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.  It’s still on my bucket list. 

Seven hours later, we docked in Patras mid-afternoon. As we disembarked, we were greeted by an unexpected cultural experience – one that dramatically transformed our plans. Patras has long been considered Greece’s gateway to the West. For almost four thousand years, its busy port, a major commercial hub, has connected the nation to the rest of the Mediterranean. It also boasts a well-connected rail network that links its port to the capital of Athens and all points around the Peloponnese peninsula. It seemed the perfect place to kick off our Greek adventure.

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. In short, 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. This included higher taxes and higher prices for public services. 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 nationwide 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. Power outages were occurring. Tourists were flooding the port, desperate to escape Greece.

It was clear that our plans for Greece were blown, even more so given that we couldn’t access an ATM. However, a sympathetic supermarket cashier kindly let us pay for groceries using my credit card and added on a modest cash withdrawal. This gave us enough funds for a couple of days. We decided to make the most of them 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 next day.

We bought some discounted train tickets and headed out of town. We reached Olympia early in the 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 dozens of ruined structures, including at least 70 temples, and plenty of toppled Corinthian pillars to explore. Key sights include the ruined Temple of Zeus, and of course, the stadium.

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 standard stadion, an ancient Greek unit of distance found in numerous ancient records.

Sadly, the Temple of Zeus is little more than a field of rubble, with weathered foundation stones marking the building’s original footprint. The temple once housed a gigantic wooden statue of Zeus, finished with ivory and gold. This 13-metre-high masterpiece was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Nothing remains today. 

Likewise, the nearby Leonidion, or athletes' lodging, is equally ruined. I was surprised to learn that the 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.