Wavering

by Mairin Ann Kane (Portugal)

I didn't expect to find Greece

‘This island has an energy, you wait – you’ll feel it’ my guesthouse shuttle driver, Alec, called over his shoulder, in an unexpected American accent, as we ascdended from Athinios, Santorini’s port. I smiled and scoffed at the cliché. I was 25 years old, on my first solo adventure through Greece, desperately in search of any meaning at all. I had packed my bag full of caution and pinches of salt and I applied both with full force, despite being absorbed by the enthralling views of the South Aegean Sea. As we stole higher I learned that my American driver, was actually from mainland Greece and passed six months of the year working 12 hours, 7 days a week in the gruelling heat of Grecian Summers. Laying my satchel at my feet I decided that perhaps I could leave aside the misplaced accent and my own stereotypes in order to maybe uncover that portal into anything else. The journey was a meandering trip amoung the coastel route to Fira, filled with a backdrop of Alec’s annotations. He adored this place – it made him come to life – albeit I didn’t know him before – but all the same his words hovered in the stuffy shuttle van with an evanescence I had never before learned. By the time I stepped from the van and hauled my backpack to the reception of my guesthouse I had caught a slight dance in my step. Zoe met me with smiles and hugs and directed me to a table – already laid with stuffed Aubergines and Salad (Greek of course). ‘I hadn’t ordered dinner’, I said quickly, yet unaware that I had landed exactly in the place that was responsible for the conception of the word ‘hospitality’. ‘Of course, Of course, sit sit’ was my smiling reply. So I complied, I lavished the food and my bags were taken from me and brought to wherever I would spend the next three nights. ‘You are a girl, so brave to travel alone, we must give you the best room’. The guesthouse was quaint and already underpriced from my tourist perspective. I couldn’t believe my luck, so I brought once again my bag of caution to the table – wondering if I was, in fact, being ‘swindled’. I needn’t have worried – true to Zoe’s word I got the top floor apartment, with two balconies that enveloped the rooms in a gust of gratifyingly fresh air. Zoe had tucked a bottle of local red wine under my arm as I had thanked her awkwardly for the delicacies and went off in search of my bags. I wasted little time in collapsing on to a terrace chair, sighing relief at my uncumbered arrival and opening the gracious wine – so it too – could breath in the evening air of Santorini. I sat and smiled – uncautiously delighted at my spontaeous decision to take flight to Greece and as the air circled in the room behind and lifted all the cobwebs of travel I couldn’t help but fall in to those words I had earlier ridiculed. ‘This place really has an energy’. Little did I know that I didn’t have to wait very long for in to seep in to the crevices of my self - I didn’t know that what I was feeling, then, was something so unwaveringly and otherwordly that I would carry it with me in all my future travels and settlements.