A continuation of my impressions from Mykonos, Greece…
The Waiter Dmitri
Everyone loves the hotel’s head waiter Dmitri. Dmitri is tall and handsome and very reassuring. He rubs our backs while he’s talking to us, and he speaks in a soft and gentle voice. He tells us that he works six months in Mykonos, and the other six months he’s a ski instructor in Austria.
We ask Dmitri many questions about Mykonos’ nightclubs. He takes great pains to be as thorough as possible with his answers, and if we ever appear confused, he draws us maps on little scraps of hotel stationery. He can’t say the word lesbian without lowering his voice to a whisper. This is Dmitri’s only fault as far as I can tell. I think his mother must be very proud of him.
Lost
When we travel as a group, we rely on the Germans. They have an innate sense of direction, like carrier pigeons, and it takes German efficiency to navigate the island’s unmarked streets and the labyrinth of pedestrian walks in town. Only once did they lead us in the wrong direction, but we ended up at a beautiful amphitheater surrounded by flowering trees.
The city plan was designed to confuse pirates. All we want is ice cream and a taxi cab. We find a transgender gypsy wearing a medieval crown, sitting on a stoop, reading fortunes. We see stray cats everywhere. We want to take them home and give them a better life. At restaurants, the cats beg at tables like street urchins. They will eat the fish, the lamb, and the bechamel on the moussaka, but they won’t eat the squid or the octopus.
There is a famous pelican in town. A man drives him around in the carriage of his scooter. One morning we saw the pelican sitting on the terrace of a restaurant, and the owner came out and cursed and shooed the bird away. We thought it was extreme and impolite until we realized that he didn’t want the pelican shitting all over the place.
