The Greece / Mykonos Mega Vacation
There she comes: now, two weeks after the vacation, I finally found
some time to write about it and thus perpetuate it in here not only for
others to read, but also for me to have a callback onto all those
memories which - a common problem with memories - fade way too fast.
The good thing about a delay between end-of-vacation and start-of-story
is, as I figured today, that the memories of downright boring things
are long lost and thus you'll only find tidbits of the more remarkable
experiences in here.
(Sorry for all syntax errors, typos and whatnot, but I'm way too lazy to care for that right now :) )
(all pictures are clickable to reveal a big version, and here's the full set of pictures (22))
Mykonos:
Mykonos is a small-scale greek island in the aegan sea, which has a
stiff reputation as being everything but cheap and attracts a lot of
tourists from all over the world each year (we met people from New
York, New Zealand, Australia, Jordania, Spain, Italy, Libanon, London,
Portugal...). Being surrounded by several other sometimes bigger or
smaller islands it's not instantly clear as to why this is. Some people
claim it's the vicinity to the island of Delos which offers a wide
introspection into greek life 2000 years ago as people found old greek
temples and towns in 1900 (Delos is actually said to be the biggest
archaeological place next do Delphi). Other people claim it's the
direct link with the gay community, which brings me to the main topic:
Mykonos is gay, literally ;) Dozens of people were but tired to tell me
in the first place about how Mykonos is the most appealing
holiday-target for gays from all over the world. Little did I know that
my shallow laughter back then would bite back bitterly. I've never seen
so many gay people on one place - mind you, I don't bear a grudge
against gay people or feel offended in any way by their behavior, it's
just the explanation of the process of understanding these new
experiences from my point of view :) But I'll come back to that later
on.
Mykonos has a set of astonishingly beautiful beaches, one of them beat
everything I had seen so far (pity I forgot the name). I think that
Mykonos has about 7-8 towns, I'm not really sure here. Chora (or Hora),
found in the western part of the island, is the biggest and - in most
cases - most interesting town on the island. Outfitted with clubs &
discos (you'll find one in every oh-so-little corner), coated with
expensive fashion shops like Lacoste or Armani, build around a quaint
port and spiked with restaurants and culinary extravaganzas of all
sorts.
The town is resembles in some ways the structure of a giant maze and I
heard that this was so that pirates would get lost when trying to steal
something hundreds of years ago. We still had problems finding the one
or other place after our 2-week vacation, and I don't even want to
think about where really drunk people might end up if they're new in
town.
The Maze from above. It's about one mile x one mile.
That's how the maze looks if you walk through it
This is the quaint port. There're better pics but this one is from me :)
This is the so-called "little
venice" a beautifull promenada which is build so that one ca nip on
expensive coffee while watching the sun going down into the sea.
Our little house lay about 10 minutes by car from hora and the price
for a cab from our place to hora was 7 eur, so being two persons it was
quite cheap for us to go to town whenever we felt that way.
The house was part of a small vacation-park containing 75 houses, a
taverna, a private beach and a pool and since we were quite late (the
boom time is from july to august) we were almost alone in the whole
park - thus being in the great position of having something which was
quite close to a private beach as well as a private pool; which is why
I'll always refer to "our" pool and "our" beach from now on :)
I went with my Cousin - Christoph - and my Mom. One of mom's friends
was there too, so we were 4 people in the house and there were always
neighbors visiting us or taking us onto some sort of adventure.
Our Pool
That's what breakfast looked like
Our house
Now on to describing those experiences which are still remnant in my brain before I loose their details too;
The Pelicans:
There're about 4 pelicans in Hora, they just live on the street, let
visitors take pictures, or try to find a good protion of tasty fish. I
had never seen a pelican before (or never in that close) and at night
when I was walkin the streets drunk, it always amazed me when they
crossed my paths or were sleeping next to a club.
Me against the Pelican :)
Delos:
Melkon, a really nice guy from the Libanon, came with us (or took us
with him) to Delos, the Delphi-Like Archaeological Place on an island
next to Mykonos. Delos had been the host of the followers of the god
Apollo, so there was a lot of Apollo-related debris around: temples,
statues and whatnot. I'm not that much into history but it was
nevertheless really interesting. Even more interesting - even
mindboggling - was the mountain in the middle of the island. It took
about 30 minutes to climb up to the hill but one had a astonishingly
wide and spectacular view from above: One could see all the surrounding
islands, the sea, little boats, the temples and other people as they
tried to climb up to the top, we enjoyed it.
The spectacular view from Délos mountain
The Greek Wedding:
On one evening we went with some friends to a hidden restaurant which
was the center of a gorgeous lagoon, with small ships, some yachts, and
little palm trees at both sides. What we didn't know beforehand, but
greatly excited us, was that there was a greek wedding taking place
just on that day, and so we could almost participate in the whole
wedding-celebration (albeit we didn't know anyone there). This was a
really special evening, we had tasty food, really good wine, and the
added plus of experiencing all these things which were part of that
wedding. It was great, in the end we even went and mixed with the real
participants, met some of them, had some chats, and thus learned more
about the bridal pair (It was in fact a international greek wedding.
