The Silly Season begins

The Silly Season is off and running again for another year. Garry and I kicked off the festivities with a lazy BBQ on a friend's rooftop terrace last weekend. The socialising (and drinking) began at 1:30 pm and eventually drew to a close shortly after 9:00 pm.

On Friday this week, EO Sydney hosted its annual Christmas Party. This year's event was held in the Penthouse at the Ivy. The Ivy was once the ultimate "it" venue for body beautiful trendsetters.  I recall more than one glamorous cocktail evening by the poolside at the Ivy more than 20 years ago. Text 100 Sydney even held its staff Christmas Party here one year. 

The Ivy was always a little too fake and facile for me, so I was dubious about going back there. However, the company was enjoyable, and the afternoon flew by.  This year, partners weren't invited to lunch, so it was a more modest affair. Garry also decided not to join me for kick-on drinks afterwards at The Royal George. Needless to say, it was another big night!

Yesterday afternoon, our apartment building hosted its annual get-together on the courtyard podium. It was a perfect day to be outdoors as the temperature peaked at 38 °C shortly after 3:00 pm. Afterwards, we invited friends back to our rooftop terraces for more cocktails. It was still a cosy 29 °C at 11:00 pm last night. It's no surprise we're a bit worse for wear this morning - and I confess -  I pre-emptively drafted most of this post before we ventured down to the courtyard.

On Wednesday next week, my EO Forum will hold its annual Christmas Party. Once again, I'm the event organiser. This year I've booked a private dining room at Pilu, a Sardinian-style two-hatted restaurant overlooking Freshwater Beach.  Then on Friday, Artiwood's annual staff Christmas Party kicks off at Nour in Surry Hills. We're keeping it local this year!

Garry's also planning an impromptu cocktail hour on our balcony before Christmas finally arrives.  Phew! As I say every year, we'll need a vacation once these events are over.

One final comment. This post is officially the 1,500th post I’ve published on this blog. How cool is that? If I’m honest, I’m secretly proud of the fact that I’ve successfully maintained it for more than twenty years. 

An Olympic sprint

In 1990, Dean Keiller and I had grand plans for Greece as part of our European backpacking odyssey. As I’ve previously recounted, he and I were travelling through Western Europe on a Eurail youth ticket. In addition to free train travel, the ticket also provided access to heavily discounted fares for local trains, ferries and buses. This included ferries sailing between Italy and Greece.

Our original plan was to sail from Brindisi, Italy, to the island of Corfu, spend a few days exploring the island, then continue to Patras, Greece. We set aside a week or more for a whirlwind Greek itinerary exploring the nation’s most iconic sights. This included plans to visit Olympia, Athens and possibly a quick dash to one or more islands in the Aegean Sea. If everything went to plan, I’d celebrate my birthday on Santorini or Mykonos.

However, what ultimately unfolded was completely different. We caught an early morning ferry from Corfu on 23 September (my mother’s birthday). The dawn departure gave a brief glimpse of Albania. That's it above. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to visiting this once highly reclusive Communist nation. Three decades later, it’s still on my bucket list. 

We eventually docked in Patras mid-afternoon. As we disembarked, we were greeted by an unexpected cultural experience – one that dramatically transformed our plans. Patras has been Greece’s seafaring gateway to the West for thousands of years. It boasts a busy sheltered port and a well-connected rail network linking it to Athens, the capital, and all points along the Peloponnese peninsula. It was the perfect place to kick off our Greek adventure, or so we thought.

At this point in the story, I need to provide a little context. Dean and I were travelling in an era before the introduction of the Euro. As a result, whenever we crossed a national border, we’d visit a local ATM and make a cash withdrawal. We’d decided early on to manage our finances by loading my VISA credit card with funds. Unlike today, back then, cash withdrawals attracted modest fees while offering a highly competitive exchange rate.

Years later, I recall my father telling me he and Mum used my monthly VISA statement to monitor our progress through Europe. At the time, my VISA card was issued by the Bank of Zealand, and I’d nominated my parents’ home address for receiving monthly statements (which back then were always posted to you). Dad worked at the bank, so he also managed the transfer of any top-up funds that Dean sent across from Australia.

In case an ATM supporting foreign cards was hard to come by, I’d also carry enough banknotes to cover our first day or two of expenses. This approach had served us well until we landed in Patras. However, we hadn’t planned for one of Greece’s popular pastimes. That is, a national strike.

In April 1990, a conservative Government led by Constantine Mitsotakis came to power, introducing a range of austerity measures. Its policies triggered a wave of protest, including nationwide strikes. By the end of 1990, more than 1.4 million people had participated in almost 200 strikes. Of the strikes, 103 were held in the private sector of the economy (both large- and small-scale industry) and 60 in banks, state-run utilities and enterprises.

