The 700 Club

Today is our 700th official day of the trip and, in a bizarre coincidence, we just happened to publish our 700th post.  So, in honor of both milestones, we've decided to pick a favorite post from each block of the trip.  Looking back, we're a little embarrassed by some of our earliest writing and photography.  We didn't quite have a knack for the whole blogging thing yet.  There was also a matter of learning to balance the time spent experiencing things and the time it takes to sit in a dark hotel room and plug away at documenting it all.  We hope you enjoy reminiscing a little with us.
Centrāltirgus, Riga - Lithuania
1-100, Holland to Estonia.   The snow began to fall in Riga and we didn't see uncovered earth again until Ukraine, well into our next block.  This was the beginning of our Slavic winter and wandering into the Centrāltirgus in Riga was surreal.  We had never seen a market like it and still count it amongst the best we've ever encountered - and we got to a lot of markets.  They're perfect gateways into a new place, an accessible entry into the authentic life of a place.   Looking back, it was probably our experience at this one in Riga that really taught us that lesson.  Monumental Brest - Belarus
101 - 200, Russia to San Marino.  We began in one place and ended in quite another.  In between was a lot of snow, a crash-course in Russian language, two Pope Benedict sightings and the last remaining dictatorship in Europe.  Belarus.  Monumental Brest was an experience of true Communist grandeur, propaganda and pomp.  We are forever grateful to have made the effort, obtained the visas and crossed the border into Belarus at this point in its history.  We've no doubt it'll be very different in the not-too-distant future.
Puszta Horse Show - Hungary
201 - 300, Switzerland to Croatia.  Sometimes we resent this blog for keeping us in on a sunny afternoon, keeping a camera in hand when it only adds to our conspicuousness, taking up time we could be spending doing something wonderful and exotic... but more often, we realize that actively thinking about content has lead us to do so many things we wouldn't have otherwise.  For example, the Puszta Horse Show.  Basically a Hungarian rodeo, how could it not make a good post?  It also made for a hysterical, wonderful afternoon.
The Water Cave - Slovenia
301 - 400, Slovenia to Spain.  Like Marketplaces, Caves are a common theme for us.  We love spelunking and never would have even known it had we not gone to Slovenia a few years before this trip began.  That time, we went to the Škocjan Caves (which doesn't allow pictures).  On our return trip, we upped the ante with this once-in-a-lifetime tour of The Water Cave.  One of our very favorite days of this entire trip. 
In a Land Far, Far Away... - Azerbaijan
401 - 500, Georgia to Malta.  At the beginning of this year, we became backpackers.  Our loyal companion Nilla (our Subaru Outback) had been sent home.  We left Christmas with our families and took one, two, three planes to get to Georgia.  It was exhilarating and scary and with our comfort zone punctured, we decided to really just go all-in.  We never would have driven to Xinaliq, Azerbaijan ourselves.  And staying with a family whose house was heated with dung was a homestay to remember.
The Beautiful Lake Komani Ferry - Albania
501 - 600, Albania - Bosnia & Herzegovina.  We found ourselves missing Nilla a lot.  Wishing we could camp, have our own cooking equipment, just have the freedom to get from point A to point B on our own time.  But any time we start thinking this way, we inevitably think of all the experiences we never would have had if we'd kept the car around.  All the situations we were thrown headfirst into.  We always think of the Lake Komani ferry, a bus made to float which carried us, a man showing off his machine gun, elderly people in traditional clothes and whoever they randomly picked up at the water's edge of nowhere to northern Albania.  It was beautiful, yes, but also bizarre, adventurous and unlike anything before it or since.

Forty-Eight People - Iceland
601 - 700, Iceland - United Kingdom.  Iceland is sort of Europe and sort of nowhere.  At the edge of the Arctic and in the middle of the Atlantic, it's very much its own thing.  Huge swaths of the country can only be seen by hiking for days with everything you need on you.  In some places, we got a tiny insight into what it must feel like to be in space.  The deepest sense of isolation in an unimaginably beautiful place.  On the eastern coast of the Westfjords, only a small number of resilient people have remained.  Forty-eight to be exact.  We contemplated staying put and bringing their number up to fifty.

