Oh! The Places I've Been - "C" is for CORFU

As a student in Switzerland (1978-79), I had a two-month Eurail Youthpass, as did my classmates. It meant that during the six-week-long semester break in March/April, we could travel around Europe at will. Just pull out the orange Eurailpass and show it to the conductor. Many of us wanted to go to Greece, to escape the snows and delayed spring in Fribourg. Using the Eurailpass, one had to travel by train down the eastern coast of Italy and board the ferry that ran from Brindisi to Patras, Greece, stopping in Corfu on the way. The trip to and from Corfu was included on the pass; jaunts to the many other Greek isles were not. And since we were poor students with limited funds, most of us went to Athens and Corfu.My friend Kathy and I traveled first to Athens and spent two sleepless nights in a hostel (Athens is noisy, the windows were open, and a sailor from Alabama was desperately trying to share a bed with a girl named Fiona from London). The following day we traveled by train back to Patras and boarded the ferry for Corfu.At Corfu, we found a hotel on the beach. Six American dollars per night. Walked out the French doors and onto the beach. The bathroom was down the hall, and not very clean, but we didn’t care. Each afternoon we’d return from the beach, brush off the sand, nap on the lumpy bed, then walk to the tavern, where a shot of Ouzo cost ten cents and the owner brought us into his kitchen to show us the dinner offerings. Point to moussaka. Point to roast chicken. Point to a bottle of wine. We sat at a table outside until the inky sky was dotted with stars and the music died down. And the next day, we did it all over again.