As luck would have it, Dean and I arrived in Greece during one of these massive strikes. The port was in complete chaos. Banks were shut. ATMs didn’t work. Buses weren’t running. Ferries were cancelled. Supermarkets were running short of essentials. Rubbish was left uncollected. Tourists were flooding the port, desperate to escape Greece.

Our plans for Greece were clearly blown, even more so after discovering the ATMs weren’t operating. A sympathetic supermarket cashier let us pay for groceries with my credit card and included a modest cash withdrawal. This gave us enough money for a few meals and incidentals. We decided to make the most of our limited funds with a quick dash to Olympia on the west coast of the Peloponnese. It was only a few hours away, a genuine tourism hotspot, and close enough to make a quick exit from Greece the following day.

We bought a couple of discounted train tickets and headed out of town. We reached Olympia early evening and checked into the local youth hostel. The following morning, we made our way to the Archaeological Site of Olympia. This is the birthplace of the Olympic Games, a place of worship for Zeus, and a site of art and culture, with roots in Western society.

The partially restored site is situated on the banks of the Alfeiós River, about 18 km inland from the Ionian Sea. For more than a thousand years, the ancient Olympic Games were held here every four years from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Incredibly, the actual games district was uninhabited throughout the year. There were no permanent living structures for spectators. As a result, visitors, rich or poor, made do with tents.

Dean and I spent a full morning touring the ancient site. There are plenty of ruined structures, including at least 70 temples, and dozens of toppled Corinthian pillars to explore. Its most iconic sights include the ruined Temple of Zeus, and of course, the stadium itself.

The stadium is basically a field with start and end lines marked off by transverse stone curbing. The athletes entered under an archway of a vaulted corridor at one end. Spectators sat mainly on the field's sloping flanks. The length of this field became the archaic standard of measure known as a stadion, a metric found in numerous ancient records.

Sadly, the Temple of Zeus is little more than a field of rubble these days, with weathered foundation stones marking its original footprint. The temple once housed a gigantic cedar wood statue of Zeus, finished with gold panels, ivory and precious stones. This 12.4-metre-high masterpiece, which took 13 years to create, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Sadly, nothing remains today. 

Likewise, the nearby Leonidion, or athletes' lodging, is another impressive pile of rubble and fallen pillars. I was surprised to learn that the Olympic Games site was abandoned around 600 AD. In time, it was buried by landslides and flood debris and remained unknown until its rediscovery in 1766 by the English antiquarian Richard Chandler.

On the afternoon of 24 September, we retraced our path back to Patras and purchased tickets for an overnight ferry to Brindisi, Italy. As we waited to board, the lights went out inside the terminal, plunging us into darkness. Any doubts we had about abandoning our Greek itinerary were immediately vanquished.

As we’d done previously, we slept outdoors on the deck of the ferry in the company of other backpackers, waking the following morning to the sight of the Italian coast. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to visiting this once highly reclusive Communist nation. It’s still on my bucket list.

However, despite the trials and tribulations of our 36 hours in Greece, one positive thing came of it. The extra week it released on our calendar was subsequently filled with a trip to Morocco, easily the most fascinating place we visited during our entire backpacking odyssey. You can read about our time in Morocco here.

Corfu

In September 1990, I spent four days on the island of Corfu while backpacking around Europe. After exploring Italy’s iconic northern cities, Dean Keiller and I decided to visit Greece. Getting there required us to catch a ferry from Brindisi. The cheapest option included a stop in Kerkira on Corfu. As a result, we decided to get off and spend a few days exploring the island.

The ferry departed Brindisi around 10:00pm and arrived in Corfu the following morning around 7:00am. As we’d done in Norway, Dean and I slept a night outdoors on the deck alongside other backpackers. Upon docking in Kerkira, disembarking passengers were besieged by a swarm of touts offering accommodation on the island. We eventually settled on a campground in Karousadhes on the island’s northern coast.

However, upon arriving at the campground, we discovered the price we’d been quoted on the wharf was misleading, to say the least. Additional charges suddenly appeared, including a transport fee and a tent fee. The price we’d been offered was just a basic site fee. The campground was also rather poorly maintained. The following morning, we decided to relocate to the campground in Dassia. which was much closer to the port. Dassia also boasts one of Corfu's most popular white sand beaches.

We made the most of our time on the island by hiring a couple of mopeds. Dean’s haggling skills came to the fore, and he secured us a bargain price for a full day’s hire. We took to the road, ultimately traversing more than half the island. The map above shows the ground we covered. Beach after beach, and bay after bay, were breathtakingly beautiful. I’ll let the images below speak for themselves. 