The Telemark Canal

Canals are that forgotten collection of map lines.  For most, an expanse of land is crossed by road or rail, the earthly passage made along firm trails.  The road grid is expanding like fast vines.  By airplane, the points are connected in the abstract, reduced to points in time - flightpaths exist in thin air.  Canals on the other hand - those flat and blue marvels of antique engineering - are relics. They silt in, they're clogged with weeds, they lie disused.  Old buildings line their shores, their purposes as obscure as the mud along the bottom.  It's not really a sad thing.  Unlike a road or a stretch of disused rip-rap, a canal can revert so peacefully to nature.  It's only water.
The Telemark Canal runs sixty five smooth miles between Skien and Dalen, connecting a collection of long lakes and rivers.  The canal is noteworthy for its complex lock system - there are 18 wooden-sided chambers in all, scattered along the length, still in about the same shape as they were in 1861.  Boats still use it; in fact, it's a point of Norwegian pride.

When the Victoria approaches a lock, it's with a proud sashay - the boat glides into the narrow chambers so smoothly that it seems to be on rails.  The boat is beautifully kept, with worn and polished wood and bright green decks.  It's hard to believe that she's over a hundred years old, or that she's been in these Telemark waters since 1882.  Every day, in theory, the boat makes a languorous, ten hour journey - depending on the day, it might be from foothills to seashore or the opposite, from the coast up towards the mountains.  People get on and off with cameras, it's more a tourist operation than transport.

Touristy as it is, the ship's journey is made with all the perfect formality and pageantry that can be afforded a distinguished old dame.  Each lock is taken in stride, with salutes to the men on shore and patient sinking. Watching the ship descend the locks in Ulefoss - there are three chambers, and it takes about forty minutes - is like watching someone regal come slowly down a staircase, attended to on all sides by a busy retinue.  This mechanical process is made very graceful.
The locks are operated by hand, opened and shut by two young men.  First, they close the aft gates.  Then they open the downriver ports, letting all the water drain into the next chamber - this is a loud and frothy happening, accompanied by the slow settling of the boat into the chamber.  Finally, they open the forward gates and the Victoria moves ahead into the next chamber.

The Telemark canal was built in two stages, and - when it was completed in 1982 - was called the "eighth wonder of Europe."  Not only did the waterway service the southern inland, but it also linked east and west Norway, creating a safer and more reliable route between the coasts.  Free from maritime storms and waves, the journey was usually faster than the ocean route.
It's difficult to image now, with Norway's miles of smooth tarmac and whisper-quiet trains, but the canal was a major development in the nineteenth century.  It's not the most mountainous of Norway's regions, but the Telemark landscape is far from flat.  There are also dozens of lakes and rivers.  The water criss-crosses the terrain in long valleys, making overland travel difficult.  Being able to link together these bodies of water was important and arduous.  It took a crew of five hundred men almost five years to blast and dig through the rock, construct the locks and even the falls.

Ulefoss is the last downstream lock stairway before Lake Norsjø, where the going is easy for several miles. The first mate had his jacket off as he stood on the prow, guiding his ship through her descent.  It was raining a little, but the sun was out and it was warm.  He was friendly to us few landlubbers on shore, and even asked one of us to help him secure a line.
After the last gate was opened, the man put his jacket back on - complete with shining epaulets - and gave an exaggerated, stiff-backed salute to the two men who had worked the ratchets and levers.  Once the Victoria was out of sight, these younger men lit cigarettes, got in their cars and zoomed out of the parking lot.

In more peaceful Lunde, about ten minutes drive upriver, the single lock has a tranquil, reedy calm. Much of the Telemark's route is built up with factories, mills and towns.  In Lunde, the canal is nothing but a peaceful waterway.  The water is glass-clear, birds flit along the banks, wooden rowboats are tied up under trees.

