Easter in Greece!

We caught the bus this morning and drove through the beautiful, mountainous landscape and I could see the snowy mountains in the distance. We arrived at a new town on the beach side and with my heavy backpack weighing down my shoulders, and another backpack over my stomach, I painfully trudged through the town. We walked past all the hotels, restaurants and tourty places, and made a sharp turn and eventually walked into the mountains. We followed a dirt path to a pink hostel surrounded by a river and green everywhere! It was a dream! The owner was out still so we had a couple hours to kill. We walked down a path with Frenchy and towards the river. In sandals, I trekked across slippery rocks in the river, up huge boulders and through prickly, unyielding bushes. We saw an old, run down wind mill and climbed onto it and then to an ancient church carved into a rock. I walked through the river barefoot and took lots of pictures. 

hostel

old windmill

Church at night

We walked back to the hostel with hungry, gaping stomachs and moved into our bungalow style huts. I met some awesome old people in the hostel and then went to the town’s favorite, locally run restaurant called Mousa. It was a really cheap Greek restaurant with the biggest menu I’ve ever seen in my life! There was ongoing pages, one after the other, filled with the strangest types of food. I ordered white wine, saganaki, and vegetarian Mousakka (a greek vegetable dish that sort of tastes like a sponge!) A forty year old couple we met at the hostel recommended this restaurant to us and they ended up coming with us. They are originally from Canada but are traveling the world together and liked Crete so much that they ended up staying an extra month, living in old abandoned library with no electricity and broken windows. They are definitely two quite strange people. The dad left his two kids who are only 16 and 14 at home so he could travel with his new girlfriend and hasn’t been home in years. He complained to me that his kids “still haven’t forgiven him for leaving but there’s not enough time left in his life to stay put!” I feel terrible for his kids and think that eventually, he’ll regret leaving his kids and missing their childhood. He started talking about religion and said that it’s all “bullshit,” and I ended up arguing with him for the rest of dinner. After dinner, we all drank too much Raqi (which didn’t help the friendliness of our religion argument), and chased them with little cakes that they gave us for free. The dinner ended with me defending Israel about the Palestinian “occupation”.

On Easter, the little town that we were at has a tradition of walking up to the of the mountain at midnight to a church. Everyone brings candles and fireworks go off the whole night and after some time of praying, everyone comes down the mountain together to party and eat. The pitch blackness along with the Raqi shots made it hard for me to follow the narrow path up the mountain, and although I was exhausted and out of breath from the steepness of the hill, we finally made it to the top.  “Beware of the boys on the roof” was a warning we had originally gotten from our hostel owner. We didn’t know what he meant, but when I finally got up there and saw the boys throwing things at people from the roofs, I was well prepared and stayed away. Piercing fireworks went off for about fifteen minutes and then the priest came out, and everyone was silent. He said a prayer and rang the church bell, and then everyone started descending the hill. On the way down, a couple American kids I had met from the hostel and I layed down and stargazed because the sky view was ridiculous! It was pitch black and I could see the entire sky.