A road trip through Europe in the 90s forever changed the way I think

​Italy

We got off the boat early in the afternoon. We had planned to spend the first night in Naples, that is about 2.5 hours’ drive away from the port of Bari. For anyone who wants to cross almost the whole of Italy by car, arriving at Bari is the norm, while if you want to travel in the north of the country then Ancona is the best choice, as you’ll need a little bit over three hours by car to reach Florence, Venice or Rome. As we entered the town in central Italy, a hallmark in many films of the Italian neorealism, as well as for lovers of the authentic Neapolitan pasta, it was just getting dark.

One wrong turn was enough to set forth the confusion that would lead us directly to the most disreputable part of town, the neighbourhood of Scampia. I’d heard a lot about this city, with the ambiguous history, a city of great contradictions where if you were rich you lived in a totally different world than that of the poor. And still, the distance between those two realities was so small that it corresponded to just a wide main avenue. You crossed it and everything changed.

Naples, in the beginning of the 1990s, was a city with high crime rates and staying there without the necessary precautions could turn into a real adventure. Before our trip, we had learned that we needed to be very careful, especially with the car. Many tourists traveling to Italy by car ended up without an engine or without their wheel rims. From the very beginning we realised we were in the wrong place: the raw, grey harshness of the huge housing complex, known as Le Vele, in front of us, the clotheslines with the laundry hanging in the middle of the street, the small children running, half-naked, with messy hair, behind our car, all created an awkward unease. It may have been superstition, or perhaps exaggeration, but my parents decided to head to Rome that same night. As we couldn’t find the exit to the motorway we asked two policemen who were stopped at a light for directions. A while later, some kilometres outside the city, we stopped at a gas station. A couple of Greek newlyweds approached us, telling us they had been following us since Naples, trying to get to Rome, and they needed our help as they had been robbed of their money and travel documents when they stopped to have a meal at one of the many trattorias. We helped them get in touch with their relatives in Athens and my father told them to follow us. When we reached Rome, very late that night, we went our separate ways. I have wondered about what happened to them that August many times since. Did they go back to Greece in a rush or did they find a way to continue their holiday? Do they still remember that strange, short afternoon in Naples?

In Rome we had booked a hotel in Piazza Venezia in the heart of the city’s historic centre, where the Altare della Patria, built in honour of the first king of united Italy, Vittorio Emmanuelle II, stands tall with the Italian flag flapping in the wind. At 12 o’clock at night, none of us was in the mood to look for it. So, we ended up in the first hotel we came across. A huge, super luxurious hotel on Via Veneto with lovely beds and a great breakfast where they served hot chocolate in a white porcelain jug. The view from the room was stunning, so stunning that I thought I’d never forget it. 26 years later I still remember how I felt when I pulled the thick, soft curtain and I saw the thousand lights of the eternal city sparking underneath me.

We spent 3 days in the capital of Italy. We went to the Vatican where my father complained for a very long time because he wasn’t allowed in the church of St Peter because he was wearing shorts. We saw Piazza Navona and the Colosseum, and we striked a conversation with those guys outside it who were dressed as Romans and asked if you wanted to take a commemorative picture with them. We had thin, crunchy pizza at a restaurant at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, and we admired the luxurious windows of the shops of the great fashion houses on the famous Via Condotti.

We rented bikes and went for a ride in the great Villa Borghese park, while in the city the temperature was 40° Celsius and we searched frantically for a kiosk to buy some water – in Rome, water is not a simple matter, first because it’s hard to communicate in English, and second because, like in the other European cities, there are no kiosks. So, in some cases, you might have to walk quite a bit to get a cold bottle of water. I made a wish, throwing a coin inside Fontana di Trevi and I must say that it came true, even though it was a somewhat strange wish with small chances of coming true. On the last night, we witnessed a stabbing in a small square relatively close to the hotel: everything happened extremely fast next to a bench. A guy was lying on the ground and another guy, standing in front of him, stabbed him in the belly with a knife. I saw it like a film frame, in fast forward, and my mother put her hand in front of my eyes, pulling me away.

The next morning, we left, headed to the south of France. On the way there, we stopped at San Marino, the independent, Italian country, that is one of the smallest countries in the world. It’s overall size is just 61 km², while the permanent population in the country is less than 34 thousand people. We walked in the narrow, uphill tourist streets and ended up below the beautiful medieval castle of Guiata, on Monte Titano, that casts its shadow on the scenic San Marino, and is part of the Apennine Mountains, that cover a large part of the peninsula.

