Girl Gone Greek (2 page)

My flatmates and I had undertaken the all-important task of holding the ‘End of TEFL Hell’ party. Taking a moment to ourselves in the kitchen, we pondered our post-TEFL futures that had taken a back seat during the last days of our course.

“Why Greece, Rachel?” Brian asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“She doesn’t want to join me in Japan, that’s why” called Richard from the sitting room, leaning over the arm of the sofa to throw a wink at me. Although Richard already had two years’ experience teaching in Japan, he’d been just as shell-shocked as I was on our first day. Due to his experience, he was the first one we’d all turned to when the verbs became too much, and he’d supported us all really well.

“Yeah, I’m sure she’ll give up her life plans for a man she’s only known for one month,” said Sandra, pointing a carrot stick at him.

“Huh! People give up more after ‘knowing’ someone for one night” Richard became defensive. I smiled at him, replying “I’m sure my sister wouldn’t be surprised if I did hop on a plane to Japan with you. I do, after all, lead an ‘irresponsible life.’”

“You naughty rolling stone, Rachel” Sandra slapped me on the wrist. “Don’t you listen to anyone else. Just follow your gut instinct. Family can be full of good intentions, but they interfere too much—I should know,” she sighed, a slightly glazed look coming over her.

Sandra was in her early thirties and about to head off to Finland to live with her new boyfriend (who she’d known for longer than one month). She was planning to teach English while she was there and from our conversations, it was clear her parents didn’t approve of her nomadic lifestyle and wanted her to settle down in the UK and provide them with grandchildren. It was nice to speak to someone who understood what it was like to have people criticise and disapprove of the way you lived, people who were supposed to be supportive. Blood ties weren’t guarantees of a great relationship and I felt lucky to have shared a flat with both her and Tom for one month, the intensity of the course and our similar backgrounds bonding us.

I turned back to Brian. “I loved Asia when I was there and I certainly do like the idea of going further than Europe, but there’s something that draws me to Greece. I need to go and discover the real country and culture, not just what the tourists see, I need to be in a place that supports this anti-authoritarian side of me. What about you? Where’ll you go?”

He seemed less enthusiastic about his TEFL future. “They need someone who’s TEFL qualified at my school here in deepest, darkest Cornwall. Winking he added “I might come and visit you in the land of
Mamma Mia
, as well as Rich in Japan…or Sandra in Finland. Who knows? I’ve got the whole world to choose from now, after meeting you fine people.” He motioned to the party in the next room.

Brian was right—even though from different backgrounds, we all shared a passion to experience and understand different cultures, and we’d seen TEFL as a route to doing this. My other flatmate Tom didn’t really know what he was going to do with his qualification, but just felt it’d help him with his primary school career. Like Brian, schools were starting to see the need to have TEFL qualified teachers.

“Cheers everyone!” I raised my glass just as
Dancing Queen
came through the iPod, and I smiled once again, knowing soon I would be winging my way to Greece.

Arriving at Gatwick Airport, I fought tears as I hugged Dad goodbye. The gate for my easyjet flight to Athens had been announced, and now, after at least a week of packing, unpacking, re-packing and wondering if the Tetley teabags and Robinsons Orange Barley Water were
really
necessary (they were), I was heading to Athens after paying an excess baggage fee of £75. Why did airlines insist on punishing people who were brave enough to change their lives, yet still needed the occasional home comfort? It seemed it wasn’t only Kirsty who disapproved of my life plan.

Dad insisted on driving me to the airport, and was mildly OCD about not wanting to be late. The weather had been characteristically miserable on the drive up: dark clouds and drizzly rain. We’d arrived two hours before check-in had even opened, forcing us to make small talk...neither one acknowledging the massive elephant trumpeting away in the departure lounge—the fact that I was leaving and we’d have to say goodbye.

My family isn’t particularly expressive. I knew that despite all his moaning about getting a backache during the long drive, Dad had taken me so that he could do as much for me as he possibly could—right up to the last minute. This even included arranging a hotel for my first night in Athens.

