The Traveler Next Door: My Friend Carol – Expert on Turkey and Greece
A wonderful and unique friend in her early 50s, my Carol is a high school math teacher, a gifted painter, a very decent pianist, and what else, a world traveler. I actually met her about a year ago, but once I found out all the places she’s been, I knew I had to do an interview with her.
Carol has been traveling since the 1970’s and has forged some amazing connections with 2 countries: Turkey and Greece. She lived in Turkey for about 8 years and has made lifelong friends in what she calls her “second country”. And she has also developed some close ties with the people of a special little town in Greece. This is her story:
1. Tell us a little about your overall travel experience. What places have you visited?
It started with my first trip to London, England to visit my uncle when I was 16 years old. That trip changed my life and opened the world to me. Basically, I led a sheltered life in Scarborough (a Toronto suburb) and hadn’t really known anything else. The trip to London gave me that travel bug that has never gone away. I backpacked Europe the summers of 1972 and 1973, that’s when you could do “Europe on $5 a day.” Greece was the cheapest – we got by on $2 a day!
The next summer I went east to PEI and the following summer west to Victoria.
After college in 1976 I took a few years off to travel. My sister joined me during the first year. We started in Paris, we visited our father in communist Czechoslovakia, we reached the beaches of Yugoslavia – Makarska, and then Greece. After Greece we flew to Israel to work on a kibbutz. I had to see what was happening in that country that was so much in the news. I stayed 8 months and then went to be an au pair in Paris for 11 months. Return to Greece followed by a big trip to Turkey, Jordan and Syria in July 1978 and then return to real life in Toronto.
I always took shorter trips to Greece once I became a high school teacher. And to the United States to visit friends I had met on my travels. A wedding at the top of the World Trade Center, a friend in Memphis besides the memory of Elvis, and a friend in San Francisco where I fell in love with the Golden Gate Bridge and another in Manhattan.
I quit my job as a full-time high school teacher after 4 years and went on a trip to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Thailand. The moment was near: we were in Tiananmen Square a month before the massacre of May 1989.
From 1989 to 1999 I worked as a high school teacher in Istanbul, Turkey, returning home twice for one year and once for half a year. My love story with Turkey began. Before finally returning to Canada in 1999, I had the pleasure of visiting Australia, a great country with the kindest people.
2. You have a very special connection to a town in Greece called Parga. Tell us about your first encounter with the people of Parga.
The first time I went to Parga was in 1976. I had been working at the O’Keefe Centre. [a famous concert venue and theatre in Toronto] and an usher had told me about this wonderful town in Greece that he used to go to in the summers. He took out a postcard with a beautiful beach and pronounced the word “Parga” as if it were magic. He couldn’t speak much English so he didn’t even know where he was located in Greece.
In September 1976, on my big trip with my sister, just arrived from Yugoslavia, we stayed in Corfu. We found Corfu too touristy, so we wanted to visit another part of Greece. My idea was Crete. It seemed far but on the way to Israel. We couldn’t make up our minds, so I just opened a map of Greece and my eyes went straight to “Parga” (a small town in northwestern Greece, so small that sometimes it’s not even on the map). Parga!!!!! Then I remembered that magic word pronounced by the usher. “Let’s go,” I said, and luckily I was close to Corfu. The travel agent was surprised that we asked how to get there. It wasn’t too popular with foreign tourists yet. And he added, “the young are beautiful.” Well that did it! We left that day.
A 2 hour ferry ride to Igomenitsa and a 2 hour bus ride to the south. We arrived in the afternoon and found a room for the night and walked along the town’s seafront. It was beautiful: 2 small islands in the harbor with a church, a castle on the side of the hill and mountains behind.
We ate “brizola” (pork chops) and then sat in the “Parga Bar” cafe, discussing our plans which included not talking to any young men for a week because we were tired of men in Yugoslavia coming on too strong. At that moment, one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen came up to us with his friend who spoke English and asked if he could sit down. My sister said “No”, I said “Yes”. He was mesmerized. They both had rooms for rent, one above a nightclub and one right in the building next door. One for $1 per night and one for $2 per night. We chose the second one that was not above the disco. Lefteri looked like a Greek god or a young Marlon Brando. He had a friend, Camille, a Canadian woman who was in Parga for the third time. He brought her to the table and we became instant friends.
Long story short, we stayed a month in Parga, having the time of our lives. It was a small unspoiled fishing village then, only 3 people spoke English and there were very few tourists in September. And the young were beautiful!
Lefteri, Camille and many of the young people who are now in their 40s and 50s, my sister and I are still friends reminiscing about the good old days of the summers of 1976 to 1979.
