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The Writer's Way Chasing le Carré in Corfu If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places. By Honor Jones Photographs by Alice Zoo Scroll down to Travel Notes July 22, 2025, 9:30 AM ET Share Save

The Writer's Way Chasing le Carré in Corfu If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places. By Honor Jones Photographs by Alice Zoo Scroll down to Travel Notes July 22, 2025, 9:30 AM ET Share Save

The Atlantic5 days ago
Black dress, pink coat, thick beige stockings. This is the third time I've seen her. She walks down the middle of the street outside my window, her head bent forward under its helmet of grandmother hair. She carries her handbag like a briefcase with a bomb in it. She has the look of someone whose friends are all dead.
I saw her first outside Saint Spyridon Church, lighting a candle. And then again in Spianada Square, among the scootering children. I lean out the window to watch her disappear around the corner. Maybe there's nothing suspicious about it. Corfu is a small city, on a small island in Greece. From my hotel room I can see the green edge of the cricket pitch where, in John le Carré's A Perfect Spy, the Czech agent, Axel, chased Magnus Pym in slow, limping circles.
I think A Perfect Spy is a nearly perfect book. Only a few of its more than 600 pages are actually about Corfu. If you wanted to write about le Carré and travel, you could go almost anywhere: Vienna or Bern or Kenya or Cornwall would make the list long before Corfu. But as Axel would tell you, if you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places. You ignore the booked flight to Washington and the train ticket to Paris because you know they're false leads. You look where the trail is colder.
Magnus is an MI6 agent who has betrayed England by spying for the Czechs, but now the Americans are onto him. In a frenzy of denial, he drags his wife, Mary, and son, Tom, on a frantic Greek holiday: Lesbos, Athens, Hydra, Spetses. The Pyms change 'boats and islands like driven souls, though only Magnus knows the curse, only Magnus knows who is pursuing them and why, and Magnus has locked that secret behind his smile with all his others.'
Corfu is where their journey begins. For centuries the island was a playground for spies, a place torn between great powers, where minor officials could go to make a name for themselves or jaded expats could try to fashion new lives. But if you're trying to escape the past, it's the wrong place to go.
Over the span of a generation, beginning at the turn of the 19th century, Corfu tumbled through the hands of four great powers. Walk into the city's Old Fortress and you'll meet a winged lion of Venice, whose face was hammered off by the Napoleonic French. On the ground is a paving stone where a Russian soldier carved his name. Prince Philip was baptized here, in the fortress's Church of St. George. Nearly 2,000 Jews were held here, before deportation to Birkenau. Across the water: Albania. My tour guide, Andreas Grammenos, tells me about a defector who swam the channel to escape the Communist dictatorship. Andreas's father served in Corfu's Coast Guard, and still has the pool float the man used to get across. The fortress's clock tower kept time until 2003, when the last technician who knew how to fix it retired.
It was the British who brought cricket here, Magnus tells Tom. 'Magnus knew those things. Or pretended to.' Their holiday is all late lunches, amorous siestas, tennis lessons for Tom, and, for restless Magnus, long evening walks. Until, one day, Axel tracks him down on the cricket pitch to warn him. 'It's over,' he says. 'Come with me.' He means disappear, defect. The double agent has to pick a side, or at least admit that the game is over.
Magnus refuses to hear it. He spins lies, hauling his family to one island after another: 'Sorry, Mabs. Sorry, Tom, old chap. But this place is too damned idyllic.' Tom knows something, though. He has seen this 'mystery man at cricket,' he tells his mother—a 'wise, stringy man with a sad moustache like a conjuror's.' They went 'round and round the ground together with the thin man going slowly like an invalid.' He was kind to Magnus. He was 'like a father.'
John le Carré's real name was David Cornwell, and his father, Ronnie, was a con man and a criminal. In 1977, David took his family—his first wife, Ann, and their three boys—to Corfu on vacation. Adam Sisman tells the story in John le Carré: The Biography:
Sitting outside at an open-air beach restaurant David overheard a familiar voice talking at a nearby table.
'Reg?' he asked tentatively.
'What if I am?'
'It's David.'
The suspicious glare melted. 'Ronnie's boy!'