France

The French Riviera, the coastline of the south of France on the Mediterranean, is the eternal destination for the international jet-set; the background for some of the most famous French films, with Brigit Bardot sunbathing, lovely and sexy, on the sand; it’s known for its impressive, expensive hotels; for the Saint Tropez lighthouse; the Monte Carlo casino; and the Cannes Film Festival; and for giving birth to bright cosmopolitan dreams of an incredibly luxurious escape. Everything there is excessive. From the balconies of the hotel rooms that overlook the umbrellas on the beach, large, stripped and chic, to the white linen tablecloths in the restaurants. We decided to stay in Nice because the rooms in the other towns – it was after all August – were extremely expensive, and that’s how, from this small, colourful, town by the water, my relationship with France started, a relationship that almost instantly turned into a passion that remains alive to this day.

I had a purple swimsuit with fuchsia dots, and I couldn’t wait to get in the sea. I felt like a heroine of “The Mystery of the Blue Train” by Agatha Christie and I walked with the air of a diva on the sand, even though the sky was cloudy and there were waves in the sea. I still remember my disappointment when I reached the beach: the turquoise crystal waters of the films by Louis de Funès where nowhere to be found, we could only see the ruffled brown mud and black seaweed that blurred the waters. Growing up I did some research on the disappointing waters of the French Riviera, looking for a satisfactory answer for my failed dreams of the past. In an extensive article of the French newspaper Le Figaro in the early 00s I read about the regular biological clean-up of the area that aimed to improve the situation. For too many years the problem of the increasing pollution of the beaches of Nice, Cannes, Saint Tropez, Monaco and Monte Carlo was huge due to the great number of boats and yachts in the busy marinas of the area during the summer months.

For many years I’ve had a photograph of the palace of Monaco in a prominent position in my album, a proper dreamer growing up with stories like Snow White and Cinderella, unable to understand the trap behind them. I would look back to our trip, looking at the place where Grace Kelly lived with Rainier, the place where urban legend has it the “curse of the Grimaldi” has brought unhappiness. This unusual building, that does not resemble a palace in the expected way, charmed me immediately with its difference and its disarming simplicity. I vaguely remember the changing of the guards, standing in the crowd and filming the procedure on our camera. I remember posing in front of the Monte Carlo fountain and a dinner with a view of the cosmopolitan principality.

Like in Italy, the motorways in France were huge, endless, straight. There were no holes causing a sudden break, they were crowded with signs informing of nearby restaurants, WC, gas stations and supermarkets. I enjoyed collecting the white receipts from the self-service toll stations with the little baskets where you had to place the money and counting the restaurants and cafés we passed. We stopped for food by the side of the motorway on our way to scenic Toulon, a cute town just outside Marseille, known for its impressive opera house, the large open-air markets, and the amazing French wines. Toulon is not a common destination for those crossing France by car, as the majority chooses to stop in Marseille, that is only 50 minutes away. We spent the night in a tiny boutique hotel, with no elevator and a narrow staircase covered in a velvet carpet that creaked under our weight. It was amazing. The next morning my father drove 840 km in about 9 hours, and early in the afternoon we were in multifaceted, vast Paris, the home of impressionism and Francois Truffaut. In just one day, I saw almost the whole of France outside the window of the green Fiat Tipo, listening to Meatloaf, Take That, Mariah Carey, Bon Jovi and an Abba tape on my Walkman.

Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in the film Casablanca in 1942 “We will always have Paris”, however, until you actually reach Paris, get confused in the roundabout that leads to the city, look up at the imposing wild chestnut trees of Champs-Élysées, and have a coffee with cream in a bistro in Saint Germain, you can’t really understand the power and timelessness of this particular phrase.

The moment I stood in front of the statue of Nike of Samothrace in the Louvre was a magical moment. Her yellowed – from the passing of time – wings appeared real and more than made up for the absence of the head. They made this winged, divine, creature seem like a true force ready to sweep along everything in its flight. I feel that no other exhibit has ever been placed in a better, more impactful, way in a museum. From the thousand great things one can admire in the museum with the highest number of visitors in the world, even more stunning than the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo or the amazing Egyptian collection, the statue of Nike is what thrilled my eleven-year-old soul and made me love museums, books, art.

