6/14/03: Yes, I'm still on Santorini!
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 12:32 PM
Subject: Yes, I'm still on Santorini!
So I'm here on Santorini, living at Youth Hostel Anna down in Perissa Beach. It's 3 euros a night to live in the dorms in the basement, which we basement dwellers have deemed "the dungeon." It's a good life here.
I get up around 10 AM and wander down to the 24 hour bakery and buy a spinach pie or a cheese pie or a chicken pie for a euro or so, wander back to the "kitchen" -- oh, the "kitchen" deserves a musing all its own -- and make myself a frappe by putting a spoonful of Nescafe crystals, a spoonful of sugar, and about 6 oz of water in my shaker, shaking it like crazy, then putting a container of NouNou milk product in there. MMMMmmmmm.... frappalicious. Then I sit around and eat my pie of choice, drink my coffee, and shoot the breeze with whoever's around. Actually it's more like duck the breeze, since it's gotten really windy of late and spinach pie doesn't taste good covered with volcanic dust.
After a while, people begin emerging more and more from the dungeon. People are inevitably a bit hung over, which is probably due to the supa-special wine they have around here. You get yourself an empty water bottle -- not hard to do, since you can't drink tap water around here so water bottles are everywhere -- and then you go over to the super-market next door and they'll fill that puppy up with a liter and a half of Mystery Wine for a mere 2 euros! It comes with a free headache. In any case, people do eventually recover, and come crawling up the stairs, groaning in the bright sun and clutching their water bottles like holy relics.
We sit around for a bit, discussing possibilities. We make vague plans to rent a scooter, go hiking, go into town, go to ancient Thira, go to ancient Akrotiri, and/or go to the local winery - tomorrow. Then we decide that today we should go to the beach. We collect a random assortment of water, potato chips (my favorite is "American Cream" flavor, which appears to be sour cream and cheddar), spf one zillion, towels, and beach mats, then make the four minute trek to the beach. We each get an iced coffee to pay for the chairs, then lie there on the chairs, alternately moving into and out of the sun. I occasionally make vague pronouncements that I will go swimming "soon." Sometimes, we'll eat the potato chips and/or drink the water.
At around four, someone will ask if anyone is hungry, to which we all Reply that we are actually starving but don't have the energy to get up and eat. Then fifteen minutes later we get up and go eat at a restaurant. We pretty much always get the same thing -- Greek salad, tzatziki, kalamari, bread, French fries, and baklava for dessert.
After that, it's a nap; a shower; the great evening guide book reading; And then dinner (pasta and tomato sauce in the kitchen, or a gyro) and the evening drinking begins. Time to sit on the front porch of Hostel Anna, drinking Mythos beer (70 euro cents a bottle from the deli next store, and they’ll even open if for you, if you ask). Then to the beach, to drink some more; or to the bar, to drink and dance; or to the bar on the beach, to drink and dance on the beach.
Then around 3 am, we head to the all-night bakery for some more baklava, where the all-night baker and I make the same joke about whether or not we should say good morning or good night. Then off to bed, because by then all of us are completely and utterly exhausted by the long day and also because ostensibly we are going to do something tomorrow, really, honestly, we are.
I'll let you know if I ever leave,
Loretta
Comments after the fact: This is a combination of a letter I sent home and a musing I started to write at one of those internet cafes on Santorini. It's emails like this one that made people say things to me like, "I hate your guts," without the slightest trace of jest. The thing is: I wasn't as blissfully happy there as it may sound from this email. Even in paradise you can make your own pain, you know? But yes, it was pretty damn good. And you know what? I was living for less than 20 dollars a day there. People seem to confuse money with happiness, and I would like to make the point that you can live so happily on so little. I guess all this is the subject of another musing, if I ever get around to it.