Aegean Dream

By Dario Ciriello

A true story set on Greece's real 'Mamma Mia' island of Skopelos.

Comic and tragic by turns, Aegean Dream is a story of love, resilience, and the power of friendship. A compelling window on the daily life of a small Greek island and the spirit of its people, this book also provides striking insights into the broken institutions that would soon shake the entire global economy.

- What’s it really like to live on a tiny Greek island?
- Why is the Greek economy so messed up?
- What IS ‘The Secret’?
...and what do mysterious skulls, Russian prostitutes, President Bush the elder, and Pierce Brosnan have to do with it all?

In November 2006, Linda and Dario gamble everything on their dream--a new life on the tiny Greek island of Skópelos. They've studied Greek, done their research, and have a simple goal: to set up a small natural cosmetics business and live happily ever after. But the Greek Gods have other ideas, and before long the couple find themselves snarled in a web of lies and incompetence, their dream slipping hopelessly out of reach.In Greece, connections are everything. But will the efforts of their friends--the proud and complicated Dr. Yiánnis; Tákis, the island's chess-playing, motorcycle-riding Adonis; and Ilíana, the mayor's gentle daughter--be enough to help them overcome their difficulties before their slim finances run out and they're forced to abandon their dream?

Dario Ciriello's 'Aegean Dream'. All story. All true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Panverse Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jul 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983731320

Dario Ciriello

Like most writers, Dario Ciriello has lived several lives in one and enjoyed an eccentric career trajectory. He’s worked in a warehouse, driven trucks, drag raced motorcycles, had a small import business, and enjoyed a twenty-five year career as a decorative painter.Today, Dario is a professional author and freelance editor, as well as the founder of Panverse Publishing.His first novel, "Sutherland's Rules", a crime caper/thriller with a shimmer of the fantastic, was published in 2013. "Free Verse and Other Stories", a collection of Dario's short Science Fiction work, was released in June 2014. His new novel, a supernatural suspense thriller titled "Black Easter", will be released on December 5, 2015.Dario has also edited and copyedited over a dozen novels, as well as three critically-acclaimed SF novella anthologies "(Panverse One", "Panverse Two", and "Panverse Three").Dario's nonfiction book, "Aegean Dream", the bittersweet memoir of a year spent on the small Greek island of Skópelos (the real "Mamma Mia!" island), was a UK travel bestseller in 2012 and has recently been published in Poland.He lives with his wife in the Los Angeles Area.

Book preview

AEGEAN DREAM

Dario Ciriello

Sixth Edition

Panverse Publishing

The events in this book are as accurate a recounting as my memories and records allow. To protect the privacy of others, names have been changed, characters conflated, and some incidents condensed or altered.

AEGEAN DREAM copyright © 2011 by Dario Ciriello.

Cover photo copyright © Dario Ciriello 2011

All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

or portions thereof, in any form whatsoever.

Published by Panverse Publishing

Distributed by Smashwords

Cover layout by Janice Hardy

Cover photo by Dario Ciriello

Visit Panverse Publishing online at www.panversepublishing.com

ISBN 978-0-9837313-2-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I - The Dream

II – The Aegean

III – Prisoners in Paradise

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Map

About the Author

For Linda

I

THE DREAM

There are a thousand ways in which a heart can be broken.

This is a true story.

AN UNEXPECTEDLY PERSISTENT DREAM

August 2004

Santa Cruz, California

We’d been back a month from our second vacation in Greece and were picking over the remains of dinner when our conversation turned again to the small island of Skópelos.

I looked at Linda and shook my head. What are we doing here? We could be living on Skópelos.

My wife gave me a playful smile. Sure. Let’s go and live in Greece.

I blinked. Are you serious?

Why not? We’ve been talking about leaving California for years. We could be Greeks.

Beneath me, the world stopped turning. If it’s true—as some physicists assert—that our tiniest actions and decisions each conjure fresh histories, new alternate realities, I believe these generally pass unnoticed. This time, I was staring at a sudden, unanticipated off-ramp on the freeway of our frantic life.

The words, we could be Greeks, hung in the air like neon.

Well, I guess I could do my work anywhere, I said, going with the fantasy. My skills were portable. I’d been self-employed all my life, a faux painter fancifying the homes and furniture of the wealthy. "But what will you do?"

I’m going to make soap!

The notion took me by surprise. But I knew Linda well enough to never doubt her ability to follow through. She’d been making luxury soaps on a hobby basis for a year or more, and was extremely gifted at it.

Do you think you could work for yourself, though? I said.

"Maybe. I’m tired of making money for other people. It’s time I did something for me."