The years have passed, but I still hold a small grudge against my parents for not having gone to the Musée d’ Orsay to see the impressionist paintings. We did spend a fun night at Moulin Rouge and my father told me stories he’d read about the legendary Maxim’s during the interwar period. The countless stimuli around me seemed like a fairy tale, as if each corner belonged to another chapter of the story of this buzzing city, flooded by revolutionary ideas and finesse, with hundreds of steps to go up and down, and a wide long river to walk on its banks. We went to the Sacré Coeur church in Montmartre and we looked at Paris through the observation binoculars, that needed a coin to work and reveal all the chimneys and roof tops of the City of Light. We saw clothes and smelled perfumes at the department store Galleries Lafayette, and we couldn’t find our way to the exit. We ordered well-done beef patties and still they were red in the middle, we bought books in English from Shakespeare & Co., at whose mezzanine James Joyce wrote “Ulysses”, one of the most important novels of international modern literature. There, if you ask for it, they can stamp the head of William Shakespeare on the first page of your book so that you will always remember where you bought it from. When I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time I let out a scream, joyous and spontaneous – this is, for me, the city that never ends and this is something I’ll always strongly feel.

In April 1992, just a year earlier, every child’s dream had been established in Europe; Eurodisney had opened its doors in the town Chessy, 32 km from the centre of Paris, and it was a big deal. The tv channels broadcasted images of the park, and the newspapers wrote articles about the grand opening. And in the summer of 1993, I stood in line with my parents, waiting excitedly to hold my ticket, that turned out to be a red card that looked like a credit card, with the Little Mermaid on the front. I had a small purse, and I hid the card there, where it still is, buried in one of the drawers of an old desk. When we entered the big fairy tale park, the imposing castle of Sleeping Beauty “shined” on the hill with a princely bridge leading to it, looking exactly the same as it did in the film. Minnie, Mickey, Donald and Goofy were dancing among the people at this huge children’s party. A while later I got lost. I suddenly turned my head, and I couldn’t see my parents. I went round and round a small bus that took visitors from one part of the park to another, scared. This didn’t last more than a few minutes, but it was enough for me to panic so much that I still vividly remember it. In the calm and maturity of 38, I now can say that my parents’ reaction when they realised I was gone was reasonable and at the same time comic tragic.

We left France for Germany, making a stop at the “golden” Versailles palace, and at the small town of Fontainebleau, Marie Antoinette’s favourite summer refuge. Urban legend has it that the last empress of France loved sitting on a particular bench in the huge royal garden, while she also liked dressing in plain clothes and pretending she was a poor peasant girl feeding the ducks, in the company of her ladies-in-waiting that were always by her side.

​Germany

We entered Stuttgart early in the evening, after 6.5 hours of driving. We had stopped for food on the way, and, by mistake, had ordered a pasta omelette – probably the worse dish I’ve ever tried, to this day. Thankfully, at my aunt and uncle’s warm home, who spent the six winter months in Greece and the six summer months in Germany because they couldn’t stand the heat, my favourite food was waiting for us, as well as a break from the long stay in hotels.
Each May my aunt and uncle packed their suitcases, toiletry bags, and mini fridge and crossed by car former Yugoslavia to get to Stuttgart, their second home. That’s where my father’s uncle had spent his youth, working, making money, and where he discovered in the German people, a people that for Greeks was still controversial at the time, something that he loved more than anything in his life. For some reason I never understood, he refused to travel by any other means of transportation to Stuttgart, and he insisted on crossing the Balkans even during war, as if this process was an essential part of his personal happiness, despite the dangers. It’s possible that for him what was more important was the journey to Germany and not Germany itself.

