Announcing Mr. & Mrs. Tim & Laura Berezny!

Well, I came back from my travels for my bros wedding. It was a beautiful wedding! Tim (my brother) was basically allowed to make only one decision concerning the wedding, and that was what his groomsmen got to wear. Sooo.. we had a blast! All decked out with top hats, canes, white gloves and tails!!! Laura looked fantastic and im really excited to have her in the family! It was a perfect day, that ended with a cool cruise with a jazz band on Lake Nipissing. Congrats Tim & Laura!!!

IOS: its pronounced EEE-AWWS

The following is an account of a few of my experiences on the Greek Island of IOS.

There are tons more.

Trust me.

Gimme a ring.

Two nites ago I was in Corfu, I took an all nite ferry/slash bus to Athens. I arrived there at 4am. I had no plan, and very little money. I assumed the bus would bring me tot he city centre and I would have no problem figuring out how to get to the port so I could get to my destination Island of IOS. I wasnt so lucky.. it brough tme to some obscure bus station near a freeway. Not only that, the buses and metro was not yet open. I had my whole life on my back... I was dead tired.. felt sick.. and I walked out of the bus station.. I looked left, I looked right.. I decided to go right. I don tknow why. I walked for about an hour. it wasnt till then I asked a taxi driver where the acropolis was.. unfortunately, her was greek. Just like everyone else in this freakin city. At about 8am I arrived at the acropolis. I sat down on a park bench and made myself a PB and J sandwich. Mmmm.. I went down to the port bought myself a ticket to IOS. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. WOuld I get a job?? Or would i be back on a plane, maxing out my VISA to get back to Canada? Above: a beautiful church in IOS after an 8 hour ferry ride.  

Here it is... my first "Hostel" on Ios!! What?? More like a resort.. I couldnt believe it! It was called the FAR OUT CLUB. and it had two pools a waterslide, huge patio and huge parties all the time.. it was really, really nice! And all this for 5euro a nite! Mind you i was stayingin a dirty little tent.. but I was only in there to sleep.. I was so happy and relieved to be here. The first thing i did was walk down the beach and look for a job at the watersports places. I ran into some Albanian guy named freddy in front of one of the watersports shacks. He didnt speak any english, but he directed me to Maria, the wife of Panos, the owner of Mylopotas Watersports. I had an interview with him the next day and got a job right away! He said he couldnt pay me at the time because it wasnt busy enough, but he could supply me with a place to live. That was more than enough for me.. I was just happy to find something!! Especially considering I only had about 50 Euro to my name at the time. ... Unfortunately, I had to make that 50 Euro stretch about two weeks.. before I started geting paid 15Euro a day..and then a whopping 20Euro a day.. Slave labor..Canadian and Aussie Slaves.. although.. its not a bad place to hang out.. 

This is about 10 seconds from the first house that I moved into. I loved it here. It was an amazing place to look at the stars and the windmill was pretty wild too. I sat and chilled here on many occasions, just to relax and reflect.  

After 4 weeks of travellin, sleeping on airport floors, train stations, planes, buses, trains, cars, dirty tents, red light district hostels.. i had my own bed... my own dirty bed.. but it least it was mine..for now. The best thing though was unpacking my bag! i could hang up my clothes.. the hangers were dirty and rusty and i probaly got tetanus from them.. but at least they could get hung up! Many good times were had in this house.. after about a week Mark (aussie) moved into the bed beside me.. a wicked guy.. and still working in Ios now.. (August 14th) a trooper.. Eventually I got kicked out of this house.. and had to move... 

