Delusions of Grandeur – My Summer in Greece

Delusions of Grandeur – My Summer in Greece

It is the lawlessness of Greece that attracts both travelers and outcasts. They arrive on ferry boats with the eagerness of immigrants, drunk with notions of escape and pleasure. This hedonistic lure of the Greek islands is far removed from the academic splendor of mainland Europe. In myth, Greece is a land ruled by the selfish whimsy of the gods, and this climate of self-indulgence blows across the Ionian island of Corfu like a frolicking wind.

Teetering, as it does, on the far edge of western civilization, Corfu presents itself as a haven or a refuge, depending on one’s orientation as traveler or derelict. Here, travelers can live out their adolescent fantasies and outcasts can be gods. The playground of these gods, the Mount Olympus of debauchery, spills down the steep east coast of Corfu like a glob of Pepto Bismol—the Pink Palace.

I came to the Pink Palace in late May, one of a steady trickle of off-season travelers who had arrived just in time to enjoy the last of the cool nights before the torrent of peak season vacationers, drawn by the summer heat, filled the island to capacity. The last leg of a nine-month solo expedition through Europe, the Pink Palace was my last indulgence in freedom before I flew home to start college. On paper, the resort looked like Paradise—the very brochure seemed saturated with ambrosia. Pictures of gleeful scuba divers, vast cliffs that fell into the Ionian Sea and sunny rooms lured me from the mainland. But the brochure’s utopian promise—”Ideally situated on the sands of Agios Gordios beach, the Palace assures a stay that you’ll never forget”—turned out to be, at best, a euphemistic appraisal of the jarring reality that awaited me.

The Pink Palace was a glaring twentieth-century smear on an otherwise primitive landscape. At night, the profusion of light and music that came from the resort was as obnoxious and out of place as the sickly pink stucco structure that scarred the green hillside. Self-indulgence came in liquid form at the Pink Palace, with names like Ouzo, Blowjobs, B-52s, Kamikazes, and Alabama Slammers. Having dutifully saturated themselves with the culture of the mainland, my fellow guests now allowed themselves the corporeal pleasure of drunken oblivion.