The Hot Spinster’s Guide to Greece

Rhodes, Part I

TW // sexual violence

It happens every time I travel.

In fact, it’s getting worse with age. The day I leave, my brain pings me awake at sparrow’s fart and recites a long list of all the things that could go wrong, kicking my anxiety into high gear. Even today, when all I have to do is put on a backpack, walk down a hill, and get on a boat for two hours.

Why? What is it about getting older that makes some things more and not less scary?

Another excellent question to ask at 5 o’clock in the morning.

Dawn over Fethiye Bay. Photo by Pierre Karneef

I arrive at the Fethiye port with ages to spare. Waiting in the long, chaotic-yet-barely-moving cue, my backpack strapped in place, I feel the self-consciousness I always seem to feel when I travel alone these days.

Backpacking solo in my twenties and thirties felt socially acceptable—or am I just remembering it that way? And I had wanted to do this trip as a homage to that time in my life: traveling on foot and public transport, staying in simple, self-catering accommodations. But now, as everyone around me is (in my mind anyway) staring at me and labelling me as a sad, middle-aged spinster with a backpack who’s trying to be younger than she is, I can’t remember what I thought I was trying to prove. Couldn’t I have at least used a rolling suitcase and pretended I’m glamorous?

I board the ferry.

Because this is Turkey, it leaves late. I sit and watch couples, happy families and gangs of girlfriends with rolling suitcases climb aboard. They all look so lovey-dovey and thrilled to be in each other’s company. A 12-year old daughter hooks her arm into her father’s, talking his ear off happily as they mosey along the walkway.

The nerve.

We set sail. I gaze out at the expanse of jewel-blue sea, alternately grumbling at myself for not feeling more grateful for all this and trying (and failing) to get the e-sim I bought last night to work on my phone.

We arrive at the port of the island of Rhodes, Greece, with its medieval stone walls and gasp-taking beauty.

Photo of Rhodes old city by Shinjan Bhattacharya on Unsplash

Without only vague instructions on where I’m meant to go and without internet access, I follow the direction of a sign pointing towards the bus station. The sun is blazing. My backpack, which I thought I’d packed lightly (that’ll be the day) is getting heavier on my hips. I ask a tattooed guy at a car garage for directions, and he tells me I’m going the wrong way and that I need to find the main road. I ask a man at a travel agency, who waves me in another direction. I walk for a while longer before admitting that I truly am lost.

And more to the point, that I feel ashamed about it.

Why? Why is it assumed that now that we all have smartphones, we’re supposed to be walking GPS’s, cruising along like purposeful little robots? What about all the magical things that happen when we get lost, especially while traveling?

But I can’t bring myself to ask anyone in the street, especially men, for directions.

Almost 20 years ago—before smartphones—I was travelling alone in Athens, and a Very Bad Thing happened. I’ve written about it a lot, which is why I don’t want to give it any airtime now.

I have been back to Greece since, though. On holiday with my wusband, whose family hails from the southern part of the country. And to go to a trial to testify about the Very Bad Thing. That trial was postponed, then postponed again, so many more times I lost count.

Over the course of the eight years that followed the VBT, I spent days on phone calls with authorities and press. I spent months trying to recovery from the toll it took on my mental heath—the Very Bad Thing itself, the postponed trials, and the people who commented on news articles and by Twitter that I asked for the VBT to happen because I traveled alone as a woman, and that I should stop making such a big deal out of it. (This was before #metoo. And it’s another reason why I don’t want to give it any more airtime now—this, and the Unbelievably Horrible Things happening to many, many people right now.)

Finally, in 2013, the guy who did the VBT was put in prison.

Two years later, he was released because the Greek prison system was overrun.

I’ve had a tiny resentment with Greece ever since.

Should all Greek men be blamed for the sickness of one, and for the corruptness of a nation’s legal system? No. Am I compassionate enough in this moment, lost and pouring sweat under my backpack in Rhodes, to remember this? Also, no.

To which you are possibly asking: Then why the hell did you go alone to Greece?

Good question. Kind of a reckoning, I think. To prove something to myself.

And also because of where I’m going, specifically.

If I can ever find it.

Photo of Rhodes old town by Andrew Vvedenskij on Unsplash

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I do find a cafe. The friendly woman at the counter gives me the wifi password, and I get the e-sim working. Google maps tells me the bus station is almost back where I started. Another 25 minutes of walking later, feeling disproportionately victorious, get on the bus.

It sails along the northeast coast of the island. We pass a sweep of more of that bluest of seas, past hotels and restaurants and more hotels and restaurants, to my stop.

I’m about to gratefully trudge uphill when I remember I have to buy groceries.

The first supermarket I try is closed. The sun is beating down ferociously now. I’m wearing jeans, which by this point look like I’ve taken a bath in them. The second one, thankfully, is open, and I buy Greek yogurt, snacks, muesli, and local, perfectly ripe strawberries. Then I begin the climb.

I pass through a surprisingly beautiful whitewashed village, most of the homes and shops still shuttered for winter. I stop a few times in the shade to catch my breath, but refuse to sit down, because a) I might be able to stand up again and b) I am now in tyrant mode where WE CAN NOT REST BEFORE ZE JOB IS DONE.

taverna in Theologos

I arrive, a veritable waterfall of sweat, at the Drolma Ling Retreat Centre.

The kind owner shows me to my cabin, a simple, clean space with 2 single beds and a wood stove. I get on a 12-step zoom meeting, make an outreach call, and then fall dead asleep.

When I wake up, the sun is setting over the sea.

sunset from Theologos by Raymond

I lie in bed. For the first time in… I have no idea how long, I have nothing to do and nowhere to be. I google nearby restaurants, but even the 15 minute walk to the closest one feels too exhausting on my still-shaky legs, so I improvise a dinner of freshly-picked carrots one of the centre’s volunteers offered to me earlier, and some sardines and feta cheese and potato chips, and share it with one of the centre’s permanent residents.

Simba of Drolma Ling

It is so, so quiet.

The only sound is the wind blowing the pine trees. This place has hosted some very senior Buddhist teachers, and has the embracing feeling of other dharma centres I’ve been to. Places where awakened beings have taught and blessings have been given and hundreds or thousands of hours of meditation have been practiced. Where kindness is given more importance that capital.

I had forgotten how being on land like this, for me, anyway, is a hundred times more relaxing than being at a resort or upscale boutique hotel. I’m still alone, but I feel like I’ve come home. I wish everyone could have this.

But I sure as hell couldn’t have gotten here, or to any of those other places, without being lost first.

Or, for that matter, with a rolling suitcase.