From Stuttgart what I remember more vividly is a large pedestrian street in the centre of town, with countless shops on the right side and a lush garden on the left. In the end of the street was the impressive Palace Square with the gorgeous old palace in the middle. It now houses the Württemberg State Museum, an attraction for everyone making a stop at this modern, industrial town in Germany. There were many department stores there, and everyone’s favourite was C&A, one of the most famous European department stores in the 90s. People came and went, holding large nylon bags with sheets, kitchenware, knitwear, and down coats, as did I, feeling a little bit dizzy, discovering for the first time the wild consumerism of this world. My father was on the lookout for the most high-tech Casio calculator, while my mother and I enjoyed a slice of chocolate and sour cherry kuchen, probably the most delicious cake I’ve ever had, in the cafés at the top floor of the department stores. Each department store had its own café, and you would get everything you liked, as they were self-serviced, something I was not familiar with and that I enjoyed very much doing, filling my tray with anything I desired. In the afternoons, when the others were not in the mood to go out again, my aunt would talk me by the hand and we’d go for a walk in the neighbourhood, and she’d buy me teen magazines with pop idols on the covers. I didn’t understand a word, but I liked looking at the photos and collecting the posters. We stayed in Stuttgart for 10 days and the warm hospitality mixed with the deep generosity remains strong in me, like a beacon showing the way to what we should do for everyone we love.

​Switzerland

The northernmost city in Switzerland is Schaffhausen. There, on the border with Germany, the waterfalls of the same name fall at a great speed, making a loud noise. They are the widest – at 150 m width – waterfalls in Europe, but not the tallest, as is a common misconception. Known also as the Rhine Falls, it’s a place of indescribable natural beauty, a spot worth a visit if you’re traveling from Germany to Switzerland by car. There were many visitors, and everyone crowded to get as close as possible to the edge, and touch the water falling between the green slopes and rocks, creating bubbles and foam and ending forcefully in central Europe’s beautiful river that resembled the sea – it was that huge and wide. We filmed everything and if I had to describe those moments with one word, I’d say the word is “noise”. The noise of the water was so loud that you couldn’t hear what someone next to you was saying.

Crossing Switzerland, between the slopes of the Alpes, on the fast, winding motorway of San Bernardido (known as San Bernardido pass), that cut the largest mountain range of Europe in two, I was trying to process the past three weeks. This verdant country bordering with France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Lichtenstein was traveling with our Fiat and we entered long tunnels that made the high steep mountains seem like nothing. Around the middle of the day, we got in the large Gotthard tunnel (also known as the Gotthard Road tunnel), that, when it was completed in 1980, was the largest tunnel on a motorway in the world. You enter the dark tunnel at the town Ertsfeld and get out 17 km later in the small town of Bodio, in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, just 45 minutes from Lugano. Even though it was August, it was chilly in central Europe and I vividly remember constantly wearing a denim jacket, but when you exited on the other side, near the Italian border, summer was back. It was like a magic image, that not only connected two towns but two seasons as well.

We stopped at Lugano to take pictures and have lunch by the lake, and then headed to Rimini where the next morning we would be taking the return boat to Patras. Germany’s cold, the deafening sound of the Rhine falling from a height of 23 m, and the slopes of Switzerland were already behind us and that night in Italy was one of the hottest nights I’ve ever experienced. For some weird reason, the hotel we found by chance after a quick ride around the port was right next to the train tracks and all night I could hear the trains pass, in unnatural intervals, given that it was early in the morning. I woke up literally every half hour and after one point I could understand when the train was approaching, the building would shake, and I would open my eyes and wait. This particular experience made me realised the transience of travelling; people were arriving from all around, passing through and leaving, some spent the night, waiting to get on a boat the next morning towards another destination. There was a surprising casualness in this, a strange feeling of temporariness, that came in complete contrast to everything else I had seen and felt until that day.

I’ve often thought about which part of my life I’d return to if I could take a magic pill that takes you anywhere you want one more time. I think that I’d go back to that August afternoon when my father, wearing a leather fanny pack, returned home and announced that he couldn’t wait for our trip and so he had changed the boat tickets so that we could leave a day early. It’s the place where many things inside me began, and, more importantly, where the road to a way of thinking that never again put me in the centre of this vast, complicated world, started.

Take your children on your travels. Take them to the seas and the mountains, to small towns and islands, to large capitals and small villages, to see sights and go shopping, to rivers and motorways. They may be too young to later remember every detail: the names of the hotels you stayed in, the restaurants you ate at, all the names of the monuments you saw and of the museums you visited. But they won’t be too young to feel the beauty of the unknown, and the sense of adventure that comes when you discover something new in life. They will never be too young to look in admiration and open their hearts to new people, languages and habits. They may forget the places, but they’ll never forget what they felt when they looked at them.