My second room wasnt quite as classy as my first. I got kicked out of my first room because of complicated GREEK-ALBANIAN politics. Apparently, it is insulting to put a greek person in a room with an Albanian. So, I left my room and went to the Spikey Gate (which in the end was a wicked move).. but.. it meant i had to sleep in the kitchen. And it wasnt the cleanest of kithens.. Something was living in the drain, so every time you turned the water on it would smell like dirty pumpkin mixed with egg and donkey poo. Interesting thing about my bed: the matress had a huge C-Shaped groove in it. Thus, I could only sleep on my left side, because then i would be lying right in the groove.. whereas if i slept on my right, i wouldn't fit properly and it was extremely uncomfortable...ah well..eventually I clued into just flipping the matress... idiot... so it was a little better.. anyway, it was home.. a fixer upper i spose.. eventually i taped off the sink and made it off limits and the smell did go away.. a little.. That little red book on my bed... my journal.. lotsa reflecting took place when i first moved into this room. an experience..

Well, at least mour bathroom was nice. A funny phenomenon in Europe was that there were rarely shower curtains.. we didnt even get a shower stall! You can see the cord for the shower head in the upper left, and yo would stand in the middle of the floor and just shower.. and the water would run into the drain in the middle of the floor. THis wasnt really a good system because it would soak everything in the bathroom! Often you would go to the toilet and there would be a soggy roll of toilet paper.. FYI. Soggy tp doesnt work well. PART 2 of out bathroom was the sink. well..it got clogged and broke.. so we tried to fix it and broke the pipe. Sooo.. we put a nice littl ebucket under the sink, so the water would run straight out of the bottom of the sink into the bucket. When the bucket was full we would pour it into the shower drain hole. Efficient system.. dirteee... At least we had a toilet seat.. that was more than could be said about the last hosue I lived in. 

Soooo.... this is my hut. Station 2. This pretty much sums up my average day for the first month and a bit. Thats me, with my chair and a water bottle. Some days I would see how long I could sit without getting out of the chair, or I would make sand castles with my feet. I think the record was 3 hours. It did get busy some days though. I normally taught windsurfing, 3-4 lessons a day, which was fun. I also had a chance to just go out myself fairly often and goof around on the surfer. Later on in the season I worked here with a greek guy named Babis. He taught me a little bit of greek everyday. Yasoo! Tikanis? Kala..eci? Poly Kala. Efchiristo.... which basically means... hello! How are you? Good and you? Very Good thank you. ... weeeeee.. im such a linguist. I also learned and heard the word "Malaka" a lot.. apparently it means "Jackass" 

Mylopotas Beach. Eventually, when it got busy, I began driving boats. This was a beautiful break from being on the beach. Why? I could be my own boss out there. If ther eis one thing I learned about Greeks (at least the ones i worked with) is they are stubborn... There are no ideas, plans, but their own. Canadian, Australian opinions do not matter. In the event that you try and voice your opinion, you will either be banished (as i once was), or heard.. but nothing will come of it. Greeks also have a funny way of treating you. They treat you like you are about 7 yrs old. They are always coming up behind you, watching you, babying you, telling you to do things and really in general never trusting you to get the job done. This was quite frustrating for everyone that worked on the beach. Even at the end of my time there (90days of doing the exact same thing) I was still gettting reminded, "Make sure the locks arent in the sand" or "The boat is ocming in !!! Go catch it! " when it was quite obviously coming in and it would probaly be another mintue before it actually reached the shore. This lack of trust shown by my greek employers and coworkers was quite frustrating. I learned something huge about trust during this job. If my employer doesnt trust me and is always watching me... I wont do a good job, or at least take much pride in my work. Ill just get the job done. This is because I know i am going to get told to do it another way, or im doing it improperly anyway. On the other hand, If im given responsibility, and trust.. the onus i son me to get the job done. As a result, i take pride in what im doing and work very hard. It wasnt until the last couple weeks of the summer that my employer even began to demonstrate an amount of trust with me when he let me drive th boats. In response to this trust, I was happy to work much harder. Anyway, that was a rant... in the end... it was difficult working for Greeks... while they were great people to hang out with, they transform when you try and work with them.. ok.. thats it.. yehah for IOS!