Close at hand, with its bottom mired in muck and its steam pipe listing to one side, sits one of Norway's oldest construction machines, the frog-green "Mudder'n'."  The name, almost too predictably, means "muddy."  A steam dredge bought in 1890, the canal's snaggle-toothed workhorse was used for decades to keep the lock channels deep enough and to free up detritus washed in during floods.  It's been fixed up a little, but the deck is littered with leaves and the gears are rusted.  Compared with the canal boats, it has received very little love.

We found nothing in Lunde except a shuttered cafe and a parking lot.  In September, the canal traffic is starting to cool off.  The farms close to the water had tightly wrapped bales of hay and grain combines parked in the fields - a few late season roses bloomed in someone's garden.  We felt alone there, by the banks of the Telemark.  It was funny to imagine the canal's heyday, when it represented progress and new horizons.  We realized, looking at the map, that we'd already crossed over it a few times, without even realizing it.

In the Land of the Puffins

The Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands), off the southwestern coast of Iceland, are home to the world's largest puffin colony.  Anyone taking a ferry ride from the mainland to Heimaey - the largest and only inhabited island in the archipelago - is at least somewhat drawn to it by the promise of puffins.  Us included.  The front deck of the boat was closed off. So, standing outside meant approaching backwards.  We saw the mainland move away into a silhouetted sliver and then disappear entirely.  Then, it was just sea until islands began to pop up, out of nowhere, on either side of the ferry.  Cliff side streaks of white bird poo were our first signs that we had arrived in the land of the puffins.

Some of the islands look like the little round scraps that would confetti a tabletop if you hole punched a photo of the alps.   A grassy peak with a lone sheep on top of it smack dab in the center of a body of water.  We had no idea how Lamb Chop got up there.  At least two of Vestmannayer's uninhabited islands have a single building set atop or nestled into the side of a hill.  That white dot on the left side of the island above is one.  We thought, initially, that these were maybe the homes of the world's most romantic loners - or possibly its devoutest monks.  But they are actually puffin hunting cabins which are rented out to groups of dedicated huntsmen within the six week season each year. Needless to say, they have to pack reserves. 

The main island of Heimaey has 4,000 inhabitants who receive around 6 million visiting puffins per year. This used to be quite the boon for residents, a food source arriving in bulk. Puffins were the diversity in an islander's diet of fish, fish and more fish. There was a period at the end of the 19th century when the birds were harvested for their down, too, which was then sent off to Denmark to use in bedding. While lucrative, this put a big strain on the Atlantic puffin population and the practice was banned. All hunting was called off for 30 years. Today, the Atlantic puffin's conservation status is ruled as "least concern," meaning they are far from endangered.

Still, like so much wildlife in the world today, the puffin population have been showing some signs of decline and, as a result, hunting the birds has been prohibited for the last two summers.  Most people chalk the dwindling breeding numbers up to changes in the eco system, over-fishing of the puffins' food sources (small fish), and the introduction of new predators such as domestic pets.  Whether hunting plays a role or not, it's better to just err on the side of caution and cancel the season for a few years.  Or maybe for good?
Any hunting that does take place is done using a method borrowed from the Faroe Islands.  "Sky fishing," involves grabbing a puffin right out of the sky with "fledges," a kind of oversized lacrosse stick.  Their neck is then broken by hand.  It's actually very humane - and only non-breeding puffins are caught.  You can see a huntsman in action in the above Heimaey building art.

Puffin art adorns plenty of buildings on Heimaey.  The people of Vestmannaeyjar have a special relationship with their birds.  The yearly arrival of the millions-strong colony is an event, a tradition and a cause for celebration.  This is the only time in a puffin's life that they set foot on land.  Aside from this breeding period, their entire existence is spent at sea.  As they arrive in Vestmannaeyjar, the birds meet up with their mates.  Some are known to meet midflight and go right at it.  Honey, I haven't seen you in so long!  Puffins are monogamous, except in the rare case that no eggs are produced for a few seasons. Then, the puff daddy goes out and finds himself a new puff mommy.  (Ever think the problem may be with you, bub? Look at him, so smug in that tophat.)

