Meis

Meis – or Kastelorizo in Greek – is a small Greek island, approximately 2km off the Turkish coast. There are boats there daily from Kaş. “Meis” is Turkish for eye, while “Kaş” means eyebrow.

I board a very comfortable slouchy-beanbag-chair-covered boat full of tourists and ex-pats, most like me doing their regular three-monthly visa run to this tiny Greek island. There are little over 400 residents, some hotels, pensions, cafes, restaurants and a couple of shops. Apparently people are subsidised by the Greek government for living on the island – holding the frontier.

It ‘s nice to be back in Greece for a brief time – attempting to remember the Greek I spent a painful 3.5 months trying to memorize (it’s almost all gone!), seeing the Greek style of houses and change in culture, and ordering a Greek coffee – Enna Ellinika cafe parakalo.

Four hours later I return to Kaş and to Turkey. The following day I’m back up the mountain at the Rainbow.

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Meis Island official website

Goodbye Greece

Kavala

All my rides tell me Kavala is a beautiful city – but how can a city be beautiful?

Getting out of the car by the highway exit and hugging my environmentalist drivers goodbye, I have to admit the way the sun throws it’s light at the white towerblocks that stagger down the mountain to the sparkling sea below is, indeed, beautiful.

I’m staying in the anarchist occupation in the centre of the city. It’s very punk and a far cry from the tranquility of the forest, but the people are friendly and welcoming. At the forest occupation and the squat in Thessaloniki there were more women than men. Here, it’s the reverse and I have a hard time adjusting to what I interpret as a macho energy. I ask one of the women how she finds living there, but she doesn’t understand what I mean and seems offended that I think her friends are macho. I try to reassure her that I like them, just find them a bit… well… macho. I can’t think of another word that expresses what I mean. Thesaurus anyone?

I spend a day exploring the old city by foot, walking the narrow steep and twisting streets. I pay the €2 entrance fee to the castle and make the most of my money by picnicing on the castle walls, looking down over the city and out into the Aegean.

My evenings are spent at the steki – an autonomous bar with a small bookshop, library and a couple of computers in the back room. It doesn’t really get busy until after my bedtime, but I manage occasional conversations – notably one with a Greek anarchist, who after hearing that the anarchist scene in the UK is a lot more environmentally oriented, tells me – “We don’t need environmentalism – we have anarchism!” Sigh.

Two full days and three nights in Kavala feel like enough. I say goodbye to the anarcho-punks and find a bus out of town to a good hitching spot.

Outside of squat

“Community watch Area – police not welcome”

“No gods, no masters”

Castle

Lighthouse

Kavala

Komotini

Church and Mosque in Komotini

This time my lifts don’t tell me I’m going to a beautiful city. In fact they suggest I go to Xanthi instead. But I’m not going to Komotini to look at the city, I’m going purely for the purpose of meeting a Couchsurfing host named Patrick.

I found Patrick’s profile way back when I was first in Athens and have been looking forward to meeting him. I’m not disappointed. As a long-term traveller I have grown to appreciate the beauty of feeling at home somewhere, and that is just how I feel with Patrick – right from the moment he greets me at the cafe in Komotini’s main square.

Komotini isn’t beautiful, but it has character. The city is half-Greek, half Turkish. There’s a mosque next to the church, elderly people mutter in Turkish together, and I notice nargiles and Turkish chai glasses in shop windows for the first time.

Unfortunately, I only get two days with Patrick, but he leaves me his key along with his good faith when he goes to Thessaloniki Film Festival for the weekend and I lock up carefully for him when I leave the following day. It’s time to leave Greece at last…

It’s an easy walk to the edge of the city and I raise my thumb to the passing cars. One stops and takes me to the edge of Alexandropouli. He’s half Greek, half Turkish. There’s something about him I don’t like, but it’s not that he’s threatening or a bad ride. I figure it out when he tells me his job – as well as the restaurant he owns, he makes a living by transporting cattle from Greece to Turkey for slaughter. Eighty cattle, three times per week and he also hunts rabbits with his dog. I ask if he loves his dog. He smiles and says yes, he loves his dog. I tell him I’m a vegetarian, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.