Note that we aren't wearing helmets. In fact, now that I think about it, we didn't have travel insurance either. What can I say? We enjoyed a classic backpacking experience. Although getting out and about allowed us to see the locals in action. As novice travellers, we were fascinated by the donkeys we encountered everywhere. It really was like something from a black-and-white Hollywood classic.

Highlights from our moped tour included the Canal d’Amour (Channel of Love) in Sidari on the island’s north coast. The coastline is famous for a series of Instagram-worthy channels carved into its white limestone cliffs. Supposedly, any couple who swims together in the waters of Canal d’Amour will remain forever in love. Dean and I certainly fell in love with its crystal-clear waters. It was also the perfect spot for a memorable picnic lunch. Did you notice me in the image that opens this post?

We also made it to Paleokastritsa, famous for its picturesque, white-washed monastery. The monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos is one of the oldest in Corfu, dating back to 1225.  Nearby is the equally impressive Angelokastro, a Byzantine castle situated on a prominent headland overlooking the village and its tranquil harbour.  The image above, sourced from the web, gives you a great sense of its unforgettable location. 

The furthest south we rode was Kato Garouna.  The village located here sits on one of the island's highest points. Not far from the road, you're rewarded with the most stunning view of Corfu's west coast and the Ionian Sea.  Another image taken from the web, above, captures the scene perfectly.

We originally planned to spend two full days on Corfu. However, thanks to a rookie mistake, we ended up spending a third day on the island. In essence, we’d forgotten that Greece was an hour ahead of the rest of Western Europe. As a result, we failed to adjust our watches after docking at Kerkira. We didn't discover our mistake until we arrived at the port on September 22, only to find that the ferry had already sailed. If truth be told, we had an early hint that something was amiss after hearing fellow campers around our tent pack up and leave at what seemed to be an ungodly hour of the morning. Little did we know!

However, all wasn’t lost. We decided to make good use of the extra day and used the campground’s coin-operated washing machine to wash our sleeping bags. It was the first time we’d laundered them since arriving in Europe in May. I’d hate to think what microscopic critters and fungi were living it up inside. Although, as you can see below, we got to enjoy a relaxing afternoon siesta under the olive trees.

The one thing that strikes me about this image is the plastic shopping bags sitting around our tent.  I'd forgotten our regular ritual every time we set up camp. We'd always go shopping for supplies to last us for a few days: bread rolls, salad, tomatoes and cheese for lunch, plus a few tinned goods used to pull together an evening meal. Our pup tent was tiny, so we often left our dry goods outside. When I look back now, our campsite must have looked like a garbage dump to other campers.

One final story about our time in Corfu. Greece has a police division dedicated to looking after visitors and tourists. After our first night camping in Karousadhes, we caught a shuttle van back to the main port to find a new campground. It was here that we encountered the deceptive tout who’d misled us the previous day. I took it upon myself to warn disembarking passengers that he was a crook and a fraud.

Let’s just say our dishonest friend didn’t take too kindly to my impromptu warnings. A scuffle soon broke out. In the ensuing melee, he knocked my spectacles to the ground, breaking the frame. I reported him to the local tourist police. I can still recall being interviewed by a slightly bemused officer in a small white-walled office in Kerkira. I have no idea what came of my complaint. This was the pre-Internet era, so it was almost impossible to follow up once we left the island. Fortunately, I was travelling with a spare pair of spectacles, so all wasn’t lost.

Early in the morning, on September 23, we boarded the ferry for Patras in Greece. What followed next was another unexpected encounter with the volatile Greeks. Follow this link to learn more!

Farewell Scandinavia

Here’s another retrospective blog post. This time we’re off to Copenhagen as part of the Eurail backpacking odyssey that Dean Keiller and I enjoyed in 1990. We’d just finished two days touring Stockholm. On 31 August, we caught an early train and headed for Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden. We planned to spend five hours in the city before making our way across the Oresund Strait to Copenhagen for the night.

We arrived in Gothenburg shortly after noon. Our trusty Let's Go Europe travel guide recommended that we check out the iconic Feskekörka, colloquially known as the “Fish Church”. Built in 1874, this seafood market gets its name from its unique design. It features a steep, angled roof with pointed arched windows and construction without partitions or pillars – it simply looks like a church, or “kôrka”. Check out the image from its website below.

Our remaining time in Gothenburg was spent exploring its old town. We stumbled across the local city library and spent an hour or so reading its collection of English-language newspapers. These were the first news stories we’d seen in more than three months. Remember, we were travelling in the pre-Internet era.

It was at this point that our first rookie mistake was made. Unbeknownst to us, the train we boarded for Copenhagen included a section of carriages terminating at the port of Helsinger, while the remaining train drove onto a ferry to complete the journey. Of course, we made ourselves comfortable in a terminating carriage and didn’t discover our mistake until the rest of the train had driven off.