Amen to that. I’d always ‘done it for me,' a self-employee to the point of burnout. Twenty-five years of producing art under construction site conditions will do that, especially if you’re a perfectionist.

I was also a science fiction writer, with several short stories published. The money earned from these efforts was laughable, rarely enough for a good dinner for two, but I had hopes. Besides, if you’re a writer, you write.

We were, then, a fine pair of professionals: painting, writing, and soapmaking. No problem, success assured! Of course we could make a living in a foreign country where we couldn’t even speak the language.

I fully expected our little fantasy to evaporate with the dawn, a wraith of dreamstuff brought on by wine and the romantic imagination. We’d wake, shrug our shoulders, and get back to the grind.

Oddly, the idea persisted.

¤

We all dream of escaping. But from what?

It was Saturday morning, the promise of a warm Indian summer’s day in the air. We were on our second cup of coffee. Our conversation about Greece had stayed with me.

The other night… were you serious about Greece?

Linda gave a shrug. What’s the point of having dreams if they just remain dreams? I don’t want to have regrets when I grow old, like so many people do.

Well, we don’t have children or parents to take care of. And, God! I’d love to get away from California. It wasn’t just the stress and crowded freeways. Even after twenty years in this bizarre frontier land, not a day passed without my heart yearning to return to Europe.

I went on, But could you handle the insecurity? Linda had always been the stable one with the steady job. She’d worked for years in the fast lane, lately in a number of startup companies. She was good, and commanded a healthy wage. But soapmaking—like Greece from California—was a world apart from her ‘day job’.

What’s security? she said. Are we secure here? We earn over a hundred thousand a year between us and we still can’t afford to buy a house. Neither of us is young, and we’re not going to live forever.

She was right. We’d seen two fifty year-old friends in apparently excellent health drop dead in the last year, one from a stroke, one from a heart defect; a twenty-two year old co-worker of Linda’s die crossing the road; one of my oldest friends die at forty-nine of lung cancer. Jobs, spouses, life itself, all could be taken from you at any moment, without warning.

Why then fear moving to another country, shooting for the moon? Life was to be lived, and they knew how to do that in southern Europe, where people had time for family and friends, and didn’t measure their worth by how many hours they worked.

We knew there were risks. But the risk of growing old and having regrets because we’d been too timid to follow our dreams was the most frightening of all. What to others seemed like courage was, to us, necessity. It was survival.

¤

I called the Greek Consulate in San Francisco. Consulates are hardly ever open and do all they can to discourage business, but if you are fortunate they will note your message and call you back.

To my surprise, the man who returned my call had an accent—a genuine Greek!

My wife and I want to move to Greece, I explained. I’m an EU citizen, she is American. What’s the procedure?

Do you have a European Union passport?

Yes. I’m British.

He hesitated. My stomach fluttered.

And you are thinking of moving when?

"Oh—perhaps a year, or a little less."

Well. Britain is not a Schengen agreement member, and there are some papers required. But in December the Greek laws will change, and non-Schengen members will have full residence rights. I do not think there would be a problem.

That’s fantastic! I blurted.

Eh, yes. I could see the smile flicker across his lips from ninety miles away. Why do you want to move to Greece?

I’ve always wanted to return to Europe, I said. The US had been good to me in many ways, but my British-born Italian genes screamed to be taken home. I missed European culture, architecture, the sheer common sense of the place. Even after seventeen years here, I thought America very strange. The dreadful Puritanism, the endless national navel-gazing over rights and ‘values’ while the things which really mattered went to hell. How could an entire nation get so worked up over, say, abortion rights or gay marriage, when they should have been out rioting in the streets over the appalling mess in healthcare? Nero, at least, was doing something creative while his city burned.

And, I went on, we love Greece and the Greek people. I told the official about the time we’d spent on Skópelos, and that I had a dear old friend on Alónissos, the neighboring island.

He seemed to sigh. Skópelos is very beautiful. It is one of the jewels of my country.

Yes, I agreed. It certainly is.

We had taken the first tiny step towards transforming our lives.

¤

Linda was as surprised as I was that we might actually be able to live in Greece without huge bureaucratic impediments. I felt I might be sleepwalking. Could something so audacious really be possible?

I think we need at least a year, she said. We have to save as much as we can.

I snorted a laugh. Not easy, living here. The San Francisco Bay Area was one of the most expensive places in the US. And our finances had taken a huge hit in 2002. With the local economy reeling from the dot-com bust and the aftermath of 9/11, Linda was unemployed for months before landing a job as Director of Operations at Warmboard, a company that manufactured a sophisticated radiant heating system. And my painting business had tanked.

