Greece 17: Turtles, Mosquitos and Other Creatures

During all the time, spent in Greece we were always pretty lucky in meeting people - all of them vere super nice and always willing to elp. In Serbia, the owners of the house offered us homemade lemonade and rakija and spent nice evening talking with us about everything we wanted to know. In Macedonia, we were pretty suprised by a man who we asked for a help with direction, and he immeditatelly jumped into his car and showed us the way on his own.

From our experience, I have to say that people on the South of Greece were generally warmer and friendlier. The owners of the apartment asked us if everything is okay and what are we planning to do every day. In the next apartment, both the Italian owner and the Greek cleaning lady were always there to help us with everything. We exchanged facebook profiles and phone numbers and the conversation was not made of empty phrases. When a problem with water occured (I'm gonna talk about it more in the next article), the owners came to give us vine as an excuse, several bottles of water and they even offered alternative accomodation until the problem is solved. The cleaning lady Eirini always made us laugh with her jokes and also with her attempt to make a selfie with our family.

When we stayed at Acheron, the owner introduced us the whole (female) family, we were always seeing them with a smile on their face and when we were leaving, they gave us a package of fresh oranges from their garden.

After we  moved from the western coast of Greece to the easter coast to the mountains, I felt the atmosphere changing. The staff of the chalet, we stayed at, were nice ... but they lack that warmth, we experienced on the western coast. Owners of the chalet greeted us when we come to the breakfast and that was the end of our conversation.

 "cleaning lady" Eirini z apartmánu Villa Riza

Also the reactions to our dog were interesting. In Greece and Macedonia, we were meeting a lot of stray dogs. Some of them live normally in houses with people, but they walk around the neighbourhood all days long and they come back home at night. Most people don't really care, sometimes they give them water or something to eat when they meet them in the street, some people tell them to go away ..

During our stay at Faros Apartments, there was one dog constantly walking around the hotel. He went to drink some water when people were showering in the outdoor shower or he just went to sleep in the shadows under the balconies. The owners of the apartments were going after him with something looking like a buterfly net, however they were leaving the gate open all the time, so they probably didn't really care if he's sleeping in front of the hotel or in the garden. The guests of the hotel were tolerant as well, some of them pet him when he walked around them, one woman gave him her Sprite to drink ... Then a serbian family came. A family, that wasn't almost able their car after they arrived and saw the dog. For the next couple of days the were visiting the hotel reception all the time, asking the owners of the hotel to get rid of the dog. Someone took him away one day, but in the morning he was sleeping in the shadow of cars in from of the building again.

Also the reaction to Teddy were interesting - in Preveza, the kids were screaming like if they had never seen a dog before, Greek seniors were frightfully dodging us, the other were smiling at him, taking photos ... and one young dad let Teddy to lick the feet of his baby.

On the other hand, it's true that not all of the dogs were kind and friendly, especially when meeting Teddy who was proudly protecting his territory and his pack.

Preveza

Besides interesting people and many dogs, Greece was full of many other species - in the meadows, in the mountains, around the roads and in the towns as well. Besides cows, sheep and donkeys, we also saw turtles, who frightfully ran away when they saw our car. At Acheron, horses were waiting for the tourists to take them for a ride through the river and beautiful blue dragonflies were flying above water. At the monastery on Lefkada island we met (besides of a dog sunbathing in the garden) peacocks, geese and fallow deer. And on our way to Lidl we also saw few foxes - unfortunatelly knocked down by cars on the road. Also, whereas a lot of honey is produced in Greece, you can see bees flyings all around and when the sun goes down, mosquitos are coming to play as well.