This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with 31-year-old circus artist Kong Viban, a performer at Phare, the Cambodian Circus . The show performs regularly in Siem Reap and will be on tour in New York in December .
28.08.2023 - 15:23 / euronews.com
It’s summer season, which means Greeks are flocking to the islands and beaches for a well-deserved holiday.
But I’m not one of them. Instead, I’m heading deep into the interior of the country to the Pindus National Park, a mountainous netherworld of bears, wolves, reclusive villages, ancient dialects, vast forests and endless rivers. I’m going to need a jacket.
While Greeks often ascend to the mountains in winter - the country has around 18 ski resorts - they actively shun them in summer.
“If a Greek told me they were going to the mountains in summer instead of the beach, I would call them crazy,” a friend recently told me.
But for me, the Greek mountains in summer are something close to paradise.
I love the cool temperatures and clean air that allow you to sleep easily without even a window open. I love the lack of light pollution that reveals the night sky in all its glory. I love the greenery of the pine forests and the vertiginous villages clinging balletically to the rocks. I love swimming in rivers, lakes and waterfalls. I love seeing a Greece that feels genuine.
In August 2015, fed up with the excruciating heat, relentless crowds and inflated prices of the islands, I turned my back to the coast and bounded up to the mountainous region of Zagori in northern Greece. It was a revelation.
Since then, I’ve spent every summer in the Greek mountains. The road to Zagori became my road to Damascus.
But it’s a lonely vocation. Aside from the local villagers, who tend to greet me with a courteous bemusement, I’m usually the only Greek tourist up the mountains in summer.
The rest of the villages tend to be filled out by the usual suspects: Israeli hippies, French pensioners, German hikers and the obligatory Dutch caravaners, whose omnipresence in Southern Europe is surpassed only by pigeons.
They clearly love it here. So why don’t Greeks?
“It’s an issue of mentality,” says Spiros Apergis, who runs hiking and walking holidays with his tour company, Aperghi Travel. Spiros has been trying for years to get Greeks to join him on his frequent summer trips to Zagori or to walk the mountain trails of his native Corfu. But his tour groups remain stubbornly, resolutely foreign.
“Greeks don’t have a culture of hiking or mountain activities,” says Spiros. “They have different interests for holidays. A Greek thinks ‘What do I care about the mountains?’ It’s like the moon to them.”
Just to be clear, Greek islands and beaches are incredible.
But those who once decamped to the islands for authenticity, calm and an easy-going way of life, today find themselves in a different world.
In recent years, wildfires, heatwaves, crowds, exorbitant prices, rampant development and collapsing infrastructure have crushed the experience of the Greek
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with 31-year-old circus artist Kong Viban, a performer at Phare, the Cambodian Circus . The show performs regularly in Siem Reap and will be on tour in New York in December .
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