As a result, Dean and I had to catch a separate ferry across the strait, then board a second train bound for Copenhagen on the opposite side. We finally reached the campground late at night. The following morning, we discovered we’d made a second rookie mistake. We didn’t have enough local currency left to get to an ATM in town. However, good fortune was our friend. As we reluctantly set out on foot from the campground, we stumbled across a 50 Kroner banknote on the ground – enough money to buy us a couple of bus tickets.

Much like we did in Stockholm, we bought a three-day tourist pass that provided free public transportation as well as free admission to a range of local attractions. We chose the Hologram Museum as our first stop, before tackling the Louis Tussauds Wax Museum. That’s Dean above giving Leonardo da Vinci a few pointers for painting the Mona Lisa. We finished the day wandering the Tivoli Gardens as night fell.

The Tivoli Gardens deserve a special mention. Founded in 1843, it’s one of the world’s oldest amusement parks and a true icon of Copenhagen. However, this isn’t your Disneyland or Universal Studios experience. When you enter the gates, you’re met with twinkling festive lights, colourful flower beds, sideshow stalls, and the sound of laughter. 

Yes, there are classic thrill rides scattered among the trees, including carousels, rollercoasters and the rest. However, you can also enjoy a peaceful stroll through the beautiful gardens, experience live performances such as concerts, ballet and theatre, eat great food, and so much more. I recall being slightly bemused and confused by the whole experience. Was Tivoli a theme park, a carnival, an open air market, a place for kids or designed for adults? The image I’ve pulled from the web above gives you a great sense of this unique attraction.

On Sunday, 2 August, Dean and I headed out of town to visit Frederiksborg Castle. This former royal residence is a genuinely spectacular venue. It’s located on an island in a lake on the outskirts of a town called Hillerød, roughly 30 km northwest of Copenhagen. My travel diary raves about its chapel, which visitors view from an elevated balcony, the grand ballroom and an extraordinary chandelier in the Audience Chamber. The chandelier features a deer leaping from its upper rim towards the ceiling.  The images above were all sourced from the Internet.

However, one of my strongest memories about the castle had nothing to do with the building. Dean ran into a couple of Australian tourists from his home state of Victoria while we were there. They told us that Joan Kirner had become the state’s first female premier a couple of weeks earlier. Looking back, I marvel at how easy it was to become disconnected from current affairs in the pre-Internet era.

We returned to the city that afternoon to leverage our tourist pass at the city’s Planetarium. We watched an IMAX film about the Space Shuttle, which, as a dedicated space buff, I totally loved. It was the sort of thing I’d never experience in New Zealand.  Dean and I finished the day with a tour of the Calsberg Brewery. Yes, the free taster at the end was definitely a highlight.  The image above shows the Elephant Gate, the brewery's iconic entrance flanked by four granite elephants.

Our third and final day in Copenhagen was spent visiting the local Aquarium. The building is situated in the city’s northern suburbs overlooking the sea. The piranhas were a highlight for me. Little did I know, 15 years later, I’d be fishing for them myself in the Amazon jungle. Afterwards, we walked along the waterfront, stopping to admire the city’s iconic Little Mermaid statue sitting alone on a rock. I was surprised to see how small she was. This iconic bronze sculpture, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, is only 1.25 metres high, including a tail that wraps around its podium rock.

Dean insisted we revisit the wax museum and check out the horror section we’d missed on our last visit. He made the right call as the special effects were suitably spine-chilling. Apparently, the wax museum closed several years ago. We spent our final hours back at Tivoli Gardens listening to a live orchestra and watching a ballroom dancing demonstration. Later that evening, we caught an overnight train to Munich, a journey that included a ferry back across the Ferner Strait. This transit also marked the end of our gruelling three-week circuit through Scandinavia.

Stockholm on a shoestring

Time for another retrospective post. Let’s continue my backpacking journey through Europe with Dean Keiller, a sheep farmer from Victoria. This time we’re off to Stockholm in Sweden. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, getting there was half the fun. We caught an overnight train from Bodø in Norway, stopping briefly to change trains in a place called Hell, and on to Stockholm, passing through picturesque tracts of pine forests that stretched for miles.

More than 1,400 kilometres and 24 hours later, we finally arrived in Stockholm mid-evening on Wednesday, 29 August 1990. I made a note in a travel diary that we spent our time on the train sharing a compartment with an Australian woman named Anne and another backpacker from Chicago named Connie.

Dean and I based ourselves at a campground on the outskirts of Stockholm for the next three nights. To make the most of our time, we purchased a three-day tourist pass offering free public transportation, as well as free admission to a range of popular tourist attractions. For the next couple of days, we gave the pass a solid workout.

