Hello Everyone,
We are here! And what a beautiful place this is. But let’s dispense with one common misunderstanding about this island straight away. The island’s official name is Lesvos as in, the Greek spelling of the name of the island is, Λέσβος. The Greek letter ‘β’, or ‘beta’, is sometimes transferred into English, using the similar looking letter ‘B’. However, the Greek ‘β’ is actually pronounced as a ‘V’.
The Greeks say that Lesvos can be written in English as ‘Lesbos’, or ‘Lesvos’, but it can only be pronounced one way, ‘Lesvos’. Personally, I always write it as ‘Lesvos’ so as to remember which way it should be spoken. It’s a bit like the word, ‘Farage’, I always type it as, W-I-S-E A-N-D C-O-M-P-A-S-S-I-O-N-A-T-E M-A-N.
Anyway, enough of him. There we were on Tuesday evening, Lesvos bound! We were travelling by train (and ferry once we reached southern Europe) so our journey started in Penzance station. We were both a little apprehensive. We had made an almost identical journey to Athens last year, but for some reason we both admitted to feeling more than a little nervous as we sat in the waiting room before boarding the sleeper. Very excited, but a little nervous.
When I get like that, I’ve noticed that I get an ear-worm playing along in the background of my mind, on constant repeat. It’s become an auto-response thing that I’ve tried and failed to overcome. The precise soundtrack in question varies but it’s always some early work by The Stranglers. …I know.
Actually, I have taken the trouble to self-analyse this (in the normal way, by lying on a couch and talking to a cheese plant) and it turns out that it stems from an early experience of extreme excitement/ extreme nervousness, which was my first ever gig; The Stranglers at the Top Rank, Cardiff in 1977. I had just turned fourteen and had made it into this heaving basement den, where Hugh Cornwall, Jean Jacques Burnell & Co were performing at the very peak of their electrifying powers. I was accompanied by two school friends, Jeff and Russell and can recall uncannily vivid memories of that evening. I wrote this paragraph lying on my bunk on the sleeper (with “Princess of the Streets” playing in my head, (obviously)) and thought I’d google, the stranglers top rank, Cardiff 1977 and found this link:
On This Day 27/05/1977 The Stranglers — Cardiff Live I was blown away when I saw the photos and spent a good few minutes trying to pick myself out in the crowd (I remember being on the left and being squeezed much closer to the front of the stage than I was comfortable, with Jeff just behind me). The image is exactly as I remember it. It was steaming hot in there, condensation dripped from the ceiling like the beginnings of a thunder storm and it was absolutely deafening. A little bit scary if I’m honest.
Needless to say, that intensely exhilarating gig made an impression and I now wonder whether having seen an actual photograph of it (including the back of my head) it might act as a sort of ear-worm exorcism, insofar as it ceasing to hold the same mystique as pure, unfettered memory. I’ll have to let you know about that. Perhaps I’ll book an appointment with the cheese plant when we get back to help deconstruct things a bit more!
The Penzance sleeper went like a dream (geddit!) and we made our way underground to St Pancras which was ridiculously busy, even at six in the morning! Descending into it was like lifting an enormous paving slab at some unearthly hour to find it relentlessly teeming with life in neat little corridors beneath. It was quite a thrill though, and it all went according to plan and we had plenty of time in hand. In fact we had to wait just over an hour until we we made our connection (ear-worm: The Stranglers, “Hanging Around”).
We took the Eurostar to Paris Gare Du Nord, then the metro to Gare De Lyon where we boarded the quatorze quarante-sept! We had hoped the all new TGV “M” would be up and running for this trip but it’s not quite ready and we had to make do with the uncannily smooth and near silent 186 mph version. Last year, I gave a lift to a young German economics lecturer who had been staying in one of our holiday lets.
As I drove him to the station, he told me (in perfect English) that he had written his degree thesis on the privatisation of British Rail, as it now seems to be held up as a template for how NOT to ensure future investment in critical national transportation networks by the would-be new private owners. The train we took from Penzance to Paddington the day before felt like something from the Austin Montego era (no offense) but even this soon-to-be-replaced TGV that was pulling out of Gare De Lyon was space-age by comparison.
Looking around, you could easily tell which of the passengers were Brits by the dreamy look on their faces as they brushed the silky, velvety seats with their pallid, Blighty cheeks. In fact, as I made my way through to the buffet car, my ear-worm, (“Grip”), was interrupted by the audible purring of contentment from one particularly Brit-heavy compartment.