Now, our financial position was finally improving. Linda had seen some generous salary increases and my work was showing a pulse again. We were chipping away at credit card debt. If we could just stay on track, I was confident a year would see us in fine shape. We were going to do this.

¤

Of course, life happens.

The market for my work went flat again; Linda’s daughter suffered major car and personal crises which sucked zeroes from Linda’s bank balance like M&Ms; both our teeth clattered for dentistry to the tune of several thousand dollars. By early 2005, it was clear we wouldn’t be able to move before at least the end of the year, and likelier Spring of 2006. Given the rate at which we were hemorrhaging cash, even that was optimistic.

Heart sinking, I kept trying for dates on calendars; Linda remained circumspect. We need to see how the next few months go before we commit to a date, she said.

I tinkered with cashflows and what-ifs, looking for bottom lines. After searching the Skópelos island website, I contacted Láli Páppas, a local real estate agent, to see if she handled rentals as well. Getting a realistic idea of the rental market would be a big help.

Mrs. Páppas spoke good English, and seemed happy to take our inquiry. Yes, I have some rentals, she said. When are you thinking of coming?

Probably early next year. Certainly by Easter.

Ah. A pause. I must tell you this is not a good time to rent a house on the islands.

God. Why not?

You must understand the Greek psychology, she said. She pronounced it psee-cologhy. In the summer, everybody here on Skópelos works very hard. If they have a house to rent, they have new people coming every one or two weeks. From June to September they are like crazy people. So at the end of the summer, they are so tired that they will be very happy if somebody wants to rent this house for one or two years. They will make a little less money, but they will have peace. But then, after one or two months, certainly by November, they will be rested, and start to think of how much money they can make if they rent the house by the week for another summer. Do you understand, Mr. Ciriello?

Uh, yes. Yes.

Yes, it is this way on the islands. So if you want to rent a house it is best that you come in September, or in any case before the middle of October.

The clang as this new wrench struck the works was almost audible. Spring wouldn’t work. We’d have to postpone again, this time to the late summer of next year. I knew Linda would welcome the extra time; and I knew, despite my impatience, that she was right.

GREEK LESSONS

It all started in early 2003, when we were planning our first Greek vacation. Linda had gone online to find a summer rental, and discovered the so-called Ánesis spítia (‘comfort houses’), a pair of charming little traditional cottages set in an olive grove opposite the harbor and the old village of Skópelos. But there was no email address or booking form, only a phone number and the owners’ name: Spýros and Mára Balabánis.

With Greece ten hours ahead of Pacific Time, Linda called from home early one morning. Using our new Oxford Greek Dictionary, she’d rehearsed a short script with all the right keywords, such as ‘house’ and ‘rent’ and ‘July’. She could do this, no problem.

Of course, when Mára answered the call, it became quickly apparent that not only did she not have a copy of Linda’s script, but also that she was as challenged in English as Linda in Greek. After a minute or two of mangled syllables and desperately made-up words, Linda was crying with laughter, and so was Mára. Eventually, Mára was able to make Linda understand she should call back later when Spýros was home, as he spoke better English.

Later that morning, Linda called me from work.

So did you get hold of the husband? I said.

She chuckled. Well, yes, I did.

How was his English?

No better than his wife’s. She made that cute little whimpering sound, oooh, that she reserves for moments of profound muddlement.

And how did you do? Do we have a deal?

Well, we’ve either rented a place to stay, or agreed to buy a table.

"We what?"

Yes. He asked if I could send him a hundred Euros deposit and I said that would be fine. I asked where, and he gave me series of numbers, which I think is his bank account.

Great! I said. Linda had learned her numerals all the way to ten, and was very proud of the fact.

"But when I asked him which bank, he started talking about tables. I tried again and he kept talking about a table. Oooh. I’m so confused!"

Hm. But was he nice?

He was delightful! We had lots of laughs. I just don’t get all this stuff about a table.

This was too bizarre. She had to be missing something. Do you remember exactly what he said?

"Well, I kept saying banko and he kept talking about a trapézi something—that’s a table, right?"

It was my turn to laugh. The Greek for bank was not banko, and the time-honored Anglo trick of adding an ‘o’ on the end of an English word wasn’t gonna work here. "Trápeza! the word came back to me in a flash, trápeza is the Greek for bank. Trapézi is a table. Different stress accent."

Omigod! He must think I’m so retarded!

No, I’m sure—

You need to call him.

Me? No, no, I’m sure you got it right.

No, you call him! she insisted. I don’t want to get to Skópelos and find we own a table but have no place to stay! You’re the one who’s been to Greece lots of times, and has history with these islands. And you speak French and Italian.

