In this column, Catherine White shares her latest travels to Greece. Cat, who hails from Jeffreys Bay, is an award-winning journalist who is furthering her career overseas. She has been writing blogs for PE Express since first arriving in London in 2022, on her new career journey and overseas adventures.
You might recall the last time I wrote about Greece or about the Italian, for that matter. I’ve visited both again, and here’s the update: I still love one, but not the other. Greece is more beautiful than ever. Besides the odd sneeze here and there, spring beats all other seasons! It represents regrowth and rebirth.
If my travels have taught me anything over the last few years, it’s this: NEVER, ever, date a man whose name starts with a D. If it sounds anything like Donatello, Dawid, David, or Devon, run. Donatello (the Milan chapter), David (the London boy), Dawid (the JBay boyfriend), and Devon (a guy I thought I liked simply because he liked me). Sometimes, we humans can be so silly. We do silly things! We don’t always see clearly until the dust settles. Now that the rain has gone, I know either to never write about a boyfriend in a column again, even when it’s cute and politically appropriate somehow or if I’m proud, or to simply run if his name starts with a D.
So, I ended up in Greece. Again. I think I needed a hug, but then I booked a trip instead. And that was just about a week before departure. I spent nearly three weeks in Crete, Greece. I stayed with my god-family but was often on my own… wandering, walking, breathing at my own pace. Working online, of course. The grind never stops, and as long as I have my laptop and a stable internet connection, I could be anywhere! So Greece it was.
And so Greece was good for me. Again. Perhaps it was the sun. Maybe even the busyness and hustle and bustle of life inside the family house. Maybe it was the charming Mediterranean men I encountered at a distance every so often. Or perhaps it was just the place of my ancestors that made me feel at home.
One day, I couldn’t help myself responding in Afrikaans to a group of travelers outside a shop I walked by: “Sorrie,” I said as I squeezed through and past them in a slight rush. “Suid Afrikaners?!” I added with a huge grin as I turned my head back, still moving. It wasn’t really a question. The Afrikaans gave it away! I added, “Jeffreysbaai, en julle?” and with respect for my rush, “Hallo Jeffreysbaai, ons is Pretoria!”, “Babaai Pretoria, Geniet hom!” as I ran off.
They were not the only South Africans I encountered during my three-week trip on the island. But let’s rewind slightly to the major disasters I survived during the last weeks.
After my first night in Greece, I woke to messages of concern from South Africa. “Are you okay!? We read about the earthquake in Crete.” What earthquake? I wondered. It read at a magnitude of 6 point something on the Richter scale. So apparently I survived an earthquake. Great! Didn’t feel a thing. I am obviously even stronger than I thought.
This was my third time returning to Crete, the biggest island in Greece. The Cretans are a nation of their own. Being the closest part of Europe to Africa, besides Malta, of course, many people, according to a well-placed off-the-record source, arrive as refugees here. Some don’t survive the journey. The Cretans are proud. Some may say traditional, others might say backward. Perhaps it’s just Mediterranean culture. I found Southern Italy to be stunning and its people warm, but also deeply old-school, and not necessarily always in a good way.
Let me just say this: South Africans are incredibly developed in many ways. Yes, our country struggles. Yes, poverty and crime exist in some of the most horrendous forms. But we are also forward thinkers, brilliant in many fields. Some places in South Africa are far more advanced than parts of Europe. The future, as far as I’m concerned, is African. South African, even. That’s how I see it. But that won’t stop me from travelling. It fuels me.
Of course, there are good people in all parts of the world, and there are some wonderful Italian men, too. But Southern Italy is slightly less developed than the Northern parts. I don’t quite think it fits into the category of Europe. In Southern Italy, up until the 1970s, it was legal for a man to beat his wife to death if she cheated. Imagine that. No law ever existed granting women similar power, or any power at all. Maybe that’s why some men there still walk around with the entitlement of a Latin lover. Perhaps it’s my curiosity that pulls me towards the things others would run from. Perhaps it’s the dangerous environments I’ve experienced that have numbed me to the world’s darker corners. I can be disarmingly open-hearted.
Travel changes you. It opens your heart, sharpens your eyes, and deepens your empathy. That’s the price of movement: you grow. The more you travel, the less you can ignore what’s real.
I am a well-travelled woman. Just yesterday, I stopped counting at 21 when I listed in my head the number of countries I have visited. This didn’t include short trips or multiple trips to various parts of the different countries. How lucky am I? I don’t always feel lucky. I am tired of travelling.
Of course I have my own beliefs, yet I judge no one else’s. I try my best not to impose on others. I’m open to listening, to understanding, and to learning because I know I am just one soul in this vast realm. Who am I to think I have all the answers? I may not be able to change the world, but I can change mine. We all can. But not everybody has the drive or the real desire to do it.
