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One Night In Piraeus

August 6, 2021 /

One night in Piraeus, is like a year in any other place….

You are a serious rock music aficionado if you know that the above line is a plagiarism of a song by English 70s band 10cc, and that in the original lyric it was Paris, not Piraeus. But our one night in Piraeus, sandwiched between Korinthos and our first island of this adventure, manages to almost live up to the line.

The smooth running, punctual, air conditioned train from Korinthos pulls into Piraeus dead on time, and we step out into the searing heat to trudge to our one night stay, backpacks on. Piraeus station is conveniently positioned very close to the port, so nothing should be too much of a challenge. 

“First I have to tell you one thing”, says the pretty hotel receptionist, “Piraeus has no electricity because of the hot day”. 

“Ah ok, no problem, do you know how long?”

“No we do not know. The hot day means all of the power in Piraeus is broken”.

It takes a few minutes for the implications to sink in. Yes there is no lighting, and yes there will be no internet. And then we realise, there’s no air conditioning either. Nor is there a lift (elevator). Our room is on the 6th floor. And when we get there, our electronic door key won’t work!

So this is how we come to be trudging up six flights of pitch dark unlit stairs, backpacks on, already sweating, to meet a chambermaid with a master key, waiting to let us in to our hot, dark room. And we find ourselves laughing, just a bit. Drenched in sweat, short of breath, and laughing. This is the kind of challenge that makes travelling an experience, being properly knocked out of your comfort zone.

  • Early morning ferry
  • Ferry to Serifos
  • View from the deck before departure

There is little choice but to find a beer in the shade down town once we’ve secured our ferry tickets for tomorrow; we tell the waitress that we think it’s even hotter today, she in turn tells us that she’s just heard that it’s 46 here in Piraeus. That’s 114 fahrenheit. We’ve certainly never experienced temperatures like these before, not anywhere.

A quick check back at the hotel – and another trudge up six floors in the dark – establishes that there’s still no power, so we may as well find a restaurant and stay out. And have a couple more beers.

We may have been trying to see the funny side of our predicament, but in reality of course this whole situation is no laughing matter. The staff at the very decent Italian restaurant near the port bring us up to date with the news. It seems the power cut is selective and intentional; the local authorities in Piraeus and Athens have shut down the power to big user areas whilst keeping essential supplies such as trams, trolley buses and street lighting functional. In other words they’ve targeted the hotels.

Sunrise in the smoke cloud

Much worse though, the fires are raging in the Attika region all around Athens, people are losing everything, and a big operation is underway to move livestock to safe ground. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed. Our waitress wipes a corner of our table and shows us white dust: there is a “snowfall” of ash across Piraeus as the smoke cloud moves overhead.

For me, the beer plan works and I fall asleep despite the oppressive heat in the room. Michaela is less lucky and sits on the balcony waiting for sleep to come. Sometime during the dead of night she notices light creeping under the door – the electricity is back on.

Next morning the smell of smoke has permeated the whole city and you can smell nothing else. As we set sail on the early morning ferry, Piraeus quickly disappears behind the yellowish smoke cloud hanging low in its skies. Our next stop is the island of Serifos.

Smoke cloud over Piraeus

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