Passing Friendships
Our guidebook, so the blurb on the back cover claims, is like ‘having a local friend’.
If only.
I always thought it would be great to have a local friend: to get an insight into people’s day-to-day life, to have somebody to guide you around town or teach you about food.
I had forgotten that the trouble with travelling is that you have to leave the local friend behind.
We’re missing Yanis, although I doubt that he’ll miss us as much. He has many friends; he makes new ones every day, and those who meet him are lucky people indeed. The Cosmogonia Bar is one of those rare places I won’t forget. It will stay with me as I grow old, alongside fading memories of a shisha house in Cairo, a beach off Dar es Salaam, a table in a shady village square in the then Zaïre where a man with flashing eyes and ebony skin seduced me and I contemplated eloping for the first time until, panicked, I hurried on.
These are all sites of passing acquaintances. Moving on left a little pang and a lasting—but hazy—memory. There were closer friendships as well. People I felt sure I would meet again one day, and perhaps with the age of the internet there will be a truly global community of ‘local friends’: travellers and those who reciprocate and come to visit them in London, Sydney or New York.
Ironically, for all the friends that Yanis has made in Europe, Australia and the US, he has yet to travel anywhere. He’s too busy.
Tags: Crete, friends, Greece, Greece, Palaeochora, Tag Index
Denni