The domestic life of a puffin is undeniably endearing.  Aside from the whole swoon-worthy mating-for-life thing, they also act as true partners in their time together on land.  The male puffin is mainly responsible for building their nest, burrowing a hole into the side of a cliff or finding a rabbit hole to repurpose. The female lines the spot with grass and leaves to make it more comfortable.  Then, once the single egg is laid, the couple share incubating responsibilities - and, once hatched, feeding duty.  Then, the little puffling is mostly on its own, braving the world outside its nest for the very first time during the night.  Its natural instinct is to use the moon to guide its flight, but some get confused by the bright orb streetlights of Heimaey.  So, every year, a "Puffin Patrol" goes out onto the streets and finds the confused little pufflings, bringing them back to the water's edge and sets them free by hand.

Breeding season was just coming to an end as we arrived on the island, but we still got a glimpse of a few stragglers.  After seeing their image on just about every souvenir possible throughout Iceland and in street murals and pub signs in Heimaey, it was both more and less exciting to see them in person.  It's a lot like seeing a rainbow.  You know exactly what one looks like, you know what environment you're most likely to see one pop up, but it's something so attached to drawings, symbols, cartoons, iconography that spotting a true one in nature feels predictable, but lucky somehow. 

"Do you hate it when people order puffin?" Merlin asked... after ordering puffin.  "No, no," the young waitress answered, shaking her head on top of which about a mile of blonde hair was piled.  "When they are young, they are cute.  But when they get big..." she scrunched her nose.  Four deep brown puffin breasts were served alongside a candied pear and some roasted potatoes.  They looked like beef liver, even more so when one was cut open to reveal an intense pink.  It definitely didn't shout "poultry," but then again neither does duck.  The texture was also similar to liver, but the taste was a cross between duck and venison.  You know, in case you were wondering.

The Beautiful Lake Komani Ferry

On a grey, cold early morning in Tirana, we boarded a minibus headed north for Lake Komani. A man got on a few minutes later with three sacks of corn and a shotgun. Hours later, in the tiny cabin of the Dragoba, he took the gun out of its case and began passing it around. His friends and neighbors admired it and someone told a joke. Outside, high cliffs passed by in the mist. This was one of the strangest and most beautiful boat rides one can imagine.
There are two ferries that ply the long, sinuous waters of Lake Komani. The more commonly-run boat is a conventional, small car ferry. The Dragoba, which we took, is an old bus with a hull welded around it. The seats were threadbare, the doors clanged open unexpectedly. A deep, slow, diesel note grumbled from the engine. Two young men were in charge - they looked as though they might be brothers. The captain piloted the boat quietly, surrounded by a chatty group of friends. The first mate collected money and made people laugh – he wore red pants, a fuchsia shirt and pink sweater. Both were lithe and tall, with ready smiles and the friendly nature of Albanian mountain men.

Lake Komani is a dammed lake, running some forty kilometers through the heart of the Dinaric alps. It’s not the easiest way to get to the northern towns, but is definitely the most scenic and the best route that doesn’t lead through Kosovo.

Our “furgon” (minibus, marshrutka) took us up to the top of the dam, some hour away from the nearest town, and dropped us off at the south-western landing. Here - on a patch of cement at the end of a tunnel, surrounded on all sides by cliff and water – there was barely enough room for a few vehicles, a bar, some waiting people and two forlorn cows. The buses were unloaded (our furgon, aside from the corn and firearm, had carried bags of fertilizer, some hardware supplies and sacks that looked to contain cured meat) and men stood smoking. The lake was vividly green.