Reg was one of Ronnie's loyal hangers-on, a cast of courtiers that included innocent marks and faithful henchmen and a rotating roster of replacement mothers for young le Carré. Reg told le Carré that he and others had taken the rap for some of Ronnie's crimes, and served time in prison for them. 'We was all bent, son,' Reg said. 'But your dad was very, very bent.'
That scene from Corfu turns up in A Perfect Spy, though Reg is replaced by a character named Syd Lemon, who drops these lines back in England. Syd is speaking with Magnus's MI6 boss, who is trying to find him before the Czechs, or Magnus's own despair, catch up to him. In the novel, Magnus's father is called Rick. 'I did time' for Rick, Syd says. 'A lot of us did.' Rick 'was bent, you see. We was all bent.' But Rick 'was very bent indeed.'
Le Carré tried, and felt he failed, for 25 years to write about his father, before he found, with A Perfect Spy, that he could lay the story of life with Ronnie over the armature of an espionage thriller. The book begins with Magnus on the run, heading for the hiding place of his own imagination, a guest room by the sea. The story slips between past and present while the narration slips from first person to third and back again, sometimes from sentence to sentence, which is entirely natural, because we're not the people we used to be. Magnus's childhood—the missing mother; the boarding schools; the weepy, groping hugs from Rick—is every bit as harrowing as being hunted by the East and West at once.
Le Carré wrote 26 novels before he died, in 2020. He traveled to research many of them. Everywhere he went, he dreaded meeting victims of his father's schemes. Ronnie showed up in Cairo and Beirut—trying, maybe, to get into the gun-running business—then in Singapore, where he was arrested; then in Hong Kong, where he was arrested again. Now a letter came: Ronnie was in Delhi, claiming that he'd been appointed a maharaja's right-hand man and asking his son for £1,000.
The seductive power of this guy! This is a man who wooed his own prosecutor. After a conviction for fraud, Ronnie wrote admiring letters from prison to the man who had argued against his appeal. Upon his release, Sisman writes, the prosecutor came to stay with Ronnie, who introduced him to 'obliging young ladies.' Decades later, in Hong Kong, where le Carré went to research the novel that became The Honourable Schoolboy, he ran into the policeman who had overseen Ronnie's imprisonment there: 'Mr. Cornwell, sir, your father is one of the finest men I have ever met,' he told le Carré. 'When I get back to London, he's going to set me up in business.' You couldn't touch him without being corrupted by him.
When Ronnie died, le Carré may have thought himself liberated. The feeling lasted for about five minutes. At the beginning of A Perfect Spy, the phone rings, announcing the death of Magnus's father: 'I'm free,' Magnus says. But even after death, Rick keeps turning up. Very near the end, A Perfect Spy is addressed to his ghost.
Once, a woman contacted le Carré. He had no idea who she was, but she seemed to believe that they'd had sex on a train. Of course, Sisman writes, it had been Ronnie, 'passing himself off as the world-famous author.' The first person, the second, the third; fact, fiction, death—they were no match for Ronnie Cornwell.
One day in Corfu, I catch a cricket match played by a group of veterans. A man asks me something in Greek, then switches to English: He's wondering if I can explain the rules to his son. I've been writing in a notebook—maybe he thought I was some kind of official, keeping score, when what I'm actually writing is that I've never seen so many older gentlemen taking their shirts off in public. They thwack the ball into the parking lot, and I imagine le Carré pretending to watch while dreading, always, the possibility of his father appearing in the crowd.
Just as Corfu isn't the first place you'd look for John le Carré, I'm probably not the first person you'd expect to write about him. A Perfect Spy was published in 1986, the year I was born. Also, I'm a woman. One of the complaints against le Carré was that he couldn't write female characters. They tended to be beautiful and faithless, always running off, one critic wrote, 'with another male, like a cat.' Anyway, I don't care about that. I don't really care about the women or lack of women in the 25 other novels, either.
