greece

In Greece one has the desire to bathe in the sky. You want to rid yourself of your clothes, take a running leap and vault into the blue. You want to float in the air like an angel or lie in the grass rigid and enjoy the cataleptic trance. Stone and sky, they marry here. It is the perpetual dawn of man’s awakening.

Once upon a time the Greek islands inspired the poetic musings of writers — like Henry Miller above, whose works inspired others to make their home and work for a time on Greek islands.

Times have changed. I’m on Kefalonia, the largest of the Ionian islands off Greece’s west coast. It has its share of sleepy villages, picture perfect beaches and the dazzling light of Greece’s azure skies, but these days it’s all about the business of tourism. Coastal towns have become service centers, focused on the summer crowds that arrive via a recently rebuilt international airport, various ferry terminals or the monstrous cruise ships that regularly set down anchor in the Argostoli harbor.

Greece, a country of ten and a half million people, hosts some thirty million visitors a year; nearly all end up on an island or two. The local tourism economy has it all: sun beds, rental cars, scooters, bikes and quad bikes, guided tours, tour buses, chartered boats, jet skis and inflatable amusements, ubiquitous souvenir stores, hair braiding, designer boutiques, designer bars, dj bars, sports bars, English menus, English breakfasts, English speaking staff, sprawling restaurant terraces – on squares, along streets, by the water. Seven days a week for half the year. Island living isn’t what it used to be, but if you find the right place at the right time and look at it the right way you can just about make out Henry Miller’s Greece.

Athina in summer is a nocturnal creature, much like its cats. The heat of summer days is intense, dry with a searing sun, the traffic slow moving. Cats lie motionless in the shade while tourists and locals alike navigate the city in an energy conserving eco-mode.

The city-state that gave birth to the concept of democracy and to western civilisation, later taking on many cultural mores of the east during the centuries it fell under the control of the Ottoman empire, has over the last few decades increasingly become a modern outward-looking western city, long part of the European Union, and plugged into current international cultural trends.

Nights are balmy. Cooling breezes temper the humidity. The city comes to life. Athenians live out on the streets, or more accurately on their squares — their plateias. Restaurants are many and are full. 9pm dinners. 10pm dinners. 11pm dinners. Bars sit among them pumping out bass-heavy beats. In tourist-focused neighborhoods musicians play traditional tunes on their guitars, bouzoukia and clarinets — in bars and tavernas or busking on the streets. Gelaterie draw late night crowds. Cats, looking for a meal, saunter and weave through it all.