When the ferry came, it didn’t seem that it could possibly be big enough for us all, but it turns out it was only about two-thirds full. Bags, boxes and sacks were piled against the gunwales (and the cows were left on land) Everyone aboard knew everyone else, they were all neighbors. One old woman held court in the middle of the rows of seats. Wearing a white kerchief over her hair, she spent time talking and laughing with all the young people on board; they took turns visiting with her, receiving kisses on the cheek and pats on the head.
As desolate as the lake seems, its shores are actually inhabited by a few hardy families. Clinging to the cliff-like sides of the mountains are tiny farms, not much more than hovels with a few square feet of plowed earth and a handful of goats. These people, almost totally cut off from the world around them, rely on boats to get anywhere and on the ferry to bring them any supplies or mail. The passengers aboard the Dragoba were mostly going home – we made a lot of stops at tiny landings, not much more than a few rocks, so that people could jump ashore or collect packages. One woman was met at the bottom of a waterfall by her son (who was about five or six). Together they scampered up a trail that looked impossibly steep – the two of them moved like mountain goats, jumping from foothold to foothold. They must have lived quite high up, we couldn’t see where their house was.
The forty kilometers take about three hours to navigate. The ship goes slowly, the way is twisting and narrow. Mountains like these offer little. They’re not more than walls. A way through was made by the river, and all the dam has done is widen this path a little. We moved as though down a hallway, taking turns when they came. The vistas were ever-changing and tightly focused. Shore was never further than a few hundred yards on either side. The others on board had seen it before and barely looked out the window.

A few times, some fishing boat or other would pull up alongside. One young man motored alongside us for about half an hour, communicating with the pilot and his brother with hand signals. Before he turned his boat off into a cove, the first mate tossed him an energy drink from their cooler.

These two men raced to a small landing so that they could get on board. After tying their little aluminum craft to a bush, they lifted the outboard motor onto deck and swung up after it. Our pink-clad crewmember greeted them with hugs and questions. They shared a lunch together in the back row of bus-seats.

By the time we got to the end, the sky had lightened a little. It had rained for some time on the trip, but it had cleared again. The remaining passengers took their things from the deck and said their goodbyes. It was a perfect voyage, the kind of traveling that makes you forget about the destination, casting the time between place as the leading experience. We got off gladly but would have taken the trip again if given the chance – when we left the north the boat wasn’t running. It had rained too much, the water was too high.

A woman we met in Tirana, Zhujeta, had told us that there were once two boats, but that one of them had “sanked.” Luckily, it seems that both are operational and floating.