The last time I visited Crete, I ended up in the hospital the day before flying back to London. I was unwell and convinced someone had placed what the Greeks call “the evil eye” on me. I’m extremely analytical (though creative), and as an investigative journalist, my instincts are always on high alert. It’s not a job; it’s a way of being. I pick up on energy, on patterns, and on body language that doesn’t match the words.
So, this time around, I decided maybe the woman I thought had cursed me wasn’t responsible after all. We did, however, experience the second earthquake since my arrival, and the international media were warning of a potential tsunami.
So amid the possibility of serious disaster, we decided to go for coffee. We sat basking in the sun under the lemon trees near the sea for hours talking and sharing our hearts. Three marvellous ladies having the times of our lives laughing and sharing some of our deepest, darkest secrets. Our energy was so good that we noticed the initially quiet restaurant build up more movement around us. All the restaurants surrounding us were quiet as we created a space of our own. But just wait to hear what happened next!
It’s important to mention that while I was in Greece this time, I was in search of something. I had a vision. It was simple. I wanted to find an old Greek lady to read my coffee cup and tell me what she saw. In other words, a fortune teller.
I asked people on the street, searched online, and popped into coffee shops. Nothing. It didn’t happen. But what did happen? Far more marvellous.
It turns out we can get what our hearts truly desire. It just doesn’t always come in the shape or form we might expect. And so, instead of an old Greek lady, I found a middle-aged man. The owner of the café we had unintentionally colonised gifted me a traditional Greek coffee, thick with grounds. And then, with quiet reverence, he read my cup. He sat at a table near us, and perhaps he overheard our entire conversation, which could certainly make sense, given his interpretation of my cup. It was beautiful nonetheless.
He said my heart was huge, like a balloon in the sky. No, much bigger than a hot-air balloon, he said. He emphasised how much love I have to give. He saw that I had loved someone deeply. He saw my travels. He saw Africa and even said, I started there, as he showed me the world map in my cup. He said I would never stop moving.
He asked if I had a dog. I do. I thought of Laika, my girl who passed in 2022. My best friend. My soul companion. He said, “She is with you.” And then, in the coffee grounds, he showed me a corgi. Clear as day. Her shape, her presence. It was her. I teared up. He didn’t notice. He was still searching for the man I loved. But he wasn’t in the cup. “He’s not there,” the man said. Just then, my phone rang. It was the Italian. “He is there,” the man said, pointing at the phone, “but not in the cup.” He told me that he saw nothing bad in my cup. When I asked him what I should do, he said, “Nothing. Just continue with your life.”
After all that, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of our conversation he might have overheard. Coffee cup reading, also known as tasseography, dates back hundreds of years, originating when coffee made its way from the Arab world into the Ottoman Empire.
Traditionally, after drinking a thick, unfiltered coffee, the remaining grounds are swirled, then the cup is turned upside down. The shapes and symbols formed by the grounds are then interpreted, offering insights, warnings, or affirmations. In Greece, it’s often practised by older women in village cafes, passed down through generations not as science, but as storytelling and intuition. It’s art, not an answer.
It was a novel experience. Something I am grateful for because I know how rare it truly is to be able to experience these things in daily life. Sometimes I really feel like my life is a movie. At times it seems more like a horror-comedy when all I wanted was a romance. But perhaps my life is more like an action movie. I am the director, after all, and I can change the script as I like.
Sometimes, life gives you exactly what you asked for. It just arrives differently.
The day before I left Greece, the winds roared. Tables flew. Doors slammed. The sandstorm was coming. The Greeks say the south wind brings bad karma from Africa, red Egyptian dust, and disrupts the island’s flow.
Now, I’ve been back in South Africa for two days. Finally, I can breathe. Properly. I’d been gasping for air, often without realizing. But once the dust settles, you can see everything clearly. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
What a rollercoaster life has been! And yet, I count myself lucky. Lucky to grow, to learn, to rise with more strength than I knew I had. No strong, wise woman comes through life untouched. I never thought I’d be one of them. But here I am.
Without giving too much away, because I plan to write more on this, openly and without shame, I’ll just say: I am like a lion. And I survived more than two earthquakes, a sandstorm, and a coffee cup.
At the end of the whole trip, en route to Johannesburg, I was selfishly bummed that I didn’t have a whole row to myself on the airplane this time around. And then, an oom and tannie from Jeffreys Bay sat down next to me and told me everything about their trip to Israel.
“Bietjie droog,” she whispered gently to him, naturally, as they chose the beef instead of the chicken. And just like that, I was home again. Because where there are South Africans, there I am safe. Despite what anyone might tell you. I wonder if anyone in America ever feels the same.
You must be logged in to post a comment.