3. Since your first time in Parga, your relationship with this town and its people has evolved. Please tell us a bit about human connections.
I have always come back to Parga for my holidays, unfortunately it is too far and too expensive to go every year. In 1976, my sister Elaine befriended a teenager named Christos, who was at the disco every night, dancing up a storm, and was one of three people who spoke English. She invited us to have coffee with her mother, an extraordinary mother, who gave us her hospitality (“ksenis”). Foreign women were not welcome in the village at that time, and probably even today, since it seemed that we were there to take away the young men. I remember the first female tourists who got married and stayed in the town. That was in 1976. There are now at least 40 of these marriages. (Perhaps the paranoia of the local women was justified).
Gia, Christos’s mother, became my Greek mother. Either she “adopted” me or it was the other way around. How many hours I spent in her little house with 2 rooms, the smallest kitchen and the most magnificent view I have ever seen. She fed me, kept me company, taught me Greek, and little by little we communicated. She had a wonderful husband, Vagelis, with whom she had coffee every morning in the village. And 7 children, mostly adults by then: 6 boys and 1 girl.
Christos and Lefteri returned to Toronto with us in 1978. Christos had never slept in a bed before. Lefteri went to visit her brother and sister in Chicago, Christos stayed with us for 4 months and saw snow for the first time. He now lives with his wonderful partner Jo (from England) in Brussels with 3 beautiful children and still loves “potatoes” (french fries).
Lefteri still lives in the village with his wonderful young Greek wife Marilena and their 3 beautiful children. He ran 2 discos and the “bouzoukia” in the olive grove. He has had a restaurant now for many years. Who knows where he learned to cook….
Many of the young people I met in the 1970s still live and work in Parga. Most have their own families. Some are still single, many have their own businesses.
4. What is your favorite memory of your stays in Parga?
I have many favorite memories of my stays in Parga. I will mention 3. You are always there and will always be there every time you go. I can always count on it. It’s the moon, especially when it’s full. The full moon rises on one side of the town, crosses the beach and finally sets on the other side, over the monastery. There is nothing to equal it. Everyone knows that I love the full moon – “panselino” it is called in Greek.
My other favorite memory was a bar called “Stavlos”, run by Giorgo and Angelo de Veria. Giorgo started with very little money in 1978 – the best bar ever! A bottle of Retsina (Greek wine) – 17 drachmas (50 cents)! And ‘toast’, like a grilled cheese, for a dollar. And you could usually do it yourself, since Giorgo was too engrossed with his girlfriend at the time. My sister and I were his first clients, we spent many hours there watching people go by. Seemed to always be open, even after the clubbing, at 4am. A great atmosphere! How many glasses do we wash (we help him out)….
Giorgo became my Greek brother and sadly had to close after a few years due to rising rents. I followed him wherever he worked: the islands of Paros, Santorini and Kos, and his hometown of Veria, near Thessaloniki. He married a Danish woman who has also become a very good friend of mine. They now live in Denmark and have 2 beautiful children. I have been to visit them 3 times. I love Denmark!
My third memory is my connection to the Avloniti family, Christos, his mother, his father and his brothers. They made me feel apart of his family. Vageli passed away 12 years ago and sadly Gia passed away last year. Parga will never be the same without her and neither will I. Finally though, after 5 years, I am going to see Christos, Jo and the family this summer in Parga at the end of August.
5. He also spent a significant amount of time in Turkey. Please tell us where and how that came about.
The first time I visited Turkey was in July 1978. My travel companions were two gay friends, one from Jordan and one from Great Britain. We took several buses to Jordan from Athens, stopping in Turkey and Syria on the way. What trip! It was the year that “Midnight Express” was released, a movie that did not portray Turkey in a favorable light, and Turkey did not seem like the most desirable country to go to.
I knew nothing of Turkey, and imagined a country of “mustachioed swarthy barbarians”, the typical stereotype. How wrong I was!
Back in Canada, I eventually became a high school math teacher. After 4 years I had enough and quit. I wanted to work in Greece for a year, but there was a problem with work permits. A friend called me in March 1989 and told me that he saw an advertisement in the Globe and Mail for English and mathematics teachers in Istanbul. I applied because I thought it was close to Greece. They hired me and I went to Istanbul with 13 other Canadians to work in a private high school. Little did he know that he was in the far suburbs of Istanbul.
They gave us apartments by the sea, with views of the Princes’ Islands. But we were isolated, with no television, no telephone, no English-language newspapers in our suburb. The work was difficult: 38 students in each of our 6 classes. And nothing to do at night.
I almost came home in March 1990. But I started to fall in love with Istanbul during that summer and decided to go back and work in the city center. After a year in Canada, I did exactly that and stayed until December 1998.