In Search of Utopia.

People travel for many reasons, some as a means of escape, others to experience the other or perhaps learn something, while many simply  fill in the time as they can afford too. But what ever the reason they are generally changed in  some way for the experience. Post-war Greece both civil and the second world war was very much a location alive to its past, even today in this age of mass tourism it is possible to find a forgotten island or village still living the dream of a simple life.

Greece of the fifties attracted a whole generation of artists, writers and searching dreamers, seeking a world at peace with itself. A world were friendship and a resigned endurance towards hardship went hand in hand. Many thinking people felt  at loss as to direction the world was taking after the cruel recent past. Greece was a magnet for the young and many others who had experienced the magic of Greek life even during the war.In my travels in the early sixties I meet many ex-servicemen  who on their discharge from the armed forces were now living in hidden villages in the Peloponnese.

When I first visited in the the early sixties although life was still very hard for the local population, there was still a great sense of community, people took care of each other. Some Canadian friends of mine had been staying on Lesvos and while sitting around an open fire one evening their young daughter had fall into the fire receiving severe burns on her face. The local women immediately rubbed a blue solution over the girls face so as to preserve her beauty, to keep away the evil eye, a thousand year old remedy handed down from antiquity. This obligation to take care of strangers penetrated every aspect of life. When walking along a hot country road locals would come out to offer you oranges to quench your thirst. Villagers would meet you on the road and offer you free accommodation.. Travellers and strangers were sacred, who knows one many be a god returning to world to check on the living. The accommodation, a white washed cottage maintained for this purpose was always embellished with local craft. The only drawback would be when you were preparing for bed you would  unknowing provide entrainment to the villagers through the pane less window.

Two Australian authors, Charmian Clift and George Johnston lived for ten years on Hydra, were Clift wrote several novels ,"Mermaid Singing,"  "Peel Me a Lotus "and "Walk to the Paradise" among the better known.Their life became a proto type for the free love adventures of the late sixties. They were not alone as the period ushered in a general period of rebelliousness. Another great lover of Greece from this period was Paddy Fermor whose death last week at age 96 sadden many lovers of Greece. Fermor wrote the forward for the extraordinary "Ill Met by Moonlight", a true story about the kidnapping of a German general on Crete during the war. Recently the Folio Society Published George Psychoundakis' story from the Cretan viewpoint in "The Cretan Runner". Patrick Feror carried out the translation and wrote the introduction. All these books are worth reading by anyone interested in Crete and Greece in general.