Let me start by offering a disclaimer, which might arguably be the worst way to start a blog post: I am not (necessarily) endorsing the actions I took this past weekend, but desperate times call for desperate measures. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.
My roommate Sarah and I made somewhat last-minute plans to hike part of Mt. Olympus last weekend. Sarah is a fellow DU student and was missing the mountains as much as I was, so we put together a trip for the two of us to stay in the town of Litochoro at the base of Olympus National Park. Trains aren’t a reliable mode of transportation here as they are in most of Europe, so we decided to take the bus. To ensure we were purchasing the right tickets, I picked out everything with our ISA program advisor Eugenia, who is Greek. She called the bus company for me to verify that once we arrived in Litochoro Friday night, we’d be dropped off somewhere in town near the bus company’s local branch. Sarah and I got out tickets, booked an Airbnb with a view of the ocean, and packed to see the home of the Gods.
The ride from Athens to Litochoro is close to five hours long. Once we finally got close to the town after what felt like eons on the bus, it was pitch black outside and we were ready for bed. As the driver announced our stop, we packed up and walked off the bus with only one other passenger. In the time it took to get our backpacks on, the bus had pulled away and was heading to its final destination. This is when we realized that we hadn’t been dropped off in the town center, but at a tiny bus stop on the side of the highway. The only thing we could see was a gas station glowing faintly in the distance.
No need to panic yet, I had phone service and plenty of battery! I opened the FreeNow app, which is how you can get a taxi in Greece, and a message read: “Service unavailable in this area!” I open the Uber app, which is slightly less reliable but still worth a shot, and the same message pops up. At this point, it is almost 9:30pm. Our last resort is to check public transportation thinking there is a local bus route still running at this time of night. No such luck. The town center is close to a two-hour walk away uphill from our location. We are stranded in the mountains of Northern Greece.
As soon as this realization hits, we start calling Tess and Eugenia, our ISA advisors here in Athens. Eugenia is (we learn later) in class, so she doesn’t pick up my call. Luckily, Tess answers her phone, and I explain the situation to her while Sarah, understandably, sits on the bench motionless, nearly in tears. Tess is just about as lost on solutions as we are because, honestly, there are no good answers to our problems. As her and I brainstorm, a car pulls off the highway towards us.
“Do you two need a ride to Litochoro? Into town?”
Well, yes, I think to myself. But also, not like this.
We get closer to the car and see a middle-aged Greek woman driving by herself. She asked us again and said she could see we looked lost, which was the understatement of the century. Meanwhile, I’m relaying all of this back to Tess and asking her what to do. After a minute, Tess sighs and gives us the ‘ok’ to get in the car. I share our live location and the license plate number with Tess and hang up the phone, praying Sarah and I are not buckling straight into a slasher film.
The woman could tell we were hesitant and told us that she had two kids of her own, a son and a daughter around our age. She explained that she lived in town with her husband and had an Airbnb that she ran for tourists like us. We learned about where she attended university and where she got her master’s degree, and by this point, we had figured that we were probably more safe than not. When we finally got into town, we drove down a quiet street where we were shown her house, met her husband, George, and got to see her dog. She then proceeded to drive us around for another 15 minutes when we couldn’t find our Airbnb and the host wasn’t picking up my phone calls. When we finally found the correct building and tried to give her a few Euro as a ‘thank-you’, she refused and instead met us both with warm hugs, telling us to come knock on her door if we needed anything else that weekend. After that, she went home to George and we called Tess to let her know we had survived hitchhiking for the first time!
The next day, Sarah and I hiked about 8 miles of Mt. Olympus. It was a surreal experience that I will never forget. I felt more connected to nature and humanity than I have in many other places I have traveled to. When we were finished and went back into town for dinner that night, after verifying the bus schedule and pickup location for the next morning, we talked about how bad we felt that we never got the woman from the previous’ nights name. No sooner had we said that I spotted a small dog with two owners across the small square. It was her! We waved her over to our table and exchanged hugs. She asked how Olympus was, and we thanked her again no less than fifty times. I asked if she could write down her name and address, just in case we ever needed it again. Αρετή (pronounced A-ret-ie) also gave us her phone number, telling us to call or text her if we needed “absolutely anything” while in Greece. She told us that next time we came back to Litochoro that we could stay with her. She was the definition of “the people make the place.”
That is, of course, until she ran back up to Sarah and I ten minutes later with two small gift bags from a shop on the town square. Inside the bags were body lotions made with herbs from Mt. Olympus. “Gifts for you girls,” she said as she stood up with us to take a picture. We tried to tell her that it was too much, that WE should be getting HER a gift, but she wouldn’t have it. The three of us took a photo and said goodbye. We waved at her husband George as they walked home and finished our delicious meal, and left Litochoro on time from the town center the next morning.
Hiking Mt. Olympus is a bucket list activity that I have dreamed of doing since I was a kid. Hitchhiking and connecting with a middle-aged Greek mother, however, was not. I’m pretty sure the second one has become more important to me. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past month and a half, it’s that maybe the Ancient Greeks were onto something. You might be stranded on the side of the highway, looking painfully American, with your roommate in emotional shambles, debating if you should get in a strangers car, but if you’ve made the long journey to see the Gods, they will reward you. You just have to have a little faith in the divine. (And the kindness of strangers)
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