Actually, we were
ready on our last day to return the car and to try a “typical” sea vacations of
the most guests of our hotel. Meaning “walk-swim-lie-eat-walk-lie-swim-eat”
etc. But this passage from active to a passive recreation was so abrupt that
our tender minds turned out to be not ready. First of all, we wanted to go to
the ceramic shop in the morning before returning the car to observe beautiful
things at least if not to buy. We counted that we took a car at 11 am, so we
should return it at about the same time. So we are coming to the parking spot
and don’t see our car. The place where we left it is just empty. We are
stressed out, thinking about some suspicious guys who were hanging around the
beach yesterday at night. Though we are
running to check a last optimistic version – to ask people who gave us the car
if they just took the car back by themselves. And it turned out to be truth –
we actually had to return the car the evening before or before 9 am that day.
But they haven’t prevented us! We thought the rules are like in Moscow – you
return the car at the same time as you took it.
Because of such stress
we started missing our car and our freedom to go everywhere a lot. Well, in the
beginning it wasn’t that bad: we swam in the hotel swimming pool, because our
rocky beach with big waves and cold water wasn’t appropriate for Max, lied on the
beach, observing a group of local teenagers who were having fun in the swimming
pool. But it was getting hot and boring and we went to find a place to have a
lunch. On foot for sure. And got lost on some private territory. Max started
whining that he was tired and wanted to eat. Finally, we found a small nice
bar, but we didn’t have cash left (only a credit card) and they didn’t accept
cards (we faced this problems already tons of times here). Se we moved to
another bar “Ideal” and had a huge lunch there. And 4 more hours of doing
nothing after. Boring…
But afternoon we had
an interesting meeting at the beach. So here is the story. We are sitting on
the beach talking and playing with Max and suddenly a middle-aged guy comes to
us and gives us a bunch of figs. We smile and thank him. He leaves than comes back
and brings also apricots. We start talking. As we found out, he is learning
Russian and came just to meet new Russians. When he discovered that I teach
Russian as Foreign language, he brought a lot of books he uses for learning
Russian and more figs. He was a manager in the air company and knows a lot of languages. He started learning
Russian in a state sponsored program, but when the crisis came to Greece they
closed this program, so he continued learning himself. Dimitrious is incredibly
nice guy! He persuaded us to take presents from him on the next morning before
we leave – olive oil, wine. And we were trying to decide what to give him in
advance, because we even didn’t have Russian books with us. It was fantastic!
Later we had an
excellent interesting and cozy evening with Costas, our new friend from Apolona
(a fireman who helped us) talking about everything in the world, about Greece,
about past and present, about future friendship of our countries, about him,
about us. The sea was lapping almost under our feet and at a distance Rhodes
was shining with tons of lights. It was the best farewell with this wonderful island.
Though it’s sad…
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