Our first attraction the following morning was Skansen, an open-air pioneer museum featuring historic buildings and exhibitions that reflect Swedish traditions and everyday life throughout the ages. The complex comprises at least 190 museum buildings, including the iconic Seglora Church (Seglora kyrka), an old wooden church built in 1730. It was abandoned by its parish in the Västergötland lake district when a new church, built of stone, opened in 1903. The original wooden structure was carefully disassembled and relocated to Skansen.

Next on our list was Kaknästornet, the city’s telecommunications tower. It delivered a superb overview of the city. It’s only from an elevated viewpoint that you begin to appreciate why Stockholm is often called the City of Islands. Sweden’s capital is spread across 14 main islands where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea, connected by over 50 bridges, and is surrounded by a vast archipelago of nearly 30,000 islands, islets, and rocks.  

Fun fact: the tower's observation deck was closed to the general public in 2018, in part because security upgrades designed to protect its critical equipment and infrastructure from terrorism or foreign interference proved too expensive. The image above, taken in 2015 and sourced from the web, offers a great sense of the view we enjoyed. It's sad to think this is another travel experience consigned to history by modern terrorism.

We then visited Storkyrkan, Stockholm’s 700-year-old cathedral, to see its famous statue of St George and the Dragon. This impressive statue, depicting the saint on horseback slaying a writhing dragon underfoot, is carved from solid oak. Including its wooden plinth, it’s more than six metres high. Storkyrkan was the first of numerous cathedrals we visited in Europe, and not the most extravagant. However, as my first European cathedral, it’s always been special to me. The image above is the only archival photo I've found so far of our time in Stockholm.

We finished our day with a wander through Gamla Stan, the city’s old town, and a look inside Sweden’s national parliament, which sits on its own little island.  Gamla Stan was quaint enough, but didn't really strike us as anything particularly special. The image that opens this post is Riksgatan Street on the island of Helgeandsholmen. It was taken during my return visit in 2010 and shows the main entrance to the grounds of parliament.

The following day, we visited the new Vasa Museum. This was a truly extraordinary experience. The purpose-built museum had opened just a couple of months earlier. It’s home to the Vasa, a 64-gun wooden warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The top-heavy vessel sailed less than 1.3 km from its Stockholm shipyard before keeling over in full view of cheering locals and foreign dignitaries.  It was salvaged in 1961, although it took another two decades to finally preserve and stabilise the structure. Annoyingly, the museum closed early, so our visit was unexpectedly cut short.  I finally returned to finish my museum tour in 2010. The image above was taken during this second visit.

Earlier in the day, we visited the city’s Toy Museum (and why not, it was included in our three-day tourist pass). I have no recollection of what we saw and did here. According to Wikipedia, it boasts one of the largest model railway dioramas in all of Scandinavia, with at least 190 metres of track. 

However, if my travel diary is any indication, our lunch spot proved more memorable. We ate our homemade filled rolls in the shadow of a statue of Thor fighting the Midgard Serpent, a bronze sculpture in Mariatorget (Maria Square), just south of Gamla Stan. I initially thought it depicted Poseidon. An easy mistake to make if you look at the images above that I’ve sourced from the web. 

Over dinner that night, Dean and I decided we’d seen enough of Stockholm. The following morning, we rose early and caught a train to Copenhagen. However, our journey across Stockholm and the Øresund Strait didn’t go quite as planned. I’ll share more in my next Eurail post.

Time travel

I’ve been on a bit of a retrospective posting binge lately. For the last month, I’ve been drafting and publishing posts about the three months I spent travelling with a small group through Eastern Europe in 1990. For years, I’ve talked about documenting my travel adventures, which began before this blog started in 2006. My time in Eastern Europe was one such project, followed by the three months I then spent backpacking through Western Europe.

I’m proud to say I’ve finally completed the story of my time in Eastern Europe. To follow this journey, start with this introductory post. Links within each story then take you on a ride through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria, before concluding with an idyllic holiday in Northern Greece. There are ten posts in total.

I’ve also started chronicling the backpacking odyssey that followed my time in Eastern Europe. However, it'd be fair to say that this experience isn’t as well-documented. I have little more than a photo album and a pile of souvenir ticket stubs to guide me. As a result, these archival posts require significant amounts of research as I strive to trigger and recall old memories. To follow this journey, start with this introductory post.

To date, I’ve documented my time in Berlin and Norway, including a 700 km excursion north of the Arctic Circle, as well as posts about my first time in Morocco. Enjoy!

In search of paradise

It’s time for a final post about my journey through Eastern Europe in 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. For almost three months, the group made its way progressively through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. Our formal activities finally came to an end in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv.