Which are no use in dealing with Greeks! I protested. Okay, give me a half hour, I need to bond with the dictionary first. I’ll call you back.

Good. And make sure we haven’t bought a table!

I made more coffee, playing for time. Hopefully Mr. Balabánis would be out when I called. I got a notepad and opened the dictionary, squinting at the unfamiliar letter-shapes.

A few minutes later, with some hastily-scribbled keywords such as ‘number’, and ‘wife’ (for which the Greek was the same as the word for ‘woman’) before me, I dialed the long sequence of digits. To my dismay, the phone was answered almost immediately.

"Emprós?" Hallo, go ahead—I remembered that one.

"Kýrie Balabánis?"

"Ne." Yes. I knew that one, too.

My woman Linda, she talk you! I blurted, in my best Greek.

"Ne, ne!" He sounded amused.

My woman… I fumbled for words. The number bank. One hundred Euros.

"Ne, ne! I say her!" he added, in a flourish of craggy English.

Number bank? Not table?

"Haaaa! Óhi trapézi! Trápeza! Bank, bank, no trapézi!" A burst of muffled Greek as he turned from the phone to explain the joke, and a woman’s laughter joined his own explosion of mirth. I started laughing too.

I called Linda back to reassure her we hadn’t bought a table, and that the Balabánises appreciated the humor of the situation.

"He laughed? God, I love these people already… They have a sense of humor even when they’re dealing with an idiot!"

Laughter, along with food, is one of the best ways to people’s hearts, and this small incident served to endear Greece to her from the very beginning.

¤

Several months later, on our first evening in Athens, Linda was further, and irrevocably, seduced by Greece. It didn’t hurt that we’d chosen to stay in the St. George Lycabettus, a four-star boutique hotel in the city’s stylish Kolonáki district.

We booked dinner for ten p.m., the normal dinner hour in Greece, at the hotel’s famous rooftop restaurant, Le Grand Balcon. We held hands across the starched linen tablecloth, looking out through the sultry heat of the Athens night to the softly-lit ruins of the Acropolis less than a mile away. Occasional lights from shipping twinkled in the black expanse of the Saronic Gulf beyond.

When Linda spoke, her eyes were brimming with tears. It’s beautiful, she said. It’s exactly the way I imagined it.

¤

We arrived in Skópelos two days later.

Unlike the parched southern islands such as Mykonos and Santorini, the islands of the Northern Spórades—Skiáthos, Skópelos, Alónissos, and a number of uninhabited islets—are carpeted in lush forests of Aleppo pine, jewels of living emerald set on a backdrop of ultramarine, and boast waters more limpid than glass. The Ánesis cottage, set in a tranquil olive grove facing the harbor just a ten-minute walk from the tavernas and shops, proved a delightful location. It was quiet, and the view across the bay to the hóra, or old village, of Skópelos with its whitewashed houses, red-roofed and blue-shuttered, climbing the green hillside from the harbor, was magnificent.

The Balabánises proved as likeable in person as they had been on the phone. Despite the formidable language barrier, we had many laughs together, and Mára and Linda somehow managed a level of communication that transcended speech. They were like sisters.

By the end of the three weeks, both the island and its people had sunk honey-coated barbs deep into both her heart and mine. When, three years later, the blind workings of the world left us no choice but to tear free, the wounds would be irreparable.

¤

Linda was very clear about the need to learn Greek if we moved to the country. I don’t want to be the Ugly American. If we’re going to start a business, we need to speak the language. And I want to be able to talk to Mára and Spýros, and to make friends.

We’d already started on the alphabet. I’m always puzzled that people who are able to learn, say, Windows Vista, find the notion of learning a new alphabet daunting. I mean, how difficult is it to absorb two or three new symbols a day for a week? It’s certainly the easiest aspect of learning Greek, and one we both enjoyed: as we learned to trace the sinuous shapes of Greek cursives such as α (alpha) or δ (delta), we began to appreciate these letters as things of true beauty.

It’s also impossible not to feel the connection to antiquity in the characters of the Greek alphabet; take the consonant ѱ, or psi, (pronounced ‘ps’): this is the first letter of the Greek word psári, which means ‘fish’, and you can be certain that this letter’s trident shape—ψ—is not a coincidence. This is an old, old language, and the traces of ancient thought are sometimes very clear.

We found a software suite called ‘The Rosetta Stone’ and made good progress for a while. But the syntax was peculiar, and we began to bog down over verb conjugations. We were going to need a teacher.

Santa Cruz is a small place, but there was a Greek Orthodox church in town, and an annual Greek festival. After some inquiries, we discovered Jody and Hector, a delightful couple who’d developed a tag-team approach to teaching Greek.