At last, the PA announced the final call. I really had to go.

“It’s only Greece, Dad. It’s not like I’m off to the South Pacific again, or that village in Sri Lanka,” (I’d kept the Love Match offers during my three month teaching stint there to myself). “And I know I’m your youngest, but I’m not
young
anymore.”

But I seemed to be reassuring myself more than him; despite all his help and company, he looked less upset about me leaving this time. In fact, he had a look of affection that I suspected went further than his feelings for me.

“It’s Greece,” he said, as he caught my inquisitive stare. “You’ll see what I mean when you get there. I’m convinced that this trip will finally cure you of your dromomania.”

“My
what
?” I contemplated—not for the first time—the irony that it was Dad who was a walking dictionary, whilst I was the one who intended to be an English teacher.

“Look it up on that Googly thing you’re always using these days, see if I’m not right. Now go and get that plane, I don’t want to have driven here two hours early—and get a bad back to boot—only for you to miss it.” I smiled inwardly…he still had to get his moan in there somehow.

“I love you, Dad.” He enveloped me in an awkward bear hug—despite checking in a huge bag, I still had an inordinate amount of hand-luggage too—pinched my cheek in a Greek manner and then backed away towards the exit, smiling. The fact he seemed relaxed about me leaving made me feel more excited and less nervous. I waved as I took myself, teabags and all, through to the Passengers Only departure area that heralded the first part of my adventure.

“Please return to your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Restore your tables and seats to their upright and locked positions. We will be commencing our final approach into Athens in ten minutes,” the stewardess announced over the intercom. I obeyed, looking out through the window into a cloudless evening, and I recalled an earlier announcement stating that the temperature in Athens, although September, was still a balmy twenty-five degrees…a far cry from the drizzly grey weather I’d left behind.

Dad had asked his old Greek business associate to meet me and take me to the hotel. The next day I’d catch a bus to my new home in a village in the mountains, where I would meet my new employer—a Greek woman who’d been running an English language school for more than twenty years.

“
Yeiasou!
” yelled an elderly, balding and rather large Greek man as I exited the customs hall. Clearly he recognised me…and I had a sudden memory of him—Stamatis: I was seven years old on holiday on a Greek island and he was making me cry as he told me off for climbing onto the unprotected side of his yacht.

Yes, that’s him…the old coot
, I remembered him shaking and scolding me, telling me that I could’ve been badly injured falling down the side and becoming trapped between two boats.

“He’s only worried about you,” Mum had soothed, shooting Dad a look that prompted him to go and have a word with his friend. “He didn’t mean to make you cry…he’s just being Greek.” At seven years old, I didn’t understand what she meant…but had sniffled a shy smile as he’d wandered over to pat my head and boom “You’re a big girl, don’t be so sad…come now, let’s look at the fish.”

Now I accepted his offer to take my luggage, and became aware of his eyes roving up and down my frame.
My God, I’m the daughter of his best English friend, and here he is, sizing me up!
Something else to add to the list of things not to tell my father. “Your father is an excellent man,” Stamatis claimed as we drove out of the airport. “But why he wanted to stay in that dump of a hotel in Piraeus when he came here on business, and not in Central Athens at the Intercontinental, is beyond me.”

Well, clearly he’s a humbler and better man than you’ll ever be…
I bit my tongue and smiling sweetly, politely responded “You know Dad. Never one to want to show off.” After all, despite yelling at me when I was younger and giving me the once over, he had met me from the airport and was driving me to “that dump in Piraeus” so I could stay in the same hotel Dad patronized twenty years ago. It wouldn’t be fair of me to be rude to Stamatis, regardless of his lack of tact. Also, not really fair to hold onto a grudge about shouting at a seven year old version of me! So I shut up, took in my surroundings and allowed myself to be dropped off at my resting point.