On 30 July, we bid farewell to our local hosts and drove towards Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Here, our group split and went our separate ways for a final week of rest and relaxation. Six of us (me, Dean, Dave, Sandy, Michele and Christine) decided to take one of our two minivans and drive south to Greece, while the remaining six members returned to Switzerland to explore the Swiss Alps.

My group decided to go in search of a remote Greek beach, set up camp, and enjoy the ultimate postcard vacation. We left Sofia early in the afternoon and headed towards Thessaloniki, 300 km south. We were keen to see the city, given its prominent role in three New Testament books (Acts, as well as 1 and 2 Thessalonians). During the early days of the Christian church, it was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. 

We stopped for a night in Thessaloniki and spent the following morning exploring this ancient Greek city. That’s us in the image above at the Arch of Galerius. This is a triumphal arch in the centre of town, built to commemorate a victorious campaign against the Persians by Roman Emperor Galerius in 306 AD. It was originally an eight-pillared gateway that formed a triple arch and connected to the Roman palace. Only two of the arches remain. 

The nearby Rotunda of Galerius, a circular Roman temple, was an equally impressive sight. It’s a massive masonry structure which, much like the Pantheon in Rome, once featured an oculus. These days its dome is fully enclosed. Over time it’s been used as a mausoleum, a Christian basilica, a Muslim mosque, and again a Christian church (and archaeological site). Faded frescoes still adore its ceiling as you can see in the image above, which I’ve sourced from the web.

Exploring Thessaloniki was kind of mind-blowing. A revered biblical location came to life for the very first time. When you live in the antipodes ancient history often feels mythical by nature rather than stories of real places where real people live. In the decades since, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had stop and figuratively pinch myself, marvelling at the fact “this place really exists”.

However, while Thessaloniki was fun, our ultimate destination was the Chalkidiki peninsula. This is the three-fingered landmass extends south of Thessaloniki into the Aegean Sea. Its rambling coastline was promising territory in our search for the perfect beach.

We headed south along the coast of the Kassandra Peninsula, Chalkidiki’s westernmost finger, mid afternoon on 31 July. However, the further south we drove, the more crowded the beaches became. Our dream destination was proving more elusive than anticipated. We eventually stopped for the night on the eastern shores of the peninsula.

The following morning, we continued our quest for the perfect beach. We drove back up the coast and around Toroneos Kolpos towards Chalkidiki’s middle finger. It was here, at the tip of the Sithonia Peninsula, that we finally found the beach we’d been searching for. 

Porto Korfu Beach ticked all the boxes. It was a gently arcing crescent of sand hugging the eastern shoreline of a small, sheltered bay. A narrow channel between two picturesque headlands provided safe access to the sea. Even better, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.  

A few days later, we found a postcard of Porto Korfu in a local store. I've kept it as a souvenir for more than 35 years. Look for the red dot in the image above. That was our small piece of paradise.

We set up camp on a grassy flat towards the southern end of the beach and spent the next three days in paradise. We swam in the warm azure-blue waters of the Aegean Sea. One evening, we filled watermelons from a nearby village with a bottle of Ouzo and feasted on their aniseed flesh. One afternoon, we hiked over the headlands to soak in breathtaking views of the local coastline. It was truly idyllic.

We even enjoyed an unexpected taste of local culture. Every morning, a young lad passed through our campsite shepherding a herd of goats. He’d walk them along the beach to graze on the headlands and return them home in the late afternoon. You can see the herd making themselves at home in the image above.

On the afternoon of 3 August, we finally packed up camp and began making our way north. Our minivan had to be returned to its owners three days later, in Einigen, Switzerland, more than 2,100 km away. We camped for the night on the outskirts of Nea Mouldania, gateway to the bustling Kassandra Peninsula.

The following day, we crossed into Yugoslavia and drove nonstop for the entire day and on through the night, before finally reaching Liechtenstein on Sunday afternoon. I recall one driving shift I took on. We pulled off the motorway late at night to refuel and take a quick bathroom break. As I drove across the motorway overpass, I momentarily forgot we were driving on the right-hand side of the road and turned onto the wrong side of the slip road leading into the service station. The entire van erupted with shouts as we realised my error.

I also remember our stop at the Liechtenstein border. A modest road sign and a small guard hut were the only indications of its existence. A friendly border guard welcomed us to the principality. We handed over our passports, hoping for a souvenir stamp. The guard waved them off. We insisted he stamp them. He eventually relented, disappeared inside his little hut and eventually returned with a stamp pad. I suspect he had to search high and low to find it. That’s my stamp in the image above. It would be another twenty years before I’d return to Liechtenstein again. 

