(Athina is Athens.)
And if you don't know about the island itself, it comprises of the main town Fira, the 'luxury town' of Ia, and a couple of other villages. It's quite a unique place because the island used to be part of a big volcanic island, but after an eruption in 1600 BC, the volcano collapsed and left the crescent shaped Santorini, the tip of the volcano in the middle, and other smaller island on the far side with about 250 people on it and not a lot of tourism there.
Santorini on the other hand is basically only tourism. Due to another eruption in 1956, it wasn't really inhabited again until the 1970's. The villages of course seem ancient and of course beautiful. Here are some examples:
So the trip over from Piraeus was great. I woke up early to catch the ferry and ended up sitting beside a lady from France for the whole trip. We sat up on the top deck and chatted, albeit with some difficulty. Her English was fairly good, and my French I realize has turned to crap. But between the two of us we managed fairly well. It was a constantly changing conversation between English, French, then us deciding that we'll each speak our own language because we both understand better than we speak, but then reverting to each other's language because you often do answer in the language you're addressed in, and so on.
After arriving at Santorini I made my way into town and found the hotel that the friends of the bride and groom we staying at. Once I got there I had a nice blast from the past, one Mr. Charlie Dawes. Charlie, Tom the Groom, and I used to play in a band together throughout our university years. Those were really good years playing together and after those I kind of lost the thrill of making music for a while. Anyway, for one reason or another which I'm still not clear about, Charlie and I lost touch, so we hadn't seen each other in 8 years. Man, it was really good to see him again. We did a lot of catching up and that was great.
Anyway, I can't really put into words how great it was in Santorini other than to say it is definitely worth a visit in September because it's still a very comfortable 28C every day, and often warm evenings as well.
The wedding was great, the party afterwards was even better, and we all got pretty sloppy. I'll leave out the gory details. What happens in Greece stays in Greece. :p
One great aspect of being there is that everybody gets around on scooters or ATV's. So I rented myself an ATV at a mere €20 a day and cruised around the island with the others. The island isn't that big but still big enough to see and do things for a good 4-5 days. We went to beaches alot. Santorini being a volcanic island, there are white sandy beaches, red sandy beaches, and even black sandy beaches. So the question of the day was simply "Which beach? White, Black, or Red??"
I made some new friends as well at the wedding, the friends of the bride. We all had a great time drinking and laughing and it was a HUGE breath of fresh air to hang out with Canadians again. I clearly don't go home enough. I miss the banter of Canadian conversations. Seriously. Germans are nice people (when they're not busy being grumpy, complaining, unfriendly, unhelpful, or unnecessarily complicated), but perhaps it's the language barrier that has me missing some good old Canadian chat. Any we laughed alot this week and it was helpful for putting aspects of my life back into perspective. I've been in Berlin too long without a holiday.
So anyway, there's not much else to say. We visited vineyards, drove around alot, hung out at beaches, drank alot of beer, and chatted a whole lot. It was really an amazing week.
Coming back to Berlin was a bit difficult as I was met with 13C weather and rain. Not fun. I also only had flip-flops. But anyway, I'm back and that's that.
I'm seriously not looking forward to winter, but I am quite hopeful it should be better than the last, though how much.... who knows.
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