“It is good to see you again, Rachel.” Stamatis hugged me, jumped into his 4-wheel-drive and sped off.
Thank God he didn’t grab my arse. How would I have explained decking an old man?

Contrary to Stamatis’ disparaging comments, the hotel was no dump at all. Built on a hill outside Piraeus, it towered above the port and I allowed a shiver of excitement to run through me:
My first night in Greece!

The next morning, squinting one eye shut against the daylight shining in through a crack in the curtains of my seventh-floor room, I could make out the sea and distant islands. Everything was bathed in bright sunlight—something of a novelty for me given that less than 24 hours ago, it had been a typically wet and grey English day. Still lying on my double bed, I rolled over and gazed at the view from the window. After a moment of allowing myself to bask in the sunlight from my vantage point, I stretched and padded out onto the balcony, marvelling at how clear and blue everything was. The hotel’s location meant I could witness the hustle and bustle of the ferries below, unloading and loading—one pulling out to head to a visible island in the distance.

A glance at the bedside clock told me it was still only seven a.m., yet the street below was clogged with traffic, with horns blaring and people shouting at each other. I could distinctly hear raised voices and banging of fists on car bonnets. Leaning over my balcony, I saw two men shouting, waving and gesticulating at each other. They looked ready to break into a fight any minute. Yet suddenly, they broke out into raucous laughter and clapped one another on the back.
If this is how they carry on when they’re happy, they must be ready to kill each other when they’re angry.

Making my way to the dining room on the ground floor, I gazed out through the floor to ceiling window whilst eating a Greek buffet breakfast of yogurt with honey and muesli, listening to the cacophony of shouts, laughter and car horns around me.

Later, as I was checking out, the receptionist behind the small wooden desk smiled: “Just stand outside, Madam. A yellow taxi will soon stop for you. Tell them you need to go to the bus station…and welcome to Greece” she added as an afterthought.

I smiled:
Yes, welcome to Greece, Rachel
.

Standing in the doorway of my new flat, I mulled over the last six hours. A taxi ‘stopping for me’ wasn’t as easy as just standing outside the hotel, as the receptionist seemed to think. I’d had to endure half a dozen variations of “
Kyria
, that particular bus station is miles from here,
oxi.
” (“Madam, that place is on the other side of the planet, I’m not going there”), but I finally managed to persuade one to take me. Clearly there was more than one bus station in Athens, and mine was so far from Piraeus, no-one’d wanted to bother.
No priority in this country for a lone woman traveller then!
I’d identified the correct bus for my destination after struggling to decipher the Greek letters on the front. A snort from the bus driver with a vague nod of the head also confirmed it. Clearly in Greece, the passengers weren’t accorded a great deal of courtesy from taxi drivers, nor public transport employees. A three hour journey took me to the inland village that’d be my new home for the next year. As my new boss had been lax in corresponding, I had no idea whether or not I’d be met, and no idea what to do when I arrived.

I’m thirty-four years old. I can do this. I do not need someone to hold my hand every step of the way
I repeated this until it became a litany in my head. In any case, what could happen to me in a small town in the heart of Greece? I’d always wanted this; craved an adventurous life over stability. I was determined not to fall at the first hurdle. Unfortunately my imagination, whilst at times a blessing, could also occasionally serve as a curse. Images from the old Burt Reynolds movie
Deliverance
came to mind: inbred locals with matted hair cackling at me from the roadside as the bus trundled along, with the Appalachian Mountains of America replaced by bright limestone and strong sunlight of mainland Greece. But the drive—a slow meander into the mountains of Central Greece, the built up balconied apartment blocks of the city soon giving way to single story farms and pine forests—didn’t produce any weird-looking locals along the way and I arrived at the village in the middle of a warm afternoon. I climbed down from the bus and found myself distracted from worrying about what to do next by the view…I stared at the mountain just ahead. The sun picked out the snow on its peak.
Even in September in Greece, there’s snow.