We stopped for the night at Camping Mittagspitze, which I’m sure is Liechtenstein’s only campground. The following morning, 6 August, we drove across Switzerland and into Einigen. Here we handed back the minivan and large canvas tent we'd borrowed from the local YWAM base. Two days later, I set off with Dean Keiller, a Victorian sheep farmer, on a new adventure, backpacking our way through Western Europe. Follow this link to learn more about our three-month odyssey through 12 countries.

Tampons and toilet paper

Here’s more about my time in Bulgaria in 1990. If you’ve been following the journey so far, a dozen of us spent three months travelling through Eastern Europe as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. We entered Bulgaria on 11 July and spent eight days in Varna on the Black Sea coast, before heading south to the provincial port city of Burgas.

This city of more than 200,000 sits on the edge of Burgas Bay, the westernmost point of the Black Sea. According to Wikipedia, Burgas is the centre of the Bulgarian fishing and fish processing industry. Our group spent five days here, hosted by a fractious local church. The congregation was deeply divided between two camps. Our group spent much of its time promoting unity in an attempt to reconcile the warring factions.

I don’t recall the cause of the schism. However, it wasn’t all that unexpected. Protestant denominations were subjected to relentless persecution in Bulgaria during the Communist era. For example, when the Communists came to power in 1946, a law curbing foreign currency transactions was introduced. At the time, many Protestant churches were funded by international donations, and many of their ministers had been trained in the West. As a result, these foreign ties were treated with suspicion, often fostering deep divisions within many congregations.

On 24 July, we headed inland to the city of Plovdiv. In many respects, we’d saved the best for last. The church that hosted us proved to be one of the strongest contacts we made throughout Eastern Europe, second only perhaps to the church we met in Debrecen, Hungary. Much like Debrecen, the church in Plovdiv boasted an active and energetic youth group that quickly took us under its wing.

For six days, we delivered daily open-air performances of our dialogue-free street drama to large and engaging crowds. The church also took on a day trip to a nearby village to share the gospel with a fledgling congregation it was sponsoring. Above you can see Dean Keiller and me with Jimmy, a member of our host church. Jimmy was simply enamoured by our group and its activities. He followed us everywhere, and we welcomed him with open arms for dinner and a laugh at our campsite more than once. That’s our campsite in the image that opens this post.

Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second-largest city. Its greater metropolitan area is home to more than half a million people. It’s also one of its oldest cities. There is evidence of habitation in the area dating back to approximately 6000 BC. In the millennia since, it has been conquered and ruled by the Greeks, the Persians, the Celts, the Romans and the Ottoman Turks.

As a result, Plovdiv is rich in fascinating history. One afternoon, our hosts took us to visit the city’s beautifully restored Roman amphitheatre. The Roman theatre of Philippopolis (Plovdivski antichen teatar) is one of the world's best-preserved ancient theatres, and one of Bulgaria’s most famous monuments. It sits within a natural saddle between two of the city’s historic Three Hills. It is divided into two parts, each with 14 rows, separated by a horizontal aisle, and could accommodate up to 7,000 people. The first image above is mine, while the second was pulled from the web.

One final anecdote from our time in Bulgaria. Shortages of basic goods were a common occurrence wherever we travelled in Eastern Europe. However, each country had its own peculiar supply challenge. For example, in Romania, toilet paper was scarce, while in Bulgaria, women’s sanitary items were hard to come by. As we travelled through Bulgaria, the women in our group were constantly approached by locals asking for a spare tampon or sanitary pad.

During our final days in Bulgaria, the women in our group donated their surplus sanitary supplies to several grateful women. Although, if I recall correctly, in Sofia, the nation’s capital, one particularly well-heeled woman cornered a group member in a toilet. She offered a hefty sum of banknotes for a handful of tampons. We later joked that had we been better prepared, we could’ve funded our trip through Eastern Europe by simply stocking up on toilet paper and tampons.

On 30 July, we packed up our outreach camp for the last time and made our way to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Here, our group split, with half of us returning to Switzerland, while the rest of us headed for Greece. You can learn more about our time in Greece here. My only enduring recollection of Sofia were its hillside suburbs. The ridge line was dominated by a string of drab, monolithic high-rise apartment blocks. It was classic socialist architecture in all its soul destroying glory.

The Black Sea

In 1990, I spent three weeks travelling through Bulgaria. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program, seven months after the nation’s Communist Government had voluntarily ceded power. We crossed the border from Romania on 11 July, exactly a month after Bulgaria had held its first free elections in almost fifty years.

We drove from Pitesti in Romania, via Bucharest, before crossing the Bridge of Friendship into the Bulgarian city of Ruse. This was also our last sighting of the Danube on this trip. From Ruse we drove east to Varna on the Black Sea coast. As we ventured through the countryside, we unwittingly experienced our first taste of post-Communist corruption.

