The trip I’m on has multiple functions, one of which is to make a literary pilgrimage. I’ve been loosely following some of the threads of the poet H.D.’s life, including a significant event on Corfu, for reasons that I’ll write about later (there are many, it’s complicated, I’m not sure why I’m following them now, but here I am).
I am both glad I’m here and I can’t wait to leave. The island of Corfu is ridiculously beautiful –
and ridiculously cheesy –
(if you listen closely you can hear the Muzak version of “The Girl from Ipanema” coming through the beach bar’s sound system.)
Because my travel funding came later than expected, I didn’t book a hotel room until much too late in the season, which means I wound up staying in Sidari rather than my desired destination of Corfu town. (Had I understood the domatia concept/system, this would have been a very different trip.) Sidari is, essentially, the British version of the Jersey shore. (”Sidari is no good,” according to an Airbnb host in Corfu town, and I can’t say I totally disagree.)
Think Wildwood – families on holiday, kids building sandcastles, teenagers cruising each other, everyone sunning themselves into a radioactive hue as if news of skin cancer failed to travel this far, empty yet deafening nightclubs straight out of the Inbetweeners movie. Sidari may have once been a Greek town, but it is now little Manchester.
Every restaurant serves buttys and toasties and Irn-Bru and Guinness. You can’t swing a beach towel without finding a place to watch a football game, and every night, although my hostel is decently far from the town center, I’m lulled to sleep by the sounds of karaoke and kids racing scooters down the main drag.
There are things about Sidari that are charming. Everyone I’ve met, including some of those British tourists, has been lovely. When I was confused about how to find my bus stop, the driver called ahead to my hostel to confirm things with the owner, Angelica. (“Ah, Greek men,” said Angelica when I arrived. “[noise somewhere between amusement and resignation and frustration] — they like pretty girls. These bus drivers, they are not always so nice, yes?“) Angelica herself has been delightful. She’s told me a lot about Sidari and the guests she sees and Germany, where she was born and raised, and what it’s like living through the current economic crisis ("It’s a shit time. But at least on Corfu people can have chickens and gardens, so it does not look so bad here. But in the cities…”). Indeed, one day at a mini mart the clerk was clutching something to her chest. I didn’t think much of it until a baby chick poked its head out of the towel she was holding.
I’ve been delighted every time a clerk or waiter is amused by my parlor trick of having sort of learned how to pronounce thank you correctly in Greek, but disappointed to realize it really is only the men who find this paltry accomplishment charming. I keep thinking of the story of the hostel guest of Angelica’s who, every morning would come up to the kitchen, spread his arms wide, and proudly greet everyone, “Calamaris!” (”good morning” = “kalimera”).
When I can’t take the tourist kitsch anymore, I’ve gone for runs in the gorgeous countryside, on tiny roads that wind through olive groves and empty buildings and subsistence farms of goats and chickens and orange trees and squash vines and bee hives and tiny tavernas where old men sit outside and smoke and drink (these men, they are also very friendly).
I’ve also been escaping to Corfu town as much as possible, but the bus system here is chaotic, to put it nicely. The town itself is only 30km away, but it takes an hour and a half to get there. (Buses are giant touring buses that barely fit on the tiny mountain highways; bus stops are unmarked and placed seemingly at random; tickets are sold on the bus, meaning you often sit and wait at a stop for 15 minutes for everyone to get paid up; schedules are mostly followed, kind of, but also you’d better be at your stop early just in case, but also be ready to wait for late buses, because they are always late.) On my bus this morning, the ticket taker asked if I would volunteer to give him a massage, then attempted to give me a massage, and then asked if I’d like to kiss while grabbing the back of my neck (”My name is Philip, would you like to kiss?” – verbatim pickup line). These Greek men…
Of course, one of the other functions of this trip is to get myself to write, and Sidari is sort of a perfect place for that. There is nothing to do, once the novelty of people watching wears off (I am not trying to tan myself into a radioactive hue, so that pastime is out), and the concentrated thinking time has led to some realizations about what I’m trying to do in the book chapter I’m writing and in the larger book project as a whole.
And the pilgrimage has been significant – it meant something to me to be in the places in Corfu town that mattered to H.D.
[Corfu town near H.D.’s preferred hangouts]
Still. Corfu is one of the places where Odysseus was briefly stranded, and while he found its inhabitants welcoming, he was happy to leave. I’m looking forward to moving on to my next island too.
