or is it Africa? You are probably wearing the same clothes you wore the day before and your hair is scraggly. You can see down the narrow street right out to the harbor where a couple greek fishing boats are bobbing.
Pretty soon, Stats comes along and sits down. He, like you, is a little groggy from all the beer you had the night before at Zorbas. But pretty soon the coffee and sugar and jam get inside ya and you start feeling alive. On the best days...there is real sunshine on your face and a cool breeze up the street and life feels fine.
Hey. Damn. Sitting down at the next table are those Canadian gals that were drinking and chatting at Zorbas last night...but not dancing. Gwen (the mousy one with the peaches and cream complexion) and Kathy...yeah..Kathy...the tall Amazon. In a while, Oliver comes down the street with his loping gate. Somehow he looks great. He sits down and says hello to Kathy. Our tables are close.
Now, here I have to stop and say a word to every woman I have known in my life since this moment there on the street in Galini. You women who had to deal with me...and put up with my bullshit owe a massive thanks to Kathy and Gwen. Up until this point in my life I had been a pathetic male chauvinist pig. I mean...I was from Sellersburg. It was expected. Guys were thrown into one side of the arena and told they were the shit. I actually bought into that too. I was once part of a track team of 3 other guys that challenged the whole girls high school track team to a track meet. What did we call our 4 guy team? (I cringe when I think of it)....the "Kool Klub".
Well, we were about to get to know two young women who turned me upside down. Made me better.
Kathy was about 6 feet tall and beautiful with a beautiful athletic body. She had straight light brown hair she parted in the middle. Just shy of hitting her shoulder. Her features were regular and she was...in short beautiful. Gwen was another kind of female. She was only about 5'3". She had black, kinda curly bushy hair she wore in a kind of bob. She was "pretty" but not beautiful. Her body wasn't especially sexy. In fact it was the kind of body that just suggests her sex. She was slight. She wore modest clothes. She had a great complexion. Smiles and bright eyes. Both of them were smart.
Kathy and Gwen had NOT ridden a bus to Galini. They had hitchhiked to Chania and then down and across the mountains coming through the little town of Spia. In the days and weeks ahead, I was to discover they had done so carrying their backpacks. I remember complaining about my duffle. OMG these gals were carrying backpacks that were twice the size of Stat's. And...we were to discover that they had everything...I mean EVERYTHING you might need somewhere in those bags. Cooking pot? got it. Iron? got it. Soap and shampoo? .... I mean EVERYTHING. And here was Gwen ...just a small thing. But not only had they hitchhiked through western Crete...they had not come into Athens as we had...ie through 'safe' western countries. They had come through Yugoslavia ...communist Yugoslavia and then down through Albania to Athens. They were cheerful. Smart. Educated. I assume Gwen had read the whole of Jane Austen by the time she was 17. Kathy was tough. She clearly could have kicked my ass in a fair fight...but I would never have been so foolish as to fight her. They were from Canada... (can't recall what province) and were, like me and Stats, just traveling.
Oliver fell in love with Kathy.
Kathy, on the other hand, was 'interested' in Oliver but she was not the kind of woman who made such a choice lightly. As charming and roguish as Oliver was...I learned she also paid attention to his love of liquor. Hmm. But more on that later.
Our casual conversation ended and we parted...knowing we would see each other again at Zorbas that night because that was the only place to go at night.
What happened in these days in Galini I have never since experienced. We met other folks at breakfast ..Michael...who was a british student of philosophy and was studying fractals and working out a theory on how the fractal patterns that appear in nature might also be manifested in human history. He was about 29 or 30 and pale and intense. He regaled us for a whole morning on the oddities of historic fractal occurrences. (I wish I had a tape recording). We met Ben. Ben was a Canadian. Aged about 54.He looked young. He had steel grey hair and a diffident air. He leaned on his motorcycle which ..we were informed...he was riding around the world. He'd ridden it so far...from his home in western Canada to the east coast where he and his bike were shipped to England. From there he ridden through the UK ...across the channel and through Europe. Came through Yugoslavia (like Kathy and Gwen) and down through Greece. He was here as a side trip as he planned to go back to mainland and through Turkey to the middle east...India and so on. He was...an adventurer.
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In Galini we spent our days in adventures. I recall one day...going to the sea and swimming in my underwear. (skinny dipping would NOT have been accepted by the locals). Another day we hiked through the hills behind Galini to a olive grove where Oliver used his broken greek to chat with the old lady who was tending the trees. Behind Galini was a mountain that was called "pussy mountain" because it had a rock formation that looked like a vagina. So one day we hiked out there and tried rock climbing the 'vagina'. Stats and Oliver were fearless and took chances...but I was a coward and only went so far. I told Stats..."I don't want to have to call your mom in Sellersburg and tell her you cracked open your head climbing pussy mountain".
One day we rented motorbikes. It was a beautiful sunny day and we headed out on the side roads (of gravel) and came upon a monastery. The monastery was beautiful..very old. The monks had taken a vow of silence and a sign on the gate requested that any visitor respect their oath and not talk and not make noise. We visited the chapel. We were silent. It was still and the only sounds were the rushing of the wind and the birds in the trees in courtyard before the chapel.
We headed out and up a mountain road and came to a village. There was no commercial operations here. Just homes and a church. Oliver spoke to someone and explained we were hungry and wanted to eat. We were guided to a home on the end of the main street and invited in. The woman of the house served us goat stew with vegetables. It was delicious. We paid her and she smiled.
Every day was some kind of adventure. When evening started coming on...we headed back. Back to our white walled hotel room. It was time to eat dinner and head to the community gathering at Zorbas.
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