Old Man of Corfu

A Bit of Local Color or Just The Crazy Old Man of Corfu?
By Barney Jefferies, Freelance Writer

‘I am Michael Schumacher!’ cackles The Old Man, again. We’re speeding along the pot-ho Grudgingly, my girlfriend poses with the old man in front of his car and his house. led hard shoulder, undertaking angry drivers. ‘Undertaking’ is appropriate, because even if I survive The Old Man’s Formula One delusions, I’m sure my girlfriend wants to kill me. It’s our first day in Greece, and we're having a Travel Experience. And it's is all my fault.

It starts in Corfu Town. Sleepy after a night on the ferry from Venice, all we want is a bed in a cheap hotel. We soon lose our way in a labyrinth of narrow alleys, so I ask a friendly native for directions. The Old Man has a kind face, and answers me in solid English.

Yes, he knows the way to the Hermes Hotel, but please, is not good hotel. Why we want to stay there? Perhaps we come and stay with him? He goes on to paint bucolic pictures of his house in the hills, amongst olive and citrus groves. A garden, a spare room, and nothing to pay. 'It is a great pleasure for me,' he says, and gives a beatific smile.

We've been on Corfu less than half an hour, and already here's the famous Hellenic hospitality. I'm hooked. My girlfriend is not so impressed. Clever me, though, I manage to talk her round. Who wants a room in the crummy Hermes Hotel anyway? We’re not tourists, we’re travellers. Looking for the real Greece, staying off the beaten track, soaking up the local colour. It’ll be rent free and it’ll be an experience.

I start having second thoughts when we see, and smell, his car. I start having third and fourth thoughts when we stop at the supermarket for provisions: not from the supermarket itself, but from the bins in the car park. We scavenge stale bread, mouldering aubergines and dozens of sheets of past-the-date filo pastry to add to the stench in the car. My girlfriend gives me a look to remind me whose brilliant idea this was.

Once we've collected all the delicacies the bins have to offer, The Old Man explains they're for his chickens. Nonetheless, we're not taking any chances, and make a point of inviting The Old Man out to dinner.

His house is, indeed, surrounded by trees, but there my idyllic Arcadian visions must end. It’s Swiss Family (Heath) Robinson on a bad trip. It’s a place where old furniture comes to die. Empty olive oil and feta cheese canisters are holding their annual convention. A rickety fire escape (from where? how? why?) spirals off into the tops of the pines.

The higgledy-piggledy house has many spare rooms, although most of them seem to be the territory of the determinedly free range chickens. In the first one we're shown to, we can almost make out a double bed beneath the junk and the dirt. The Old Man, even with his idiosyncratic ideas of hygiene, decides it's not fit for human habitation. He darkly mutters something about Albanians having stayed there.

But the next room , reached via the incongruous spiral staircase, almost verges on approaching clean(ish). There's even an en suite bathroom, with running water. Trickling water, anyway.

How long has The Old Man lived alone here? He's never married, though he talks of various women in other countries and other times. In parts of the house you literally can’t move for the accumulated clutter of a long, strange lifetime. Books line every wall, and much of the floor. The Old Man, clearly well-travelled, claims to speak twelve languages “and two dialects”. He's very proud of this: they’re all listed on a large cardboard badge which he wears pinned to his chest at all times. The beautiful town of Paliokastrista is one of the many places the Old Man drove us on his tour of Corfu.

The Old Man gets plenty of opportunity to exercise his linguistic capabilities as he takes us on a guided tour of the island. It soon becomes clear we’re not the first unsuspecting travellers to have been graced with his hospitality. In fact, it's his habit to strike up conversation with every foreigner on Corfu: and this is September, when foreigners outnumber locals by a staggering ratio. He likes to try and guess people's place of origin: 'Excuse me. You are from Sweden, I think.'

'No...'

'Holland?'

'No...'

'Denmark?'

'No, Germany.'

'Germany! Deutcshland! Ja! Berlin?'

'Nein...'

'Munchen? Frankfurt? Dusselldorf? Hamburg?'

'Stuttga...'

'Stuttgart, ja? Stuttgart!'

And so on. And on. Most people are charmed. Over the years, he must have insinuated his way into hundreds of holiday snaps, posing with his arms around young and not-so-young women.

The Old Man is proud of his beautiful, tourist-ravaged island, and determined to show us all the sights. He's also, and with somewhat less reason, proud of his driving. If we didn't already know that Greeks drive on the right hand side of the road, we wouldn't be sure. We certainly wouldn't have realised they have speed limits. The real Michael Schumacher never has to worry about sharp bends on rough, narrow mountain roads, or about things coming in the opposite direction. The Old Man doesn't worry about these things either. Providence and the sharp reactions of other drivers save our lives on several occasions.

He takes us to Myrtiotissa - 'the most beautiful beach in the world', he promises. It's inaccessible by road, although this doesn't stop him trying to drive half-way down the cliff face. In Corfu Town, we park right on the walls of the old fortress, one wheel hanging in the air. At the tacky resort of Sidhari, he drives us all the way onto the crowded beach. The car gets stuck in the sand, and a group of overweight, lobster-red English tourists ('English! London? Liverpool? Manchester?') have to give us a push. They give us funny looks, trying to work out what on earth their two young compatriots are doing with this strange Greek man. I'm wondering that myself. The view of the rugged coastline was enough to make us forget, if only for a moment, the strange situation in which we found ourselves.

On our travels, we have to stop and scavenge at every single road-side fig tree. Now, Corfu just happens to be Greece's lushest island, and there are fig trees everywhere. Then there's the pomegranates, and the ubiquitous prickly pear – another immigrant which seems hell-bent on taking over the island. We collect far more than one man (and his chickens) could ever hope to eat. Our harvest, I suppose, will eventually turn to compost in the fertile back of the car.

Legally, The Old Man explains, he’s allowed whatever fruit he can reach from the road, even if it’s on someone else’s property. He carries a special tool for hooking down fruits which are hard to reach, due generally to their being on the other side of a fence. It’s at least six feet long. Strangely, despite having the law on his side, he beats a hasty retreat whenever the owner appears.

We beat our own hasty retreat the next morning. The Old Man is sorry to see us go after only one night: 'You stay one week, two weeks!' he tells us hopefully. 'I show you more of the island.' We explain how we're pressed for time, we want to move on, and pick a remote destination at the far end of the island. He insists on driving us there, via more fig trees and a short-cut which isn't.

Back on the beaten track, we say our thank-yous, promise to send a postcard, and watch him speed away, feeling obscurely guilty. It's a huge relief to be uncomplicated tourists again. We're quite ready for some of the unreal Greece. Local colour? For now, we'll make do with garish cocktails, the white of the sand and the turquoise of the sea.