I spent the first few days in the house by myself, but then these two aussie guys moved in. Chirs and Matt. They were pure jokes.. we always had a good time, whether it was at our place playing asshole, down at the port with 41cent Landerbraus, discussing the world map, or dancing at Superfly (above).. these guys were missed when they left halfway thru the summer... ill def. reconnect with these guys when i eventually venture to Australia. FYI. Matt (middle) missed his flight back to Australia because of a girl. (shes a wicked girl though.. ) 

HARMONY CAFE. Almost every nite after work, it would be late and we would be too lazy to cook so we would go for our cheap, cheap Mexican burgers at Harmony. They gave us great deals because we worked on the ebach and we would put in a good word for them to the many sunbathers. It wasnt difficult to do, because it was without a doubt one of the coolest places on the island. 

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!! Canada Day was significantly more exciting for me in Greece than it often is in Canada. I decked myself out in some Canada gear, made a fool of myself and advertised my country while I windsurfed up and down the beach. Im an idiot... but a patriotic one. 

After a stressful day of doing ...well nothing.. Chris and I deserved some sleep.  

One of my favorite places on the Island was a Mexican Restaurant called Harmony. It was perfect. It had an amazing view, live music, hammocks, swing chairs, and above all other things... Connect 4. I dont know how many games of connect 4 I played this summer.. but.. its sad the amount of strategy i put into it now. So, If you ever wanna play connect 4... give me a call.. im in..  

Since I was wroking so hard.. I thought it was high time I took a day off.. sooo. I did just that. A friend of mine, Christina, and I rented a jeep and booted around the island for the day. The Jeep was in awful shape, but that was good because it meant I could boot up and down the bumpy, dirt switchbacks at wicked speeds and not worry too much about the jeep. It was an absolute blast drivin the jeep around! We had a cool day and we saw all kinds of other beaches on the island. It was nice to get away from the beach i spent all day, every day on.. i know.. my life is awful.. 

80% of the people i hung out with.. met, talked to at any time on IOS were Aussies. They were everywhere!! I dont really understand how there can be any 20 somethings left in Australia... they are all treavellin! Anyway.. i jsut embraced it and tried to fit in. So, I wore this cheesy aussie hat all the time to pretend. There is Shan-o.. hes Aussie.. He drives boats.. hes got a rash ... and hes my friend.. One day we'll be watersports tycoons... 

Above are a group of aussies that really made Ios a memorable experience. They were crazy, fun, hilarious girls... this is me with em on their last nite in Ios. They taught me how to properly speak Australian...while laughing at my Canadian.

JIF - Heres the thing with Australian.. its really just sloppy english.. yes ..yes.. sure it sounds nice and musical and is very dreamy.. but it doesnt really use the English alphabet properly. One of the biggest trends i noticed was the absence of ANY soft Rs in the middle of words. For example... Mark is pronounced MAAWK, Melbourne is pronounced MELBIN, Cart is pronounced CAAWT...or something like that. I did get attached to a lot of Australian slang though.. such as.. "I reckon" instead of "I think", and the great term "full on" which means.. well.. full on.... Far oooot man...

One of the most memorable nites at the Spikey Gate was with these really cool Brit Girls. Craig had the pleasure of taking these ladies on a boat cruise (thats what he did.. took lovely girls on boat cruises all day long to some seclulded beach...tough job man). This nite, a permenant marker got loose with them. They decided it would be funny to put whiskers on everybody that was there. There were probaly upwards of 30 people there that nite and they all had permenant markered whiskers on their faces....so funny.. and crazy. Ya probaly had to be there.. but anyway.... Hilarious to walk down the beach the next day and see a bunch of people with little black marks still on their faces.....stupid permenant marker. or "texter" as the aussies would say.

Here is the final crew that I left. A wicked, wicked bunch of guys! Seriously made the summer an amazing experience. Of course I cant leave out Maria (or MAPIA...in greek) 

And here it is...The Spikey Gate itself! A place where we met countless people and countless ridiculous, stupid things happened. Spikey Gate Founders/Owners seen from front left to right. Shane, Jeff, Mark, Craig. Props to the two Arizona guys in the back who kept coming back nite after nite to the spikey gate.

The Spikey Gate 2005. Represent. Unreal Guys....Absolutely Unreal.