Ferrily We Roll Along

Anyone who has ever nursed jet-lag after merely "crossing the pond," knows that sometimes travel is easier said than done. Such is the case with "island hopping," a term that suggests a buoyant bouncing from place to place, but which actually involves hours at sea and either a good dose of planning or absolutely no time or money constraints. Island hopping is tricky, but completely worth it. It requires a Type A strategy, and a willingness to cut it some serious Type B slack.
At least one ferry sits in every port, dwarfing the cars, buses, bikes and smaller buildings around it. Where and when that ferry will move into action is usually scrawled on a marker board placed outside one of many ferry offices. The routes are always the same, but the schedule thins out drastically in the off season. Basically, this is my ideal sort of travel. I was the kid who sometimes wrote her history report in the form of a song, but would be absolutely paralyzed without an assigned topic. Island hopping in March equals creativity within a framework. It's a lot like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
The ferry horn signals its proximity. People emerge from stores with packages they need to send off. Waiters collect coins and cups left by their customers, all waiting for the boat, all leaving at once. Napping bus drivers arise and start their engines for the load of arrivals coming in. Cars are returned to, bags are picked up. There's a very short amount of time for loading and unloading and everyone's gotta be ready. In Syros, men from the bakery sprinted on to sell candy to ferry passengers and, admirably, made it back off before the door closed once more.
These have been our first experiences as ferry walk-ons, having had our car with us on previous ferries. All crowded together, on either end, people recognize and greet one another. It's fun to guess how long someone's been traveling by what they have with them. A bag of newspapers and magazines was probably just a day trip onto a bigger island. A number of people carry sleeping bags, preferring to snag a spot in the lobby than pay for a private cabin on an overnight trip to Athens.
Ferry travel in Greece has changed a lot over the past decade. The ferries are faster and fancier, more expensive but more convenient. A recent conversation we had with a young gourmet shop owner named Achilles really got me thinking about how the culture of the islands must be affected by it all. We told him we'd gone to the Fourni Islands and he was amused/aghast. "They are crazy there!" he said. I immediately felt protective of Toula and Niko and all the rest, but understood where he was coming from. Fourni is remote, it's a backwater. Until recently, people probably rarely left their little island. Nowadays, students leave for school, to shop, to spend an afternoon out on the town in Samos. The characteristic 'craziness' may be dissappating.
There are a number of different ferry companies, but they're all basically the same, as the prices are fixed by the government according to distance, season and time of day. Still, it's fun to notice the difference in staff uniforms, docking procedure, refreshment options, decor. Here, on a SuperFerry, a separate walkway was available for people who wanted to avoid the car ramp. The high marks they got for this were offset by the on board Goody's and its wafting fast food smell. Our Blue Star boat had framed newspaper clippings near reception showing the vessel's special mission to Lebanon to pick up French refugees in 2004. They also had a self-service restaurant and didn't allow dogs. To each their own.
A port town looks its loveliest from the deck of a ship. Framed by the ship's solid lines and angles, an island's gorgeousness is magnified. Only from the water can you see the whole picture, the buildings piled on on top of another etched into the side of a cliff or scattered across rolling hills. It feels bigger and more three dimensional than your on foot experience had been and then it seems smaller and flatter as the boat pulls away from the port.
Watching the land fall backwards as you set out to sea stirs up a lot of excitement and tinge of sorrow. You're saying goodbye to a place you've called home, the solitary land mass that's been your solid ground for a few days or a few hours disappears before your eyes. And then it's back to the blank slate of the ocean and the anticipation of the next island's impression.

We sprung for a cabin on our overnight to Syros and were impressed with our location. Right at the front looking out over the prow! This wound up being unfortunate on account of the choppy seas. Our drawers slid open and shut, being vertical wasn't an option, but it was a heck of a lot more fun than airplane turbulence.

Fourni, Our Own Little Islands

We arrived on Fourni Island in the dark and drizzle. We stepped off the ferry feeling a little lost. Two small groups met there on the pier, those arriving and those leaving. They were all residents of the island, it seemed, and they said hellos and hasty goodbyes all together, a mixing of people under the dock lights.
"Are you Merlin?" a woman said in a heavy accent. She was standing under an umbrella, waiting for someone who didn't belong. As she walked us to her hotel - the only real hotel, though there are some guest rooms - she seemed excited. "You're the first guests," she said. "The first guests of the year."
(Click on the image to see it in full size - the panorama thing looks a little dinky on the blog...)

Covered in thyme and oregano, sea grasses and salt-corroded cars, Fourni is a tightly-bunched archipelago that's treated like one island by the Greeks. In the space between Samos and Ikaria (if that name sounds familiar, see our adventures with Kolokassi), not too far from the Anatolian mainland, the place has been mostly forgotten by everyone. We trekked over the main island for two days, returning to town each night having seen only a handful of people in the hours since we left. It's lonely in a perfect, empty way, where the land hasn't been disturbed much on its way up out of the waves.

Above, old windmills on a crag above town.

Food was one of the reasons we came here. The craggy ocean floor around Fourni is supposed to be crawling with crustaceans, and the local dish is an oregano-heavy lobster pasta that sounded good enough to warrant the journey. When we told Niko, the affable owner and cook at Niko's restaurant, that we wanted to try it he looked crestfallen. "No," he said. "The men cannot go out for lobster because of the weather." His despair lifted as he had an idea - "I can make it for you with big shrimps!" he said, holding his fingers seven or eight inches apart to illustrate the size of the prawns.
It was one of three meals we had there, the only open restaurant in town. For a while we thought that there was a second one - a man told us to go to "Jenny's," but Jenny turned out to be Niko's wife.

