Somehow we had imagined Halkidiki to be different. Kilometres of beaches, a harbour café here and there and a bit of Greek hustle and bustle. Contrary to what we had imagined, which to be honest is based on just one village, our Koroni, it is empty here. And we mean empty. Empty of people.
The harbours are empty. The roads are empty. The beaches too. All, really all Kefenia and all the tourist cafés are closed. We encounter zero cars on the road. We are actually all alone. There hardly seem to be any people here outside the tourist season.
In Nikiti, one of the trendy spots, we find a gamer café where three people are sitting at a table. We sit down and the landlord is delighted: we're the first in days apart from the "three over there", he laughs. So we finally order my much-loved Elleniko Metreo, the Greek coffee, look out over the empty harbour and enjoy the language wafting over from "those three over there". We look at the sea, do nothing but look at the sea and enjoy the sun for a whole day, and wonder what will happen tomorrow.
"Let's explore the island." Halkidiki is actually a peninsula with three fingers. For whatever reason, we ended up on the middle finger. We drive along it at a leisurely pace, stopping here and there. We end up in a mountain village with a great view and a mini-museum (Heike) and lots of great cats (Gerd). He feeds all the cats in the village until everyone is full, and at some point the hungry dogs also get some of the holy cat food.
In the mountains, I find Christmas undergrowth that ends up in our Christmas wreath. Candles come from Hungary, incense smokers and scented candles from the Ore Mountains. So we celebrate a very traditional international pre-Christmas season in our Felix.
We continue past secluded, beautiful beaches. The sun is hiding today, the real beach feeling doesn't materialise. In the evening, we have a long chat with our colleagues - it's Friday again and we've been meeting in the virtual canteen to chat for years.
We spend the night on a spectacular pitch high up on the cliffs. With the best view of the roaring sea. The roaring sea should have been a warning to us. But it wasn't. That's why we got a good night's sleep, but then at half past two in the morning we drove in our pyjamas to a much less stormy, windy, rocky pitch three villages away. Shortly before three, we were tucked up in bed again, our Felix was no longer rocking and we could sleep in peace.
In the morning we realise that we have been standing right on the main road. But we didn't realise it. Because: there is simply nothing going on on the middle finger of Halkidiki.
Merci for "travelling with us
We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.
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