The lessons were often hilarious. Jody was patient, creative, and methodical, and her strong Texas accent gave her Greek an unusual coloration. Though she freely admitted that her Greek was somewhat rudimentary, her practical teaching skills were terrific.

Enter Jody’s partner, Hector, a retired industrial chemist and native Athenian. Hector supplied the perfect diction and pronunciation, but was prone to go off on wild and opaque tangents: a simple question on grammar would derail the lesson into a lecture on the evolution of a word over two millennia. Greeks are very fond of their history, and really do take every opportunity to remind one that Greek has contributed tens of thousands of words to the world’s language base. On these occasions Jody would be visibly torn between the need to maintain an appearance of dignified professionalism in front of her students and the desire to strangle her erudite and garrulous partner.

The Greek language was also full of dreadful hazards, which we had only touched upon in the bank/table episode.

Like the word for ‘answer’ or ‘solution’, which differed only slightly from the word for ‘rabies’, making it terribly easy to tell someone you had rabies when you were discussing a problem.

Working one night through some vocabulary, we learned the Greek words for happy and worried, eftihisménos and stenohoriménos. As we practiced them in sentences, a sly smile crept across Hector’s face. You must be careful with ‘I am happy’, he said. It is not very different from the Greek for ‘I am soiling myself.’

Another night found us role-playing in Greek. Linda’s assigned scenario was to pretend she needed to find the way to the town hall to obtain her driving license. Hector would be the policeman, and she would ask him the way.

The value of role-playing lay in forcing us to find workarounds to compensate for our limited grasp of the language. So when Linda failed to fully understand police officer Hector’s directions, she hit on an idea: she would ask him to show her the way. She didn’t know the verb for ‘show’, but she could say ‘will you come with me?’

Unfortunately, the Greek word ‘kimoúmai’ (to sleep) sounds a lot like ‘come with me’, and under pressure, wires will get crossed. In a precious, unforgettable burst of confidence, Linda gave officer Hector a big smile, made a gracious lead on gesture with her upturned palms, and said, in excellent Greek, Please, will you sleep with me?

It was an approach, I decided, that would probably take us far.

THE GREEK ISLAND SOAP,

DECORATIVE PAINTING,

RADIANT HEAT LAYOUT,

AND SCIENCE FICTION WRITING COMPANY

The months passed and our Greek improved. We talked a lot about our plans, occasionally checking to make sure we were both still on the same page.

In some ways it’d be so much easier to go and live in Italy or France, said Linda one evening.

Well, I speak the languages, I said.

But I really do love the Greek people. They’re so warm; I felt so welcome there. I know we could make friends and be happy.

I nodded. "I think another good argument for Greece is that the economy isn’t so mature, the niche markets already built-out. In Italy and France, there are probably already lots of little cottage industries making soaps and natural cosmetics. I think you—and I, for that matter—would find a lot less competition in Greece."

I began to research the market for natural cosmetics in Greece and discovered it was booming, especially at the luxury end. And Greece, along with much of mainland Europe, still enjoyed a strong native tradition of herbal and natural cures. ‘Natural’ was huge. This, coupled with Linda’s desire to use as many locally-sourced products as possible, fueled my already fiery optimism.

Linda’s own anticipation began to manifest in unexpected and delightful ways.

My package arrived! she said one evening, when I returned home. On the dining table was a mound of blue towels and a plastic zipper bag of blue and white linen. I ordered towels and bed linens in the Greek colors. What do you think?

I loved them. Blue and white are the Greek national colors, repeated to infinity throughout the country: white village houses set everywhere against the blue of the sea, which, in that land of crinkly coastlines and over 1,600 islands, is never far away.

Linda began to make frappés, the delightful, frothy iced coffee served throughout Greece, and mastered the cooking of lamb for gyros; her tzatzíki (yogurt dip) was better than most we’d had in Greece. Occasionally, we bought a bottle of rétsina to go with a Greek meal.

She also started to plan her soapmaking business. I want to incorporate as many island products into my soap as I can. I’m going to use pure Skópelos olive oil, nothing else, as a base. Goat milk is a terrific moisturizer. I can use Skópelos honey, too.

Can you use wild herbs for scents, or to infuse the olive oil?

Absolutely! I want to make the people of Skópelos even more proud of their island. I’ve been thinking of a design as well… She took a pad and drew a rounded rectangle to represent a bar of soap, and inside that, a crinkly, elongated triangle.

I recognized the shape at once. The outline of Skópelos!

She beamed.

Are you going to paint it on?

I’m thinking I’ll stamp it on each bar. Can you see it?