The fishing boats were on blocks in the harbor, their hulls being patched up and re-painted. It's cold in Greece right now, and the spring winds have kept the fishermen away from their nets and traps. We took a few long walks over the spine of the narrow, main island and had to fight a stiff breeze off the sea wherever we went. The taste of salt stuck to our skin, our faces got windburned and red. At night it rained, during the day we had fitful sun. It felt like maritime spring, when weather comes at you fast and the sky changes in an instant.
We might have been disappointed about the scarcity of seafood - it was hard to scare up fresh fish anywhere, and Niko was too honest to sell us frozen stuff - but we were too in love with the Fourni experience to care. Everywhere we went, people waved. They knew we were there already, news had spread. There are only about 1,600 people on the three inhabited islands, most of them concentrated in Fourni town. Of the twelve official settlements, nine are populated by less than forty people. Plagia could barely be called a hamlet, with only four citizens. Agios Minas is even smaller. Population: three.

Above, a roadside shrine for a local resident.

The ferry comes rarely, especially in the winter. It can be days between boats, or even - if the weather is truly bad - weeks. The islands aren't big enough to have an airport, like most of their neighbors, so life here can feel very much cut off. In some ways, it felt like one of the most remote places we'd visited. Finding a community this closely knit is difficult - the archipelago's website offers a biography about many of the shopkeepers - about the hairdresser's: "Regrettably Kostas Spanos succumbed in april 2004 suddanly to a heart disease. In the meantime Maria Amorianou inherited the barbershop. Maria learned her trade in Pirea and she approaches the regular customers of Kostas as well as the youth."

In the Mediterranean, there's both a sense of inescapable overdevelopment and the hope that something pristine lies just around the corner. Fourni represents that promise of quietude and tradition, where things haven't changed in centuries. Beehives dot the hills. Tiny, whitewashed churches are strung out along the empty road, sitting unlocked with candles burning inside. Goats poke their heads up from behind stone walls and tiny flowers bloom in the weak, march sunlight. This is it: the place untrammeled, to be breathed in like the freshest of air.
Of course, we didn't stumble upon Fourni, it took us a daylong journey by plane and ferry to get there from Athens. Without meaning to make the trip, nobody arrives in that little port - which is what's kept the place as sleepy and wonderful as it is. Closer to the tourist hubs, it would have been gobbled up long ago. It's not a place that's easy for a weekend. There's no clubbing once you're here.

And though the plane helped get us close, it meant more to step onto land with rolling legs and the sound of waves in our ears. An island, after all, should feel like part of the sea.
We left Fourni the day after we were supposed to, getting onto the ferry at six thirty in the morning after an overnight hold because of wind. One cafe was open on the waterfront, its tables semi-full with a collection of departing islanders and bored fishermen.

The night before, everyone knew about the hold. Nikos was expecting us, though we thought we'd said goodbye for good the previous evening. He'd made us tomatoes stuffed with rice, a light and creamy fava and a big plate of steamed broccoli. No boats had gone out to fish. It didn't matter, dinner was delicious.