The character I identify with is Magnus—with his compulsive adoption of other people's values, with the way he puts on an identity only to cast it aside, with his damage and delusion, with his ravenous need to be loved. Everywhere he goes, Magnus compiles pieces of Magnus: from Ronnie's retinue; from the fancy boys at boarding school and the Oxford socialists he spies on; from Axel; from Jack Brotherhood, his mentor at MI6. 'Magnus is a great imitator,' Axel tells Mary. 'I sometimes think he is entirely put together from bits of other people, poor fellow.'
At the risk of turning an island full of real people into a handy literary metaphor: Corfu is a good place to think about influence and identity, about how so many disparate fragments can cohere into a whole.
Corfu emerged from the churn of ancient and colonial history only to plunge into devastating world wars—as many as one in 20 Greeks died during World War II from violence or famine—and then into a brutal civil war, and then into a tourism boom. Today, about a quarter of its inhabitants were born abroad. And yet Andreas's family has lived here for eight generations. He can find, in the archives stored in the Old Fortress, letters from his ancestors haggling over the price of wine. When he was growing up, you didn't need a ticket to enter the fortress, and he and his friends used to play there, daring one another to run through the tunnels, the children's footsteps echoing off the ancient walls.
Andreas takes me and Alice, the photographer I'm traveling with, from the fortress through the city. The houses aren't the blue and white of the Greek flag. Instead (thanks to the Venetians) they're sherbet-colored—cream and butter yellow, pink, apricot, and peach. The cafés on the avenue near the cricket pitch are busy, but whole grids of empty tables remain roped off. It's April, and one feels already the dull tread of the approaching summer crowds. Andreas says that as late as the 1950s, it would have been 'unthinkable' for an average villager to come here for coffee—only the elite were welcome. Tourism changed that. One night, a restaurant is playing 'I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts.'
Today Corfu is one of the most densely populated World Heritage Sites in Europe. Andreas says the local government is involved in a contentious debate about air conditioners: Can they be rigged up outside people's homes, or are they a desecration of the scenic past? It's hot here in the summer. Personally, I don't think tourists should even be allowed to see this place if they're going to go around complaining about AC units ruining their view.
Tourists and locals agree that the most important thing to do in Corfu is visit Saint Spyridon. Spyridon was a shepherd in Cyprus who became a bishop, went to the Council of Nicaea, performed miracles, and (after he died and was disinterred and embalmed) traveled through the mountains from Constantinople to Greece in a sack on the back of a mule.
Outside his church, people buy candles to light: The bigger the prayer, the bigger the candle. Inside is his body. Each morning, Spyridon's slippered feet are revealed so that people can kiss them, but it's the afternoon now, so the line to get into the crypt isn't too long. Above his casket dangle dozens of silver thuribles, and from the silver thuribles, silver tamata —plaques engraved with the images of answered prayers (a baby, a heart)—and little silver ships, the symbol of Corfu. The church's altar stands behind an iconostasis, a wall of icons and paintings. Andreas says this is a common feature of Greek Orthodox churches because his countrymen 'love mystery'—because they understand the power of the hidden, the unseen.
Corfu was never a center of diplomatic activity, but it was a hub of information, where facts were dug up and traded like the metals and minerals of other lands. Aggelis Zarokostas, a historian at Utrecht University who is writing a book about 18th- and 19th-century espionage in mainland Greece and the Ionian Islands, told me the story of an agent named for the saint. Spiridon Foresti was a British consul who kept filing dispatches even after the French put him under house arrest for a year. He must have dropped his reports out his windows; how he was able to gather the information while locked inside, no one knows.
British rule in Corfu lasted from 1815 to 1864. The English argued that they were bringing law and order to a cutthroat land. Immediately after they arrived, a plague broke out. Officials, going door-to-door gathering information about the ill and their contacts, dragged priests along with them to threaten people with excommunication if they didn't comply.
Long after Corfu was turned over to the Greeks, traces of the English remained, as did many expats. The most famous were the Durrells, who moved to Corfu in 1935. There's a popular British TV show about them: The Durrells, which begins with a broke and plucky widow ditching England to bring her four obstreperous children here. Two of those children grew up to be authors—Gerald, the famous nature writer, and Lawrence, the novelist.