I could. I totally could.

¤

Knowing we were leaving made the days both easier and more difficult. Linda seemed to cope well. The thought that before too long she’d be living in one of the most beautiful places on Earth made even trying days easier for her.

But I, with my damned artist’s temperament, was struggling. Anticipation made it harder than ever for me to put up with the nonsense and stupidity of the workplace.

A decorative painter is one of the very last people on a job, as a good finish requires a clean environment with a minimum of traffic. But since most of the projects I worked on were large, complex homes, when time came for me to begin my work, the project was always well past deadline and way over budget, the inevitable end result of the delusional optimism and outright lies that are the universal currency of the construction industry.

So after a lifetime of trying to do delicate surface work that required dust-free conditions, while electricians hacked holes in panels I was trying to woodgrain and plumbers installed toilets in bathrooms where I was applying delicate gold leaf (a job sensitive even to minute air currents), I was primed like a demolition charge, and it took all my self-control not to go homicidal and start beating contractors to death with my heavy, 4 x 6 stippling brush.

But it was the pot-filler that really made me snap.

I’d gone to meet a designer to bid on a job. As she was showing me around the almost-finished project, I noticed a long-stemmed faucet on a swivel mount set in the sumptuous granite slab behind the stove.

It’s a pot-filler, the designer explained, so they don’t have to carry a pot of water from the sink to the stove.

I stared at her. The sink was barely six feet from the stove. And I knew from experience that the kitchens in many of the homes I worked in were destined to be severely underused. Are you serious?

She laughed. Of course. We’re putting them in most of the kitchens we’re doing now.

Call me old-fashioned, idealistic, or Luddite, dear Reader—I’ve been called worse. But this was a gut punch, the moment in which I understood with the most terrible clarity just how terminally banal our society was, how skewed our values had become. In a world where a billion people went hungry every day, we had become so lazy that we'd spend several hundred dollars to avoid moving a pan of water six feet. I could stand no more.

¤

While Linda’s business plan was taking shape, there was little I could do at this end to further my own. Just get to Skópelos, market my painting skills, maybe buy or commission the occasional piece of traditional furniture, apply exciting finishes, try to resell it. Repeat.

Pretty thin stuff.

But in the summer of 2005 an opportunity presented itself which might provide me some telecommuting income in Greece.

Warmboard, the radiant heat company for whom Linda worked, had a growing need for outside designers, especially during the warm-weather months when most construction took place. And since plans could be emailed, the work was perfect for telecommuting. If I could acquire the skills, it didn’t matter whether we lived six or six thousand miles away.

I received some in-house training and signed up for a community college CAD (computer-aided design) course. CAD was diametrically opposite to my traditional ‘day job’; a thing of laser-fine accuracy and precision, all science and engineering, worlds apart from the shifting, hand-applied, clouds of subtly nuanced color from which I’d made my living for over two decades.

I loved it: I had discovered my inner engineer.

¤

So we were now looking at 2006 for our move, and (I remembered Mrs. Páppas’s caution, ‘you must understand the Greek psee-cologhy’) likely the end of summer. It seemed impossibly far away. Still, it gave us time to ‘tuck in all the corners’, as Linda put it, and make sure we didn’t miss anything.

The thing we were most anxious to have absolutely covered was Linda’s right to reside and work in the country; southern European countries have notoriously baroque and unwieldy bureaucracies, and it was critical to have all our paperwork in order. I decided to check in with the Greek consulate again.

This time I got a charming, young-sounding Greek woman. Yes, she assured me, the spouse of an EU citizen only had to present an application at the prefecture within ninety days of arrival, along with a marriage certificate and a few other papers, and they would be granted a five-year renewable residency. And of course, we would have to get our AFM, or afimí, the Greek equivalent of a social security number. "Without an afimí, you can not do anything in Greece," she said.

Is it easy to get one?

Oh yes. Any accountant can do this for you.

I scribbled notes and went on to ask about shipping our belongings, customs regulations, and the like. When you have your inventory, just bring it to the consulate. We will stamp it and issue a paper for the customs. It will cost you twenty dollars.

I thanked her very much in my best Greek, and was rewarded with a chuckle and a telephonic smile. I couldn’t believe the process could be so simple, the bureaucracy so benign. Had we found our pre-ordained path to personal happiness, or were we being lulled into a

¤

We wrote to Spýros and Mára in our terrible (but improving) Greek, telling them we loved their island and were planning to make it our home. Three weeks later we received an envelope in a hand unused to the Latin alphabet. It found us despite the town being written as ‘Santa Crut’.

