Christo drove us from the port of Syros to his beautiful country house on a hot afternoon in mid July. He had separated two bedrooms and a huge living room and kitchen area and even a large balcony facing eucalyptus tree forest outside of the Syros hora. Our bedroom had bright yellow walls and red curtains and two single beds which we pushed together as Marion, another French girl, was joining us for the next two weeks.

Syros is the administrative capital of Cyclades islands. It has a very straight hora and clean and conservative port with large and important looking central plateia, main square, hosted by statues of famous politicians. The only court of Cyclades islands is located on Syros so the kids on the islands are told from young age that if they don’t behave, they will be transferred to jail in Syros and nobody wants to be trapped on Syros!
Also the citizens of Syros seemed conservative. The island is not touristic at all and locals consist mainly of bankers, office clerks and other non-tanned, suited up people, who look busy all the time. Luckily our host and his mates were all from out side of Syros, as most of the islands’ main crowd seemed to be: immigrants and students from Athens. Christo and most of his friends were teachers.

Christo and his cousin visiting him were very relaxed. They drove us around the island in Christo’s little car to remote beaches and in the evenings they cooked home made, fresh, french fries with stuffed squid and fried calamari. and Greek salad of course. Christo invited his friends over who brought home made wine in two litre plastic bottles and we sat on the balcony in candle light before heading to the bars in the port.
Christo’s house was actually the first liveable house we had stayed in: he had a proper kitchen to cook, air conditioning, TV and the best of all: a washing machine! The lazy afternoons before cooking the boys were fighting with cockroaches. They were everywhere and came in from smallest holes under the doors. Boys were screaming like teenage girls and chasing the bugs with shoes or what ever they could get hold on to kill the little bastard before it went hiding under the sofas. Christo also had a habit of listening to Indian music while at home which made the whole stay feel like an out of mind experience.

From Syros we took yet another ferry to a small and religious island of Tinos. We sat down in a small café in the port to wait for our host Anastasia to show us the way to her empty apartment we could stay at and we already had our first spiritual experience. The café was located in the beginning of the main road that led up a high hill to the main church of Tinos, Panagia Evangelistria, Virgin Mary’s church, which is the main destination for pilgrimage. Next to the cafe there was a carpet and designed route on the ground for pilgrims showing the way up to the church. Women on the carpet that noon were equipped with protection on their knees and cloves in their hands when they set down on their knees to crawl up the one kilometre way to the church asking for forgiveness or perhaps doing it out of thankfulness or simply for praying. 

On Tinos we rented a car to make our way up to island’s hundreds of small churches and monasteries. It was a tiny tiny car that could barely take the three of us girls up the hills, but the air conditioning was guaranteed with an open roof top and electric windows! The small and authentic villages of Tinos were tiny, filled with white houses and blue windows. There were no people anywhere and the amount of tourists compared to the other islands was null. We saw hundreds of houses build for pigeons which were much appreciated messengers and source of meat in winters for locals. And of course we went to the beautiful beaches of Tinos. On one of the beaches our tiny car got a bit stuck in the sand and scratched the car next to ours on the parking plot. We had angry Greeks against us for the afternoon. The hassle the owner of the other car made was finally settled when the car rental shop manager got involved and reassured the owner of the scratched car that our insurance will cover the new paint. The scratch was a tiny two centimetre dash on the bumper but we got to learn a lot about the Greek patience and dramatising. In the end of the afternoon we left the car rental shop kissing and hugging with the owner of the scratched car.

PS. Before we got to use the washing machine at Christos’ place, we were looking up to buy some new, cheap, bad quality clothes from tourist’s shops. Marie stood by an ugly top and she screamed: “I’m French, if I wore that, I swear I would burn in hell!”