Outbound – Destination Greece

Selected the option to permanently delete my Facebook account at 00:01 last night, and have been told that I have fourteen days to change my mind before my profile is gone forever.  For a while I thought that it would mean that I’d still be able to use my profile for two weeks and would remain visible online, which would have been awkward as I’d already announced to the world that I wouldn’t be there anymore, but as it is I can only get into the account if I say that I didn’t really mean it.

But I do mean it.  I really do.

The only thing is that I had an unsent reply to a message someone had sent me open in another window that I’d forgotten about.  But I’m not sure that really mattered either because I think all my messages should vanish once I’m no longer on Facebook anyway, so there’s a chance they’d never have got it anyway.

But in other news, I’ve also left the country.  Typing this on my flight from Dublin to Athens where I’m spending just over twenty-four hours, before going back to Kefalonia for the month of June to volunteer once again with the Katelios Group on the south of the island.  Spent June 2009 patrolling the beach and trying to make it as inviting as possible for nesting loggerhead sea-turtles (or careta-caretas for those of you more comfortable with Latin names), and enjoyed it so much that I’m on my way back for a second helping of turtle fun.  A big part of the attraction is the daily kicking down of sandcastles, which can put off, obstruct or otherwise deter our easily-spooked shelled friends from coming onto the beach and laying their eggs.

The plan, as it stands, is to arrive in Athens this evening, spend tomorrow visiting my old place of work, meeting a few of my former students for coffee or lunch, in the afternoon, as well as another batch of them in the evening, and then hopefully catching some old friends for dinner.  That last bit is uncertain as I haven’t really heard from many of them in a while – mostly due to poor organisation on my part.  I’m also going to be meeting up with some first-time volunteers that will be arriving in Athens tomorrow over various times of the day, and I’ll be more or less leading the team down to Kefalonia on Thursday.  I imagine that they already think I’m a bit strange, seeing as I had been organising everything through a group Facebook message and have now disappeared from that two days ahead of our first rendez-vous in Athens.  I did warn them I’d be disconnecting, but their first impressions still probably aren’t that good.  I’d already set and announced the date for the shut-down when I was only planning to make my own way down and before realising there were more people coming the same way, though, and postponing it would have been perceived as showing a lack of resolve, I think.  But I can definitely see if the roles were reversed and one of the people that I was going to be spending the next month with displayed symptoms of being a little bit outlandish from the outset, that I’d be more than a little bit worried.  I’ll have to make up for it by being extra-sound.

At some stage during the time I’ll be in the capital I also hope to pick up something from the juggling shop that I can learn in my spare time on the island.  Thinking something like poi (you know those balls on the ropes that street artists spin around their heads, usually whilst aflame – the balls that is, not the street artists), or devil sticks or possibly another diabolo, as I lost my last one, but I was getting pretty good at that before leaving it somewhere in France.  Not good enough to make a living street-performing, perhaps, but enough to be able to do some pretty nifty tricks, if I do say so.

After a month on Kefalonia turtle-monitoring, early in the morning of the first of July I’ll be back standing on the side of the road with my thumb out, making a start on my journey home.  I’m confident that I’ll be able hitchhike home in the two weeks I’ve given myself, although this has been met by scepticism by family and some friends.  But we’ll see.  I could probably do it in less time, but I’m planning on dropping in on various friends in Germany, Holland and Belgium each of which whom will be treated to an evening of my company.  If they can stick an entire evening.  I’ve also pencilled in a stop in Kosovo, for the simple reason that Google Maps wouldn’t allow me to plan my trip through there, they either want me to travel to the west of it, or to the east of it, through Bulgaria and all the way around Serbia, which has made me want to see Pristina.   Excluding Kosovo, though, Google Maps claims that the distance from Kefalonia to Ireland, via Corfu, Stuttgart, Kaiserslautern, Hamburg, Texel and Brussels (and possibly Paris, which I think I threw in for the craic) can be driven in just under two days.  Forty-six hours or something like that.  I don’t know if that’s non-stop driving, or if it includes rest stops, but I call that very doable in a two week time frame.  So long if I get picked up.  

If I’m still standing beside the road in Greece by the second week I’ll reconsider my options.