Linda opened the letter to find a dried wildflower folded inside, a token of blessing or welcome, a tangible connection to the dream we were working to realize. The letter itself was warm, joyous: they were very happy that we loved Skópelos and were going to make our home there.

The months ground away. I took evening classes in CAD and endured a succession of jobs from hell in which I found myself trapped between criminally incompetent contractors and terminally frustrated clients.

Most weekends Linda made soap, experimenting and refining her skills. She worked on color and scent, packaging and presentation, until the house overflowed with soap in various stages of completion. It smelled wonderful.

We talked and dreamed about Greece. We bought guidebooks, read histories, and made lists.

There are so many places we can visit once we’re up and running, I said to Linda, as we pored over a large-scale map that covered half the dining table. All those other islands. Mount Olympus, and the monasteries high on the crags at Metéora. The temple of Poseidon at Soúnion. My finger slid northward to Rumania. "Even the Transylvanian Alps—I always wanted to go to vampire country! And Ephesus, in Turkey. It’s all so close."

"I really want to go to Turkey, said Linda. It wasn’t the first time she’d expressed the desire to visit that exotic land. A comic pout, and, Can we please go there?" she pleaded.

I hugged her. Of course we’ll go there! It can be the first place we go, if you like.

I want to go to Turkey! she repeated, stamping a foot for comic effect like the spoiled brat she so patently was not.

¤

We began to tell friends about our plans and the time grew wistful. When you move 6,000 miles, you know there are dear friends you may only see a handful of times in your life again, if that. Our already lively social calendar became intense, with dinners planned weeks and weeks ahead. They called us brave, and expressed admiration. "I’d never have the courage to do that!" was a frequent comment. I wondered what stopped people from living their dreams, and why everyone was so afraid of change. The illusion of security is strangely potent. Society relies on the herd instinct, and straying from the herd is invariably regarded as risky.

¤

As winter deepened, our plans solidified. We would move in August and enjoy a few weeks of beach time before the weather broke. Winters in Northern Greece are wet and cool, and the season in the Spórades usually ends by mid-September. We could rent the little Ánesis cottage from Spýros and Mára while we looked for a house to rent and waited for our belongings to arrive.

Once we have a workshop, I can be building my soap stock up through the winter, said Linda. That way, when the tourist season begins, I’ll be ready.

I’ll be able to help you, I said. I can do the grunt work.

It was my intention from the beginning to help Linda with her soap business as much as she needed. Growing Linda’s business was the key to success: that was where the real potential lay, and if it failed, it was hard to see how we could earn enough to make a life for ourselves.

Wouldn’t it be great, she said, if we could work hard through the winter and be able to relax a little and enjoy the island during the summer, just delivering stock to shops and retailers? And if Warmboard sends you CAD work, it can only help our financial position.

God, yes! And after the first summer, you could start expanding to other islands.

That’s what I’m thinking. I could have some more stamps made, one for every island.

And get some high-end retailers in Athens and Thessaloniki. If we can do that, then you have year-round sales, rather than just during the tourist season.

Linda was cautiously optimistic; I was certain. This was going to work. It really was.

¤

Our to-do list grew daily. There were belongings to pack and inventory, my workshop to clear, a car and an SUV to sell, utilities and services and contracts to tie up, and a myriad of minor details.

In February we began to sort and pack, doing everything ourselves. We rented a big storage locker, and as things were boxed and inventoried, I moved them from the house.

I started to get shipping quotes, and had the good fortune to discover Aris Export in San Leandro, a small, long-established mover that specialized in the Balkans and Middle East. From my first conversation with them, I knew we’d found the right company. It would cost us about four thousand dollars to rent, load, and ship a twenty-foot container to Piraéus, the port of Athens; at the Athens end, there would probably be about two or three hundred dollars in customs clearance fees. I was happy.

The big question now was how to get our belongings from Piraéus to Skópelos; Aris couldn’t help us there unless we wanted to involve a major international company, which would be prohibitively expensive.

I wrote another letter—slowly, with dictionary in hand—to Spýros and Mára, updating them on our plans and asking if they could keep an eye open for any rentals, and if they had any thoughts on how we could get our belongings from Piraéus to Skópelos.

They replied that they could not advise us on rentals, because how could they know we would like something they chose? But when we arrived they would try to help. Of transport, no mention was made.

I put these on my list of things to worry about. We had time.

¤

In May, as we were finalizing plans for an August move, Linda’s daughter Lisa announced she was going to wed and start a new life in Albuquerque.

I really want you guys to be here for the wedding, she told Linda.

We wanted to be there too. We liked the fiancé, and were delighted Lisa had reached a solid place in the previously erratic trajectory of her life. Linda asked when they’d have the ceremony.