I brought with me a copy of Lawrence's memoir of life on the island, Prospero's Cell. Published in 1945, it's full of lush writing about the landscape: 'The olives are tacking madly from grey to silver'; the 'cypresses are like drawn bows.' But he can be nasty about the 'natives.' He describes the hands and feet of peasants as 'blunt and hideous: mere spades grown upon the members through a long battle with soil, ropes, and wood.' After reading that, I feel a little less good about the fact that my hotel room is called the Durrell suite. There's a bust of Lawrence outside the Old Fortress. Andreas says people think that he was a spy too.
Alice and I have gone back to the fortress to visit the library housed in the British garrison, where the manager lets us touch a 16th-century edition of The Iliad. As we're leaving, some teenagers on a field trip mark us out as English (Alice is English but, for the record, I'm American—and this is the one and only time I have ever imagined that this fact could be a defense against anything). They mock us, mercilessly. To be fair, all they do is say 'Hello,' but they draw out the greeting in a way that makes clear what a totally preposterous word hello is. 'Hellooo,' they keep saying, waving and laughing at us.
We hustle away with our heads down and continue on to the two main sites of British memory in Corfu: the British Cemetery and the estate of Mon Repos.
The cemetery is a disheveled green dreamscape. Just inside is an ancient stone lawn roller, more sculpture now than tool. For a little while, I pulled it, creaking, through the long grasses. Farther in, we find the graves. There are the ancient ones of midshipmen and babies, the graves of British soldiers from both world wars, and then, from more recent years, plaques for the expats: Barbara Anne Reason (BORN IN OXFORD, ENGLAND—FOREVER IN CORFU), Gladys Fish (RESTING IN CORFU: A PLACE SO LOVED), and Adda Dendrinou:
The Mon Repos estate was built in 1828 for the British lord high commissioner, and a century later, Prince Philip was born on a tabletop inside. I would like to see the table, but the shutters of the mansion are sealed tight. (Anyway, it turns out the table is long gone—sold to a shipping company for the boardroom of its London office.) You can find Roman retaining walls on the grounds here, and debris from a temple to Hera. In the back of the derelict garden is a row of metal arches driven into the ground like a giant's croquet hoops. They were covered in wisteria once, but the shade must have shifted as the trees grew taller. The plant didn't die though; it just reared up and threw itself toward the sun, kudzuing over the nearby treetops. I lie there, breathing in the sweet, woozy smell of wild wisteria.
At the bottom of the estate, Alice and I step off a jetty and swim out into the cold, blue sea. By this point, I totally get Gladys Fish: I'm ready to live and die here too.
I'm not supposed to be swimming and smelling flowers; I'm supposed to be doing John le Carré things: walking on cliff tops muttering to myself, checking dead-letter drops, sweet-talking my agents in the field. I keep looking for men in dark raincoats, but it doesn't rain and my sole candidate for either surveillance or countersurveillance remains my lady with the handbag.
Le Carré was only ever a minor spy, and he quit the service the minute he could afford to. After the publication of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, in 1963, his family lived abroad to lower their tax bill. Some of that time was spent in Greece, on Crete. Le Carré was miserable there. He wrote long letters to the wife of a colleague and flew back and forth to Paris, London, and New York, where he was suddenly famous. When he was on Crete, his wife, Ann, nagged him about visiting the island's historic sites. 'I hate ruins,' he wrote to a friend. He took so many walks and made so many long-distance phone calls that, Sisman writes, 'a local official accused him of spying for the Turks and asked for a bribe as the price of his silence.'
At one point, a Czech writer, or someone posing as a Czech writer, came to Crete and kept asking him to meet. Le Carré was nervous enough to contact the head of the Athens station to report that Czech intelligence was trying to recruit him. In an interview with Sisman, I asked if he really believed this. His biography isn't a study of just a fascinating man, but a fascinating liar, one who—very much like his father—spun fictions that he then struggled to distinguish from the truth. But a Czech approach, Sisman told me, seemed plausible.
Le Carré said that he was drawn to spying because he wanted to serve his country—and to do penance for Ronnie's crimes. But he also found that secrecy could be a 'place of escape,' a way of feeling 'superior to life rather than engaging in it.' He 'relished the notion of appearing to be someone dull, while all the time I was someone terribly exciting.'