In the middle of nowhere, as our minivan rounded a downhill curve, a police officer suddenly appeared from the trees holding a sign that instructed us to stop. We pulled over. In broken English, he demanded payment of a fine. David, our Canadian colleague who’d been driving the van, quietly slipped a handful of banknotes into his open hand. We were then free to go.

We encountered this entrepreneurial spirit everywhere we went in Eastern Europe. For example, almost every town had someone offering Western pornography, a once-rare item, at a bargain price. This included trestle tables set up in city parks loaded with explicit magazines. We were also frequently approached by freelance money changers offering an exchange rate two or three times more favourable than the official rate.

The use of unofficial money changers caused quite a stir within our group. Some of us, including me, felt we were normalising lawlessness in these fledgling and potentially fragile democracies. Tim, our group leader, eventually agreed that our collective expenses would only be funded using official currency exchange outlets.

Varna was a typical seaside resort destination (see the internet-sourced image above). It’s home to more than 300,000 people, making it Bulgaria’s third-largest city. It’s often referred to as Bulgaria’s maritime capital and is home to the headquarters of the Bulgarian Navy and merchant marine. We were invited to visit Varna by a local church member who’d seen us performing our street drama elsewhere in Eastern Europe. However, unlike Romania, we set up camp in each location rather than being taken in by local families.

As I’ve posted previously, public infrastructure throughout Romania was in disarray thanks to the oppressive austerity measures imposed by the Ceaușescu regime. We camped for a night in Timisoara when we entered the country. The campground was in a serious state of disrepair, with toilets broken and filled with human excrement, and basic foodstuffs almost impossible to procure if you didn’t have the right connections. We couldn’t have travelled for a month in Romania if local families hadn’t taken us under their wing.

Camping in Bulgaria proved to be a rather civilised affair. The facilities were well-maintained, and hot water was generally available, although it was sometimes available only for set hours each day. I recall an encounter I had with an old lady cleaning the male shower block at our campground in Varna. I was enjoying a leisurely hot shower when she suddenly appeared in the doorway. She immediately took umbrage when she noticed my blade shaving in the shower. She decided this was a colossal waste of precious hot water and began scolding me in Bulgarian. I dismissed her protestations and continued shaving.

A few minutes later, she reappeared. However, this time she took a more aggressive approach. She decided that the only way to stop me wasting water was to embarrass me. She began cleaning the shower block while I was still standing there. I decided that being naked in front of an elderly Bulgarian woman was a humiliation worth enduring for the sake of a leisurely hot shower. To this date, I’m sure she thought I’d rinse off and make a quick exit.

We spent eight days in Varna, hosted by a large and active evangelical church. Its bold and public proclamations of the gospel meant that it had suffered extensive persecution under Communist rule. We heard many stories of individuals who’d been harnessed by local officials, denied access to social services and other injustices. 

For example, we learned that the church’s pastor was relatively new to the congregation. Apparently, his predecessor had been arrested, imprisoned and never heard from again. It was confronting to hear firsthand of people disappearing at the hands of the Government. I believe the image above, taken from the web, is of the church which hosted us. Although, thanks to the passage of time, I am no longer certain.

We conducted daily open-air performances of our gospel inspired street drama. These regularly drew large crowds, often hundreds of people at a time. In fact, some of the biggest crowds we drew during our entire time in Eastern Europe were in Bulgaria. You see one such crowd in the photo above. The centre of Varna is dissected by a broad pedestrian boulevard filled with plazas, parks and garden beds. It offered plenty of space for us to perform without impeding pedestrians, while providing a ready-made audience every day. 

After trolling Google Street View, I've confirmed this photo was taken on the edge of Independence Square (Ploshtad Nezavisimost). It’s a well-known focal point where several pedestrian boulevards converge, including Preslav, the main pedestrian throughfare. Preslav starts in front of the city’s iconic Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral and ends at Knyaz Boris I, the city’s premier shopping street (A web sourced image of the cathedral opens this post).

Above is a screenshot of Independence Square as it appears on Google Street View more than three decades later. The red building on the right in my image has been repainted. However, its distinctive balconies remain unchanged, as do the distinctive balconies on the left-hand building visible in both images.

When we weren't ministering in the streets, we spent time at the beach, enjoying the warm waters of the Black Sea. I still marvel at the fact that I once swam in this renowned body of water - one that's currently a battleground in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

On 19 July, we packed up camp and drove south along the Black Sea coast to Burgas, Bulgaria’s fourth largest city, before turning inland towards the ancient city of Plovdiv. You can learn more about our time in these Bulgarian cities here.