Day 7: September 3

In the morning we have a ferry to the island of Andros.
We return the car. And on Andros we’ll take another one. The companies that rent out cars do not allow them to be taken between islands.

People are crowding in the port. Because of the hum of human voices, I get the feeling that I’m in a zoo with exotic birds. A cacophony. A sound impossible to make out into words.

I notice a grandfather of about eighty. He sits almost motionless, looks somewhere into the distance, and smiles slightly. At first it seems that he is smiling at something, but that is his natural expression. Probably this is how I imagine a person who has attained nirvana.

I think about how all our emotions throughout life are imprinted on our faces, and in old age the most important emotion of a person is written on the face.

Like door handles that preserve the traces of every touch. And if you look closely at an old door handle, you can tell where it was grasped most often.

As soon as we step off the ferry onto land, I immediately feel that Andros is different. From the buildings in the port, from the signs. Andros is significantly larger than Tinos.

On Tinos there was a feeling of intimacy and cleanliness. Small villages scattered along the mountain slopes with identical white houses. And besides them, practically nothing else. Andros is more chaotic and shabby. The buildings here are haphazard, the houses are of different kinds of architecture, and there are many abandoned unfinished houses.

We are staying in a small village called Kochylos, in a very old house. It has low ceilings and furniture from the last century. A terrace with a beautiful view of the sea.