Noise and Silence in Greece

This time I decided to take the cheaper, slightly slower “open ferry” from Corfu to Igoumenitsa.

The Greeks call it the “pantofla” (the slipper), because the car deck is open to the elements.

The covered area where the passengers sit for the two hour crossing can get very crowded, and it was my luck that the 9am ferry was the same one that five or six coach drivers had also chosen to transport about 500 teenage Corfiot schoolchildren, on their annual school excursions, this year to Metsovo and Ioannina; some were in the last year of middle school, some were in high school. The combined volume of their unrestrained voices, shrieks of laughter and hysterical games was utterly deafening. Even headphones failed to block out the sound.

This came after the usual high-stress rigmarole of reversing the car into an impossibly tight space. For as long as I can remember, a dictatorial crewman has taken a sadistic delight in making drivers reverse without daring to sneak a look behind to see where they are going. They are commanded to look only at him, as he shouts, “Right, Left, Turn the wheel, Look at Me, Right, Left, Oooopa!” Once parked, it is almost impossible to open the driver’s door more than a few inches.

An hour and a half later, high up in one of the Zagori villages, the only sound to be heard is that of the soothing songs of the nightingales.

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green...

Darkling I listen.


(John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale)

Paschalia (wisteria), quince, walnut