Some speeches were held in english and the bride was half greek half
indian while the bride groom spoke so perfect english that he had
probably spent a large time around the world, there were attendants
from uk, jamaica, portugal, netherlands, switzerland, france, and
whatnot). I guess it's difficult to describe but this evening, too,
will never ever leave my heart.
Look how much fun we had!
Remezzo:
There's a special club right at the Hora port called 'Remezzo'
(formerly Mercedes). This one not only has a magnificent and gorgeous
view but also an unbelievable high reputation. It's l33t only (that's
what we were told that is). There's no chance to get in there until
you're someway important, and if you're in you have to be rich as for
example a beer is 10 eur and a bottle of whisky 140 Eur. I don't want
to go into details on how it happened, but we got in there (two times
that is), and had another one of those never-forget nights (Another
two, literally). Most people have probably been to a VIP party once in
their life (through contacts, friends or whatnot) so this is no
different, if you ever happened to have experiences something the like,
you'll probably know this kinda weird feeling. It's like feeling
to be in the wrong place - in a good way. We really enjoyed it, (and
they had really really pervert drawings on all of their walls, which
puzzled me a bit).
Our Beach:
As I already told you, we had a little almost-not-used beach right next
to our house, and used it like mad (of course). On our 3. day (or so)
we found Snorkeling Tools in the house and from then on spend most of
our time diving in the lagoon, finding shells, or following
fish-swarms. I've never been diving before and I've to stress that it's
a really interesting feeling. It's a different world, and the overall
silence managed to let me relax at an astonishing pace. Apart from that
we of course spend a lot of our time on the beach, in the sand, trying
to extend our tan as much as possible.
The Gay Party:
Now this is an interesting story, and I bet the title alone makes you
shuffle uncomfortable in your seat, let alone ask the question "Did he
switch sides now". No folks, c'mon, read on for the full story:
On one day when we were out in town we met two girls from london (Kathy
& her friend whose name I forgot, silly me) who - after labeling us
as gay at first - declared they knew a really good club and wanted to
head there now and asked if we wanted to join them - after we declared
our total straight-ness. We wanted to join for sure, and so we followed
them, eager to fetch as much party as possible (it was already 5am and
most clubs were closed by now). On our way to the club the girls
informed us that it might very well be that we were the only straight
guys in the whole club as it was THE gay after hour club. This, of
course (we were drunk), did in no way affect us and so we proceeded.
This was the first time in my life that I went to a gay party, it was
really funny, all these gay people were extremely kind (of course they
were kind, they were after my ass!), and definitely understood how to
celebrate a good party. Although I was quite reluctant to stay there
for a too long time (having a gay touch your belly, ass or penis every
once in a while makes you feel different) we still managed to have a
ton of fun, danced, had Kathy take cool pictures, drank drinks
and chat and laughed about all kinds of things. I may not have been in
the best mood but I think that I was a tad tired too, so if you're
reading this Kathy, thanks again for taking us with you as well as
sending the pictures and sorry for me wanting to leave early. Now, I
learned two really important things on that evening (as in important
for my life):
- I know fully understand how women feel if a horny guy is chasing them like mad.
- If I ever go to a gay party again I'll NOT wear a pink shirt.
I even tried to look gay
Gay party pic.
The last day:
On our last day we had planned to go to a full-moon party in a club somewhere in the middle of the island. We had heard good stuff about these parties, that they were for example resembling some of the really good Ibiza parties. But since we had met a girl from spain at lunch with whom we wanted to drink a bit at 8 we decided that we'd first go and meet her, have some drinks with her and hen maybe continue to the full-moon party. The girl, Virginia (and another girl, her colleague from work whose name I can't remember anymore) spoke fluent german and fluent english, so we had little to no problems communicating with her. Instead of going out to the full-moon party we then chatted for almost the whole evening (and, of course, had quite some alcoholic drinks), and had a really broad and interesting range of different topics, which now leads me to the whole point of this post: At about three in the morning we were drunk on a well in the middle of Hora enjoying the view of the port at night and talking about the before-mentioned everything when Virginia suddenly started to talk about how she had read Nietzsche's "Also sprach Zarathustra" (a really really difficult to understand german philosophy book which lay ground for a lot of new philosophical approaches for example through it's claim that 'God is dead') in germany and what she thought were the main aspects of it. I've read the book myself and thus we could talk about it and analyze some parts of it ( as in talk a lot of rubbish because your drunk). My point here is that I'll never ever forget this awesome situation: Sitting in the middle of greece at 3am drunk on a well, talking in german with a girl from spain about the deeper implications of one of the most difficult german Philosophy books in existence. And she had fuckin understood the point of the book, something I wouldn't even think about having it achieved myself. If you're reading this, Virginia, I'm bowin down, that was awesome :) but I think I've already said that.
Conclusion:
It was a really really great holiday, and it was the first time that my mom flew (like in a plane), and we'll definitely try to go there again next year. And then we'll know more about the island, which is a doubleplusgood.
Thanks for reading, I'd love to see some comments :)
Minutes before flying back