From Olympia, we continue along small roads through the Peloponnese countryside to Patras. The ro-ro ferries to Andirrio are loaded and unloaded quite quickly. Unfortunately, this time we’ve ended up on the ‘backwards’ ferry. Everything takes considerably longer here – with just five centimetres between us and the next lorry.

We’ve got a very long way to go today. For the first time, we’re taking a long stretch of motorway. From Ioannina onwards, the A2 motorway becomes quite spectacular. Here, it consists almost entirely of bridges and tunnels.  It climbs to an altitude of up to 1,050 metres, leading deep into the Pindos Mountains. (more…)

We continue along deserted roads and past blue bays across the two western fingers of the Peloponnese. A small sign in the middle of nowhere offers a modest cup of coffee. A delicatessen, unknown even to Google Maps, situated right by the country road north-west of Itylo, surprises us with its selection of over 3,000 affordable local delicacies.

Our destination for the day is Finindouka, a village that’s still quite peaceful on the western finger of the Peloponnese. The campsite is situated right on a private beach, criss-crossed by a small river, complete with parasols and sun loungers. After a good four weeks on the road, we bid farewell to the sea here. (more…)

We spend two weeks travelling all over Crete with the little one. Avoiding the storm on the west coast, we first land in Platanias. Almost everything is still closed before the Greek Orthodox Easter.

The sea is boiling with 13°C water and 17°C air in big waves. Our small flat is right behind it. But the wind is a little too lusty for me to be thrown into a frosty second kite session without a wetsuit. (more…)

Crete is my eighth and by far the largest of all the Greek islands I have visited. The family arrives with a stopover in Viennese style. Even at Easter, the sheer endless competition from car hire companies knocks car hire prices below the price of scooters in developing countries.

Our booked basic hotel suffers from construction delays. We are rebooked at the 5-star all-inclusive Guaves Waterpark Resort. The little one enjoys gigantic children’s pools and dad unlimited pita gyros with a few cocktails. (more…)

As the last island on our journey across the Dodecanese, Samos inspires us from the very first moment. The catamaran arrives in the old capital Pythagorio in the evening in heavy seas. By the time we check into the very fine Belvedere Hotel 600 metres behind the harbour, we are soaking wet. We walk through old narrow alleyways to the castle, to the ruins of an early Christian basilica and again to a good Greek garden restaurant.

Early the next morning we walk to the oldest and longest tunnel in the world, bored from two sides. Within a good 10 years around 540 BC, Euclides managed to join the two tunnels with a horizontal deviation of just two metres over a good kilometre using trigonometry alone. There were more problems vertically: Euclides had miscalculated the gradient for the aqueduct. The slaves were therefore also allowed to dig a trench up to eight metres deep into the limestone at the southern end. (more…)

Early the next morning, we jump on the spaceship to the moon. On the upper deck, the Meltemi blows in our faces at a good 40 knots. The moon doesn’t seem to have a slipstream. But there are much cheaper means of transport. You can hire a small old car on the moon for a quarter of the price of Kos, starting at €30 per day. Let’s treat ourselves.

Our accommodation is located at the end of a road that winds into the steep slopes of Melitsahas on a small private beach with a view of the barely inhabited neighbouring island of Telendos and the sunset. Perfect – only the high cliffs on both sides stop me from kiting. We set off. Oleander bushes and wild thyme grow next to the steep mountain roads. Otherwise, Kalymnos really is like the moon: abundantly bare and rocky. For climbers, the moon is pure paradise. Dozens of them hang in every halfway shady shell limestone wall. (more…)

Even on my first visit to Lindos, I noticed the countless pubs in old captains’ houses. But we didn’t have time for a night shift. This time we didn’t have time for sightseeing, we only came here for the nightlife. Check in at the hotel, down to the old town and into the night!

How did the crisis in Greece actually start? Not even the Greeks could explain it to me. Over-engineering, over-bureaucratisation and a good measure of wastefulness were certainly involved. But how the hell can you drive an entire country so hard against the wall in such a short space of time? (more…)

Thank you Rhodes, it was wonderful! Even if the wind could have blown more: it was always good. Unfortunately, my diabolical plan didn’t work out. I ate at least one gyros a day on average, but not one every day. Some Greeks simply don’t offer fast food.

We spend the last few days in Rhodes Town. During the economic crisis, Trivago sells 4-star accommodation with 5-star dining at the Grand Hotel for next to nothing. The buffet is amazing. Just round the corner you can pay more for a few disgusting orange juices that aren’t freshly squeezed in Erdinger wheat glasses. A weird world. (more…)

Greece has produced countless gods throughout its history. There are just as many ways to live and eat here. Only the differences in quality between Greek restaurants are even greater than those between German web designers. There is everything for nothing and nothing for everything.

Normally you find the nothing for everything preferably in well-populated places. In the old town of Rhodes, you can get micro-portions of bum gyros for maxi-coal, and the ouzo always costs extra. We often ate well for little money in deserted places. Unfortunately, this is not always the rule, it also works the other way round. (more…)

Rhodes has a lot to offer, especially in late spring. Oleander bushes bloom everywhere in riverbeds that are already dry. The mountains are high, the villages beautiful. We ride the quad bike along all the dirt tracks, no matter how dirty, heat up a dry riverbed and get lost in the middle of nowhere.

Just a few kilometres south of Rhodes Town, everything becomes pleasantly empty, wide and quiet. Sometimes we don’t see a car for hours. Every few hundred metres there is a small monastery or a chapel at the side of the road. Sometimes little shrivelled black nuns come out. (more…)

On our way across the island of Rhodes, we make a one-day stopover in Faliraki. Faliraki is the Greek word for “stupid wine”, a very fitting and concise quintessence of everything that is important there: sex and alcohol. The latter, of course, only to get the former.

There is nothing left of the fishing village. A thousand hotels, hundreds of bars and strip clubs and two shops selling Armani towels for four euros. Everything is empty, far too much has been built and nobody earns anything. The many Brits don’t care. Worse is always possible, and lobster is not red even when cooked. (more…)

I join the Facebook group “I drink ouzo and help Greece out of debt”. The Bild newspaper teaches us that we are financing luxury pensions for the Greeks. 22 billion is a drop in the ocean. Every third Greek employee is a civil servant.

That calls for more blind actionism. I fly to Rhodes and immediately start my humanistically motivated aid project “Trivago sells four stars at 12 euros a day”. At these rates, it will only take roughly 780 years until we are king of Greece again. If the plan doesn’t work out, we’ll simply send Stoiber down. (more…)