My next ride is a German man, who takes me up to the border. He’s not going across himself, so I walk to the window where the border guard is and ask what to do. He says I can’t walk across on foot or I’ll be shot, so I hang around until a car arrives. This man is Georgian and speaks no English, but I’m a dab hand at improvised sign language  -  walking fingers and mimed shooting explain that I need a lift over the border. We both get back in his car.

Goodbye Greece

Evros River - the border between Greece and Turkey

Driving over the infamous Evros River, I think of all the lives lost by desperate people attempting to cross in the opposite direction.

Migrations: Evros, last door to Europe

UNHCR: Sixteen people drowned attempting to cross the Evros river border between Turkey and Greece

W2EU: Archive for Evros Category

The Turkish border greets me with red flag waving. I wave goodbye to the Georgian and stand in line to get my visa. €15 buy me 90 days in Turkey and I wait for my host to collect me from the nearby small town where he lives.

Turkish Border

Ipsala

Ipsala Mosque

I found my host on CS. I chose him because I wanted to stay somewhere smaller before going to Istanbul, and because he’s into cycling and environmentalism, so I figured we would get along. He’s nice enough. We eat together and talk a while. He’s organised some pojects around a lake nearby for cyclists and birdwatchers, which is nice. Unfortunately he later tells me what his “real” job is: he’s a border guard. What can I say? He might as well have told me he’s a Nazi. “It’s just a job,” he says. Yes, that’s what they all say.

I wake in the morning to the sight of my full-commando-military-attired host on his way out to work. He’ staying out all night, so I have the place to myself until I leave.

If Komotini isn’t beautiful, then Ipsala certainly isn’t. Anyway it’s raining and I have period cramps so I’m not tempted to exlore much. I manage a little walk around in the rain and buy a bit of food. It’s daunting being in a new country with zero language, zero cultural awareness and even zero currency until I manage to get directions to a bank by miming inserting my cash card into a bank machine (my hand) in a shop.

I also freak myself out a bit by reading the Safety Hitchhiking Guide to Turkey for girls and decide that it might be better to get a bus to Istanbul and learn a bit of Turkish before starting my hitchhiking adventures in this new country.

Vertiskos

“But why don’t you just get the bus?” asks my bus-driver out of Thessaloniki, when I tell him I’m going to hitchhike. “Where would be the fun in that?” I reply with a smile, and he drops me at the road to Vertiskos.

I walk a little way up the small dusty road and extend my right thumb. A few cars pass, some look at me, none smile – none even consider stopping. A small white dog notices me from a nearby house and announces his disapproval in a repetetive, yappy little way. This has the usual effect of provoking all the other dogs in the vicinity to join in. Half an hour later it’s getting cold, the dog is pissing me off and I’m beginning to get “that fascist feeling” from the passing cars. This is reinforced when I notice a ‘White Power’ symbol graffitied on a wall on my way back into town. I’ve decided the bus might be more fun after all.

The main square of Vertiskos village might be big enough to squash one more bus into, but not much bigger than that. It’s raining lightly and my umbrella, gloves and coat are all collectively broken or missing in action, but it’s not long before a dark blue four-wheel drive turns up with my new friends inside and we go for a drink in the one and only tavern in the village.

Here are Maria, Yorgos, Constantia and little Maya – Maria and Yorgo’s 19 month old daughter. After a beer we drive down the track to the two Forestry Commission buildings they’ve been occupying for the past three years. Originally there were more people here, but slowly they all drifted off leaving Maria, Yorgo, Maya and another girl who’s not here. Constantia is just visiting, like me.

Early morning alarm, on water

It feels geat to replace towerblocks with trees and wake to the sound of the goose (quacking?) rather than cars honking and the mechanical sound of men flogging vegetables from car tannoys. There’s no internet of course and no sun for 12 days means rationed electricity, but there’s a wood burner inside and it’s cozy and warm.

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It’s “Clean Monday” – the first day of lent. There are celebrations happening in every village and we’re just getting ready to leave when we notice small white flakes floating from the sky outside. Could it be? It certainly could, and within half an hour they are very large white flakes and rapidly covering the ground. We decide to go out anyway, but only to Vertiskos. We will visit Maria’s parents in the village. In the Orthodox religion, “fasting” is basically just veganism, so this is a great time of year for people like me – but I’m disappointed to discover that fish doesn’t really count as “meat” and a lot of people cheat and eat yogurt anyway.