After spying, he found other ways to escape. One was writing; another was travel. When he went abroad to research a new novel, he would go in character, pretending to be whomever he was writing about. Maybe he got the idea from a training exercise for MI6, which involved posing as a German tourist in Brighton; he kept the accent up even while being interrogated by local police.
I had the idea that, while writing this story, I would go around pretending to be other people. I'm hopeless at accents, but I could come up with backstories: Maybe I was heading to a destination bachelorette party, or was on a soul-searching journey before pursuing IVF. My name might be Olivia, or Stef, or Gladys Fish. But getting strangers to ask me personal questions is harder than I expected, especially because I mostly want to talk with Alice, and after two days together, I've already told her everything that has ever happened to me. Magnus never has that problem. 'Why don't you just tell me the truth?' Mary demands. 'The suggestion amused him.'
It was not until I read Sisman's second book on the author, The Secret Life of John le Carré, which he published only after le Carré's death, that I grasped how much of le Carré's writing substitutes one place for another, one woman for another. In 1983, le Carré went back to Greece, this time to Lesbos. By then he'd divorced Ann and married his second wife, Jane, but he wasn't traveling with her. He had a new mistress—Sue Dawson, half his age. In the mornings, Sisman writes, she would 'lean out of bed to peer through the gaps between the old floorboards to see him working in the room below.' The book he was writing at the time was, of course, A Perfect Spy, in which Magnus's wife, Mary, does the same thing, looking through the 'gaps between the planks' to see Magnus showering in the room downstairs.
Le Carré told Dawson that she was his muse. He'd met her through her job: producing abridged books for cassette tapes. Mary's job is to rebind old books for MI6 with secret messages hidden inside. The one book Magnus never lets her repair is his battered old copy of Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus, which purports to be the autobiography of an adventurer during the Thirty Years' War and is considered Germany's first literary masterpiece. Magnus won't let Mary touch Simplicissimus because it's the secret codebook he uses to communicate with Axel. When le Carré got home from Lesbos, his wife typed up the pages he'd written.
'Without much effort,' Sisman writes, 'I was able to identify eleven women with whom he had affairs,' and 'there were plenty more besides.' Sisman suggests that cheating became a replacement for espionage for le Carré, an 'ersatz form of spying'—another way to live a double life.
It's 10 days until Good Friday, and according to Lawrence Durrell, there's a myth here about the 10 days leading to Good Friday: Goat-legged creatures are sawing through the trunk of the tree that holds up the world. Every year, they've almost cut through it when they hear the shout of 'Christ has arisen!' and it makes them drop their saws to fly 'in a chattering throng into the real world—if I may call our world that.'
Le Carré took inland walks, so Alice and I go inland too. In a little town called Nymfes, we see a waterfall: a glittering curtain down black rock, splitting into quick rivers that seem to uncannily slow down the longer you stare at them. It's not hard to imagine nymphs living in that sparkling grove; it's hard to imagine them not living there. I've never wanted to drink something so badly.
Next we head to the mountain village where we're staying the night. We Google the directions and start driving, and then say 'This can't be right' 7,000 times. At first the road is a rustic track through olive groves. If we're going the wrong way, we don't mind too much; any moment now, it's sure to loop us back onto a road. Nope. Instead we climb higher and higher, to scenic overlook after scenic overlook, each one of which is, to me, a rocky hellscape.
We drive over boulders, the car juddering from side to side, the wheels spinning in loose stones. I really hope those ominous scraping sounds are just branches gouging the rental car's paint job and not jagged rocks tearing up the undercarriage. There are puddles too, deep-brown puddles of unknown fathoms in which the wheels will slip and the engine flood. I try to keep to the shallow edge while not, ideally, driving us straight off the cliff. Each turn is so tight that it appears to be a dead end. I crawl to a halt, crane my neck, sigh, and keep driving around a switchback so extreme, I feel like I'm driving back onto myself.
Should we have turned around? A thousand times, yes. It's clear that no one in the history of the world has ever driven up this path. The only explanation is that we angered the nymphs and they're leading us to our deaths and we are just completely going along with it. Alice keeps getting me to stop so that she can take photographs of how glorious everything is, while I keep checking the tires for puncture wounds. At one point, I try to Google Are nymphs dangerous, but something on the risks of dating a nymphomaniac comes up, and then my phone loses service again.
