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Friday!! It’s very cold today and I have head and stomachache. I’m afraid I got the virus. I must be fine because tomorrow I have the 8 hours ‘First Aid’ course. I want that to be over already.
I slept terribly. At 3.30am my little one came to my bed and then the stomach pain woke me at six. I fell back asleep a couple of minutes before the alarm went off. I hate when that happens. It was really hard to leave the bed.

Apart from the pain, I feel quite happy today. After all, it’s Friday and I should be in love. Here it goes a little love story (no song today).
Many of you already know that I’m living in Europe because many years ago (1995), I met this very nice guy and I fell completely in love with him. It didn’t last long. Once I moved to live with him, he was not the amazing guy I met on holidays. He was still nice and sweet but incredibly boring. I don’t like boring.

That’s me in Naxos (Greece) with the Nice Guy. Yes, he’s a redhead. I don’t have any problem with red hair. And his eyes were the deepest blue I ever saw.
That island is incredibly beautiful. The sea is so clear and warm…

A couple of days after the day of the picture, we had to say goodbye. We were staying in a camping with my sister and a friend and the water coming from the showers, was sea water. Very nice when you take a bath in the sea but really awful when you need to be clean. I can’t explain how our hair looked. I remember one day we went to a restaurant and I went to the bathroom and checked the water from the tap and it was not salted. So I took the shampoo and washed my hair right there.
The waiter was not happy when he saw my hair dripping… I could reach the shampoo in my backpack but the towel was not easy to find.

So we said goodbye and promised each other that next day we were going to watch the sunset wherever we were and think of the other. (You know, those things people in love say/do). I think he stayed in Naxos for a couple of days and we headed to Santorini.
Santorini is a volcanic island. So unless you are on the right side, you won’t be able to see the sunset because the mountain in the middle won’t let you.
Knowing that, I got a map an carefully chose a camping on the west side of the island so I could see the sunset.
We took a mini bus and I showed the bus driver where we wanted to go and said: “Camping?” he replied “Camping”. After a few minutes driving around, he stopped the bus and started shouting “CAMPING CAMPING CAMPING”. We knew it was the wrong camping so we said: “The next one” and make a sign with our hands like saying: “not here, the next one”. He kept shouting: “CAMPING CAMPING”. We didn’t move. The people on the bus started to get a bit nervous and saying things. We didn’t understand a word. At some point, the driver stood up, went out, took our bags that were on the roof of the mini bus, and threw them on the ground. WTF! We didn’t have a choice so we stepped out the bus. I still remember I was cursing the guy for five straight minutes and the sun was going down very fast.
We had to go up the mountain if we wanted to see the sunset. My sister and my friend were not really keen. We were really moody at the time. Stupid and rude bus driver.
I don’t remember now if I got to see the sunset or not. I don’t even remember if we stayed in Santorini or if we decided to take the boat back to Italy that same night. In any case, I was sad and in a bad mood and I needed to “ahogar mis penas” (drown my sorrows). So we entered the first store we found and got some fruit and white wine. My idea was to make “Clericó” (white wine and fruit).

We boarded the boat late at night but we didn’t think it was right to drink in front of all the people on the deck so we waited till next morning when we took the train in Italy. We knew that we could get a cabin and close it and nobody needed to know we were drinking alcohol.
I had everything planned. Since we didn’t have a jar,  we could cut a water bottle. We had a couple of sets of plastic knives, spoons and forks. We needed a few plastic cups too but we could get them on the boat.
So next morning we boarded the train and as soon as we found an empty cabin, we took it and started peeling and cutting the fruit.

That’s my sister with the improvised jar

The only thing I didn’t think about was the temperature. It was over 35ºC/95ºF. So the wine wasn’t cold.
I think that was the first time in my life that I drank wine. And the warm sweet and fruity wine went straight to my head.

And you can see I was totally drunk because when the controller knocked on the door to check the tickets, I gave him a glass of clericó and ask for his hat so I could take a picture.

The guy said: “I could get fired…” So he stepped in the cabin, close the door, and finished the glass in two sips.
I hope he didn’t get busted for that, he was a nice guy (but my memory is blurry now!!).

~ by DotedOn on January 23, 2015.