In the Spring of 1981, as exchange students from Notre Dame at the University of Innsbruck, planning was underway for the upcoming two week break, and a map of Europe was spread across the table in a local Bier Stube. There was a problem, though; a portion of the group, me included, was on a really tight travel budget. When the decision was made to vacation in Crete, it was clear our subgroup was going to have to be fiscally creative to make the trip.
The group with means made their reservations on the fast train to Athens, and procured rooms at a tourist hotel on the beach at Iraklion, which is positioned on the northern coast of the island. The low-budget set mailed home for packages, including tents and sleeping bags, and my letter also included a request for my tape player and a handful of music tapes. We used our pre-paid Eurail passes to reserve the slow train, content to see all of Yugoslavia on the way, every single whistle stop.
After an overnight ferry from Athens to Iraklion (included on the Eurail pass), and a long, hot bus ride to the hotel, we hooked up with our friends that had already spent a day on the beach. We chose a spot a few hundred yards off the hotel property at the edge of the beach, under a single, weathered tree that stretched its trunk in the direction of the sea, and pitched tents under its shade.
There’s not much to say about how we spent our time over the next ten days, and not because my memory fails. It’s just that we meticulously followed a plan to do nothing at all. Mornings were spent sleeping until the heat in the tent became unbearable. We scrambled out of the tents and made our way to the outdoor pool showers at the hotel with slivers of soap. After washing off the previous day’s sand and sweat, we went back the beach to accumulate more. There was swimming, watching flying fish dart their way among us, and there was beach volleyball. There were numerous long walks at the edge of the Mediterranean, always on the lookout for the Scandinavian girls that preferred to swim topless. And there was dinner.
When the smoldering blaze of the sun began to sear the edge of a watery horizon, we pulled on t-shirts for the first time that day and walked the kilometer of so to the closest taverna on the beach. It was a local haunt, since the hotel guests usually ate at the nice restaurant on the hotel property. Our group commanded a little more than half the seating in the place, and when the older couple that owned and ran the tavern realized we would be regulars for awhile, they embraced us as family.
Each dinner began with a walk through the kitchen, where we would point at fish and squid, vegetables and cheeses which would be prepared at our leisure and set upon the tables. We drank beer and ate over the span of hours, learning Greek words from the locals and playing with their children. It was hard to leave every night. Well after midnight, the patriarch would begin to pour small glasses of ouzo, on the house, and if we stood to leave the locals would howl in protest. Eventually, though, the ritual of payment would begin. There was never a menu or a bill, only an offering of drachma on our part, and an insistence on the part of the owners to take less. Ultimately, we would weave our way back down the path, making sure all the girls were accounted for and safe, and tumble into the tents with laughing and deep sighs.
We chose an overnight train from Athens to Innsbruck in order to get some air-conditioned sleep. As we ate cheese in our cabins and prepared to curl up for the night, the conductor moved through the train, checking for tickets and passes. He looked at mine, and explained something in Greek. I shrugged, took my pass back from him and went to sleep. Precisely at midnight, the train stopped. The conductor stepped into our cabin, turned on the light, and made motions that I was to collect my things. He pointed at the date on my Eurail pass, which had expired moments before. Politely, he threw me off the train at a tiny, closed station, and the train moved on without me.
There was a glass-encased train map at the station, and it appeared that I was just north of Dubrovnik, but still well ensconced in communist Yugoslavia. A few hours into my fatigued considerations as to how to get back to Innsbruck, another northbound train arrived. I climbed aboard and hid in the luggage rack until it reached its final destination – Graz, Austria. From there I hitched a ride from a kind gentleman who marveled at my tale, and who drove me directly to my apartment in Innsbruck. I beat the rest of my group home by an hour.
I was nineteen when this adventure occurred, and it is this story that leaped into my memory when my 21-year-old daughter asked to spend this summer as an intern in Dublin. Yes, I let her go … and she returned safely.
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