We got into Milan Garibaldi at ten to ten at night and found our accommodation without fuss. We didn’t go out that night. Last year, we had two nights in Milan on our way to Athens and on the first night I might have been a bit excited, drinking a tad more than was sensible (it doesn’t take much!). I couldn’t remember leaving the restaurant or the entertaining way in which I apparently led Liz back to our hotel, my feet doing that thing where they walk a few steps ahead, leaving your torso trying to catch up. During the course of that evening, my Stranglers ear-worm (“Goodbye Toulouse”) was replaced by “Agadoo” by Black Lace, before I unfortunately felt quite ill. The halloumi risotto was obviously off.
On Thursday morning, the train left Milan Centrale at ten to eight but our Trenitalia was nothing like the TGV we’d taken into Milan on Wednesday. We hadn’t so much regressed back to an Austin Montego as much as a Fiat 127 complete with cigarette-burned seats, broken door handles and blocked toilet (ear-worm, “Something Better Change”).
Nevertheless, the Milan train arrived on time, squealing wildly as it pulled into Bari in southern Italy. On a map of Italy, Bari is located down towards the foot; If you imagine a pair of knee-high leather boots as I often do, Bari would be where the heal would rub if you settled for a size ten because they didn’t do half sizes. It’s a nice town and seems very authentic as it’s not exactly on the tourist trail.
It bears the hallmarks of Roman and Greek influences in ancient times, and much more recently when communism collapsed in Albania (please don’t let that put you off, Sir Keir) and the burden that Italy then carried forward. We had about four hours to explore Bari, before getting on the ferry (…earworm, “Duchess”).
From Bari, we boarded the ferry to Patras in northern Greece. The ferry was pretty much at capacity and on Friday morning we sat in one of the lounge areas and I scrolled through my phone, assessing what damage Trump had inflicted on the world while we’d been asleep. Between swiping, tutting and sighing through the various screens, I found myself absentmindedly watching a large group of American kids, probably 18-19 years old. A few were wearing University of Dallas sweatshirts and I resisted the temptation to engage with them in order to confirm or dispel my preconceptions. Anyway, I was well within the universally acknowledged US voice range of 800 metres so I could hear everything they were saying and from what I could pick up, I decided to spare myself taking on more unnecessary information.
Then I noticed a man of about my age observing my expression as I gazed upon the young Texans. He appeared to be in charge of them, their teacher perhaps. He half-smiled and shrugged in a resigned, helpless, apologetic manner. Perhaps a useful conversation, challenging lazy stereotyping that I should have had, had just gone begging, because at that precise moment an announcement over the ship’s public address system summoned us to the deck to await disembarkation so I didn’t get to talk to him.
We came ashore into 32 degrees of piercing sunshine and saw helicopters relaying sea-water onto wild-fires raging close to the town of Patras. Our taxi driver (who ended up taking us half the distance to Athens because the ferry was late arriving and the bus driver refused to wait while we purchased tickets from the office!) said that when he was a kid growing up in Patras, wild-fires were a rarity. He said that you would see one every few years perhaps. Then in the eighties they became much more common in the height of summer. But now he said they get them all the way through September. He said this summer was near unbearable. He had a protective mat covering the top of the dashboard of his Skoda to protect it from the heat. On the sides (where the doors met the glass) there was no such protection and the vinyl was completely melted.
In Piraeus, we met the coordinator for the volunteers and she took us to meet the ferry to Lesvos, the Anek Superfast ferry, which isn’t only super and fast, it’s also very red! We had a cabin for the overnight crossing which wasn’t compulsory, some passengers opted to sleep on the seating in the various lounges. I would really struggle with that. Mind you, they were mostly kids although these days kids seem to be getting well into their forties while policeman look like school children. It’s becoming a funny old world (…”No More Heroes”).
Our ferry nudged the jetty wall of Mytilene harbour at 9:50 this morning and we finally stepped onto Lesvos soil for the first time (…earworm, “Don’t Bring Harry”). It felt like a seismic moment. I looked down at my feet which now stood on this fabled, distant land. The same soil which still represents the only chance of safe refuge for hundreds of thousands of people. My entire body shuddered with something and then Liz looked at me and we stepped silently into it.
We met Ute, one of the other volunteers here, who was holding up a sign for us. She walked us the short distance to the house where I am writing this, and where we will live for the next four weeks or so. The house is old and shabby, but quirky and brimming with character. Everything is decorated by hand in vibrant colours and the mis-matching furniture that has been assembled here fits the setting perfectly.
On Monday, we will find out exactly what work we will be doing but I’ll sign off now. We’re going to do a bit of exploring. I’ll let you know how it all goes when I write next week.
Love to you all from Lesvos,
Rob Kersley.