July or August, said Lisa, before you go.

Welcome as this news was, it slammed into our plans like a medium-sized meteorite: weddings cost money. But I knew how much it meant to Linda to see her formerly wayward daughter and her beloved grandson, Ben, finally become part of a ‘real’ family.

Even keeping it simple, it’s going to cost several thousand dollars, said Linda. We’re going to have to put our move back a few more months.

I groaned. I really hate to do that. Christ, it’s just one thing after another! At this rate, we’ll never get to Greece. I was terrified of our dream slipping away from us in the dull grey onslaught of the ordinary. We have to set a date, make a commitment.

We kicked dates around and settled on a move at the very beginning of October, as late as we dared leave it if we wanted to have a choice of houses still available for rent. We would miss our chance at a holiday before we began to work; but since the whole adventure was our dream bid for freedom, it seemed like a small thing to give up.

I kept asking Linda when she was planning to hand in her notice at work. I understood her reluctance: it was a huge step, an irrevocable stab through the heart of our security. But it had to be done, and she wanted to give a full ninety days’ notice, to allow plenty of time to find and train her replacement.

One morning in early July, she went off to work, apprehensive but full of resolve.

How did it go? I asked her when she got home that night.

She laughed and shook her head. The boss walked into my office this morning, and said, ‘Linda, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take your office away and build you a nice cube. We only have the three private offices, and with the new CEO starting soon …’ He was so apologetic! So I said, You know, that’s really okay, because I’m moving to Greece in three months, and I was going to hand in my notice anyway!’

I burst out laughing. God! That’s hilarious!

I know! Anyway, he was very sweet. Said he understood, but that he’d really miss me. I told him I’d do everything I could to help the new guy settle in. I’m going to be working my butt off.

¤

The wedding came, and went off swimmingly. Everyone was happy; we’d managed to give ‘the kids’, as we affectionately thought of them, a good send-off, without entirely derailing our own plans. We booked our flights for early October.

I started a blog, opening it with a countdown calendar and photos of boxes piling up. There were dinners with friends, the first real goodbyes. We bobbed and tossed on a pitching sea of emotion, alternately sad and elated, nervous and overwhelmed. And all the while the siren call of a new life informed our waking hours.

But with only 35 days to go before our departure, Warmboard’s newly-hired CEO asked Linda whether she’d consider staying on an extra month to ease the transition.

Another delay. I couldn’t believe it!

Fortunately, Linda rolls with the punches better than I do. So when I stopped whimpering, we began to look for a win-win.

Reviews for Aegean Dream

[dwatson2_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Would you be willing to leave the security of your every day life for the chance to make your dream come true? Dario and his wife Linda did just that when they decided to leave behind the financial security they had and live on a Greek island. Many of us have gone on vacation and thought how great it would be to live there. Aegean Dream by Dario Ciriello is the story of two people brave enough to turn a dream into reality.I was hooked on this book from the start. In the beginning you hear Dario and his wife Linda talk about how wonderful it would be live in a vacation destination which is something that lots of people do. Aegean Dream is a very detailed travel memoir that takes you from Dario and Linda planing out how they can make the trip happen, overcome the obstacles to make it happen and what life was like in Greece. This book doesn’t sugar coat anything, you see how hard it was to make a living on the island, how difficult the government bureaucracy was to deal with and the hard realities to living your dream life.I was surprised how good it was, I figured that at some point I would lose interest in the story but I never did. I enjoyed hearing about all the differences between Greeks and Americans and with Dario and Linda constantly having a new challenge to face, I was curious to see if they would be able to make a living. They have issues such as appliances not working, getting their belongings through customs, and getting their business up and going.As they go to Greece they have a plan to make and sell soap using local ingredients. While they have a solid business plan what they didn’t plan on was the government red tape. Reading this book you can see what led to Greece’s financial collapse. The government sets up a lot of obstacles to starting new businesses which Dario and Linda have to deal with, also at one point you hear about a woman saying how employers get away with not paying their employees and one employee went over a month without getting paid. Another thing that you read about is one person saying that people use credit too much and they don’t seem to realize that one day they will have to pay the money back.I loved reading about how Greek people were so friendly and very different from Americans. Dario talks about how they were invited to several dinners where everyone was encouraged to eat and drink until they got their fill. This book is worth reading for two reasons, it’s a great look at a culture that is very different from ours and its a story about a couple who tried to make their dreams come true. Aegean Dream is a great story from a great storyteller and is a book that you should read before you decide to follow your dreams. One thing you will learn is that you have to take the good with the bad, running down a dream isn’t easy.