Clean Monday Feast

Still, there’s plenty to eat. I’m especially pleased with the tradtional dolmathes which I helped to prepare – wrapping the cooked rice, leek and herbs in vine leaves and boiling them with a plate on top to weigh them down and stop them from unravelling. Another part of Clean Monday seems to involve drinking a hell of a lot of tsipouro, which doesn’t seem very clean at all.

The "Orchestra"

When we have scoffed and drunk a fair bit we walk to the main square, where an “orchestra” of two cold looking men – one with a keyboard, the other singing and playing a bouzouki – play to a small group of drunk old men. Gradually more people arrive, the second round of eating and drinking begins and much dancing and merriment is had by all.

Sneaky, sneaky…

Bullseye!

 

The other house

I’m developing a routine: wake up, make the fire and sweep the floor as Anna wakes and we lay our mats down on the floor – twin yoga shadows in black trousers and polo-necks bend and stretch in front of the fire. Maria, Yorgo and Maya arrive and I go over to the other house to meditate, then back for breakfast and coffee before my walk – my favourite part of the day.

I sit on the hill, check my phone messages, dance to the music I have stored in my phone and sing out loud on the way back down. Often I take a detour or walk on further, explore the forest, climb a tree… and always I am escorted by at least one, if not two, dog escorts. I’m told when some couschsurfers came to visit on bicycles, the dogs followed them over twenty kilometers and they had to shut them in a cafe and call Anna to come and get them, lest they follow them all the way to Turkey. More loyal canine friends cannot be found.

I’ve never been very good with children, I don’t really know how to speak with them. Usually we just gaze shyly at one another or ignore each other completely. Not so with Maya. This little girl demands attention, and she knows exactly how to get it. By day two we’re already building up a relationship. She adds “hello” and “bye” to her few words of Greek vocabulary, and will often potter over to where I am to see what it is I’m up to, turn my laptop off unexpectedly by pressing the pretty blue button, or simply demand “pano!” (up) with her arms outstretched.

The snow is slowly melting away and Maya can hardly find any “xoni” (snow) on her “voltitsa” (little walk). The sky is blue for the third day in a row and it feels like spring is really here.

The Hunger Strike continues in Thessaloniki. We listen on the radio for news. We hear first that two women have been arrested for preventing doctors from giving the men food in hospital. Then something astonishing happens – the hunger strikers win! The strike is ended! Ok, they didn’t exactly get their demand of “unconditional legalisation for all migrants living and working in Greece” – but they did get rolling six month “tolerance” permits, until they have reached the new eight year work requirment to entitle them to stay permanently, with the ability to leave and return to Greece in the meantime. Many of the men have already been working in Greece for more than eight years and so will be legalised right away – more details here.

—————————

City day – well, town day at least. Anna and I drive to Langada to collect Constantia and Sma. They and some others are visiting for the first firing up of the big cob oven which has now been finished. We also need to buy food and wine for the occasion.

The new cob oven

Five men are driving up to visit us – very exciting, but their car breaks down and they go back to Thessaloniki instead. Everyone is very disappointed, but we drink wine, bake cake and pie in the new oven and barbeque vegetable kebabs, mushrooms (and meat for the others) on the fire. Barbequed mushrooms are definitely the most underestimated culinary phenomenon ever to hit my pallet. Smoked delisciousness – I could eat these forever.

Vegetable Kebabs

Barbequeued Mushrooms

Sma with kebab

Sma and I are both leaving. The others are driving to Thessaloniki, but there’s no room in the car for all of us, so Constantia, Sma and I walk for a few kilometres while Anna drives the others to the village and comes back to collect us. The walk is spring foresty goodness, mountain views and a surprise waterfall – the perfect goodbye to the forest I have called home, if only for the past week. Sma and I get a lift to Langada before we get a chance to say goodbye to the others. Maya is asleep in the car. I have to whisper – “Bye Maya! Bye!”

Puppies!

Katsika (“Goat”) – the mother

Cat-house?