It’s been almost 10 years since my visit to the island of Crete in October 2000. I was staying on a back street in the seaside town of Chania – it wasn’t a very fancy hostel, not even 10 rooms. I walked out on to my balcony in search of the Greek morning sun, and there to my surprise I found Jenny, reading the book “Memoirs of a Geisha.” It turned out that our two adjacent rooms shared a common balcony, so from her point of view I had walked out on to her balcony! We struck up a conversation and arranged our first date, a 6-hour trek down the longest gorge in Europe, the Samaria Gorge. I learned all about her 5 sisters back in Australia, and how the girlfriend she’d been backpacking with had run out of money and turned back, leaving Jenny to continue on her own to Crete. My good fortune! I quickly decided to extend my trip, and soon we were plotting our long distance relationship between North Carolina and Melbourne, Australia. Many emails, several thousand miles of travels, and a green card later, Jenny arrived in Raleigh. We returned to Crete in 2004 only to find that the hostel had been abandoned, and our shared balcony was half-collapsed. Not a very romantic setting for the marriage proposal I had planned, but that wasn’t about to stop me, and fortunately it didn’t stop Jenny from saying “yes”…
Ted Tsomides
Raleigh