The market is everything a market should be: loud, chaotic, smelly, fascinating - a complete throwback to a different time.
Vendors yell at you as you pass, shoving grapes under your nose; skinned lambs are hung by their hooves just waiting to be basted with herbs and olive oil and cooked to perfection. Or, in my case, vomited on. Wheels of cheese are hacked into, and samples are waved in front of your face; dried figs array themselves in tempting piles.
I bought three perfectly ripe Persimmons, a bunch of glorious looking zucchini flowers, and a bag of cashews. After about 45 minutes, my introverted self was gasping under the weight of the sensory overload, and so I took myself off to the more sedate shopping district in the downtown area.
After wandering around for about an hour, weaving in and out of stores, trying on knee boots and ankle boots and flats and heels and pointy toed shoes, I gave up. All I wanted was a really comfortable pair of shoes, suitable for touring around in, that looked fabulous. How hard is that?
Nigh impossible. I can tell you that.
The only remedy for the situation was to take myself out for lunch.
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Scanning the menu, I noticed a whole list of very scrumptious looking salads. This excited me, because I truly love salads. I haven't had one in three months, though - mainly because I can't be bothered to clean lettuce leaves, after having become acclimatized to pre-washed organic greens in resealable plastic containers.
I was almost through lunch, when the table next to me became occupied by two men - one around fifty, one nearing thirty-ish.
Somehow - I am never sure how these things get going - a conversation was started, and they invited me to their table. I had nothing better to do, and so I hopped on over, they ordered me a glass of wine, and tried to get me to share their plate of spanakopita with them. I told them I had just finished my own lunch, and was quite full.
"I saw what you had. A salad. This is nothing."
"It was quite a big one. Very filling."
"This is not real food. If you don't eat enough you will lose, and this is not a good thing. Not at all. Eat."
The only thing to do, was to distract them by getting them to speak about themselves. Who doesn't like to tell their life story?
They were "sea men" - the younger one was some sort of Captain - and they were on a shore leave for a few days. The older one was Greek, the younger one was from Montenegro.
As the conversation spun off onto different tangents, something that struck me was how gentlemanly both of them were.
At one point, in discussing funny misunderstandings that can happen in translation from one language to another, the younger man started to explain some swear words that are popular on board his ship, that in his language are not offensive, but in Greek could get you involved in a fight.
Quite suddenly, the older man touched his younger friend on the shoulder, "This is a very lady-like woman. She doesn't need to be hearing this."
The younger one blushed, and quickly changed the topic.
I could have eased his conscience and told him that I have two brothers who are marines, one of whom in particular, can make me ears bleed if he sets his mind to it.
At another point, when the waitress brought our bills to us, they grabbed mine because, "A woman with men should never pay."
And finally, as I got up to leave and thanked them for a nice afternoon, they both shushed me. "It is we who are happy that you spent time with us. You made our lunch such a good one."
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This is something lovely that I have come across traveling alone. People are more apt to start a random conversation with a single person, than with two or more people traveling together.
Or maybe it is that men tend to prey on alone - looking females.
In any case - I don't really care what the reason is - I have had reams of interesting conversations, from one with a Swedish man about the European economy, to one with a British woman on the bottomless generosity of the Greeks, to one with a Canadian woman about hitchhiking through Europe during the '70s. OH - and one about how olive oil is produced. Apparently, if your olive oil is not a rich shade of green, it should not be touched, even with a 10 foot pole.
More than this though - and I am about to sound completely naive to the more jaded - is that through these encounters I have been able to observe such slivers of goodness in everyone - generosity, kindness, intelligence, cheerfulness, peace, courage, old fashioned chivalry.
Talk about financial crises and the death of Western Civilization all you want, but when I think of that burning flame of goodness - sometimes big, sometimes small, but always there - inside each person I have met, I am hopeful.
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I hopped onto the bus at the Kalamata Station with no wonderful shoes, true, but a surprisingly light heart.
Who needs shoes, when you can spend the afternoon being prevented from learning how to sound like a sailor?
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