The Layover

There are worse places to be stranded for 5 hours than a Greek island - especially Samos. By the time we boarded our ferry to Fourni, we'd been utterly charmed by the place and wished we'd had more time. We arrived at noon and left at dusk, right as Samos slipped into her evening attire, dark and glittery. Our boat pulled away from the dock and the sun set behind the mountains as if the two were attached by a string.
It's an island used to these sorts of visits, a quick once over by travelers on their way to Ephesus in nearby Turkey, or other east Aegian islands. Samos is a ferry hub, neither close enough to mainland Greece to be a hotspot, nor far enough to be alluringly remote. When we arrived, this information board listed our next boat at 2:15 as opposed to the 6 oclock departure we'd been expecting. We were excited. Who likes a long layover? The woman inside informed us that the sign was old. "Another agency. Closed five years ago." She pointed to a luggage storage room, a welcome curve-ball. We'd be able to do more than sit at a cafe and stare at the sea after all.
Samos is one of the sunniest place in all of Europe with sunlight estimated at about 74% of the time. Well, we hit the other 26% - a mix of sun and clouds, as they say. Sunday's a fine day for that sort of thing, ducking into a cafe here or a museum there. Older women in black came back from church and joined their neighbors at a coffee shop. We followed the scent of bread and the tracks of a few loaf carrying men to find a bakery, hidden down a backstreet. Unable to find anything to really put on our sweet-smelling sesame roll, we treated ourselves to a more proper lunch. And this is where the series of pleasant surprises began.
12:30 is an unthinkable time to begin lunch in Greece, but we haven't quite acclimated to late feedings yet. So, we sat down at Kouros tavern, joining a trio of old men and a family with two young children. The Early Bird crowd. When shown the fish selection by a bemused young waiter, we asked for an order of each. Both the plump sardine and the thumb-sized red mullet could have dangled from a necklace, that's how beautiful they looked. Shiny silver and iridescent pink. The red mullet still shone bright pink through the light batter and was so tender, it fell off its barely visible bones. We've never seen or tasted anything like it. Their moist, delicate sweetness went perfectly alongside the meaty bitterness of the sardine (cooked in the same fashion). Truly awesome.
Oh, we'd also ordered a small carafe of "open" wine (meaning "house"), writing it off as a necessary cultural experience. Samian wine has been renowned since Classical Antiquity. Who are we to pass it up? While it was nothing exceptional, it gave us a midafternoon energy boost. Just when it began to rain again. These children in the main square didn't seem to mind, but everyone else huddled back indoors. We slipped up the stone staircase to Samos' Archaeological Museum, where we found a shuttered ticket booth and an open door. A woman turned the lights on for us and her grandson, noticing our bewildered looks, shouted: "It's free today!"
This part of the world is just so rich with ancient history, chock full of archeological findings. Still, Samos' collection was shocking. The island is the birth place of Hera, Zeus' wife. So, naturally, a massive temple was erected for her around the 8th century BC: The Ireon. Statues from the excavated site stand around the museum's first building. All intriguingly headless. One female was the twin of a statue on display in the Louvre. Another held a bird in her arms and had a long dedication inscribed in the folds of her dress. The pièce de résistance was the colossal kouros - the largest surviving kouros (male statue from the Archaic period) in Greece. Over 16 feet tall it was mind-blowing and, in a room of its own around a corner, popped up out of nowhere.
In awe, we were ushered out across the street to the second building. Here, the collection was focused on pottery, tools, trinkets for Hera and, as we like to call them, "ancient Precious Moments." There had to have been close to a thousand pieces in their "archaic sculpture collection," including a bronze pine cone and a bizarrely large number of bronze griffin heads that used to adorn cauldrons. Other griffin heads from the Ireon can be found in the MET. Birds, turtles, wooden figurines, the findings were the most diverse of any Archeological Museum I've been to. (I get a little sick of spearheads and nails to be honest). All from the island of Samos.
The Ireon site itself was too far for us to visit and make our ferry in the evening. Who knew we'd want our five hour layover to be longer. It is still being excavated, which I find fascinating. I would love to have seen the holes in the earth and the lone standing column. To imagine all the statues we'd seen whole and erected in the flower covered field. Instead, we just strolled back and forth on the waterfront until it was time to collect our bags at the ferry office and embark on our next leg.
Samos is the birthplace of Hera, Pythagoras (of theorem fame), Epicurus and the astronomer Aristarchus, who is the first person recorded to have suggested the Earth moved around the sun. We didn't know any of this when we arrived, not bothering to do much research on what we figured would just be a lunch stop and quick dilly dally. I feel like one of those people who say, "I found love as soon as I stopped looking." Travel is like that sometimes. The best stuff just kinda sneaks up on you.