'How many kilometers left?' I ask Alice many, many times.
'Five point six,' she says. Countless white-knuckle hours later: '5.4.'
At last, we arrive in the village of Old Perithia. If only Magnus had come this way, I keep thinking, Axel never would have found him.
Corfu's wealth used to be concentrated inland, because of the oaks and olive groves, and because it was safer from pirates there. According to the information sheet I find in my room that night, if you owned land near the water, you'd give it to your daughter, not your son. Old Perithia is a beautiful ghost town. It dates to 1357, and at times, as many as 1,200 people would have lived here. Now there are just a few tavernas, this bed and breakfast, meadows of blossoming wildflowers, and the ruins. The town was abandoned because of the tourists, who sucked all of the wealth and workers from the interior toward the coasts. But now so many tourists gather on the coasts that some tourists, wanting to get away from all the other tourists, come out here. They're drawn by the promise that they'll find something truer and more authentic here. To paraphrase Durrell: the real Corfu, if I may call it that.
Checking in, we ask the owner about the path we drove in on. 'Were we … supposed to do that?'
She looks at us blankly. 'You came from where?'
'Back there, through the farm, up the mountain.'
We explain about the waterfall. She knows about the waterfall. She doesn't know about any path.
She points to the parking lot. On the other side of it lies the ordinary, non-enchanted asphalt road.
Early in his career, John le Carré tried to write a literary novel that had nothing to do with spying: The Naïve and Sentimental Lover. It was awful. He wanted to be seen as a major writer, and resented the suggestion that he should stick to what he was good at. He resented, too, the assumption that once the Cold War ended, he'd have nothing left to write about. In the introduction to the 1993 edition of The Little Drummer Girl, he complained about people who believed his 'rice-bowl was broken.' How could they not appreciate the fact that, 'of my fourteen novels to date, five have had nothing whatever to do with the Cold War'?
The level of defensiveness is a little pathetic, a little endearing. As one critic put it, he had 'already beaten the genre trap'—not by leaving genre behind, 'but by finding unexpected room within, as in A Perfect Spy.' When Magnus goes to Greece, he isn't just trying to get away from the Czechs and the English while enjoying a nice vacation with his family; he's also trying to write a literary novel, one that will contain and transcend his past and reconcile the fragments of his many selves. Magnus fails to write that great work, the lines deteriorating into 'ponderous aphorisms about betrayal': 'betrayal as love,' 'betrayal as escape,' 'betrayal as travel.' But le Carré succeeded. No one reading A Perfect Spy for the first time today is going to wonder if it's a literary novel. What else could it possibly be?
The thing I love most about the book is how it uses time to turn self-pity into something purer. A writer, Magnus thinks, is like a king, looking 'down with love upon his subject, even when the subject is himself.' Later he repeats the idea: If only he could write, he'd be able to 'look with favour on this child that was myself.' Maybe we should all be talking about our childhoods in the third person.
Le Carré's mother walked out when he and his older brother were sleeping upstairs. They were 5 and 7. 'One just couldn't live like it,' she later said, as if that were an excuse. When he met her again as an adult, she informed him that Ronnie had infected her with syphilis when she was pregnant, and that he had been born with pus dripping out of his eyes. Ronnie abused him—hurt him in every way you could hurt a child—but Ronnie was the only parent he had.
I'm sitting in Spianada Square when I see the old woman again. I've been watching children play soccer, and thinking about how always, everywhere in the world, the littlest boy is grabbing the ball with his hands to steady it before he kicks. She's wearing the same pink coat and clutching her bag, heading in the direction of the Old Fortress.
'Nothing goes away in life,' Magnus says in Athens, between one island and another. He's been gone all night and most of the day, and Mary demands to know why. He's crying; he kisses her hand and she feels the tears. He makes up a story about having to talk down an old Czech agent who was threatening to expose him. It's a lie. It's one version of the truth.
Travel Notes
Swimming off Mon Repos
Maybe you've been to paradise before and can yawn at crystal-clear waters, but I've swum only off America's East Coast, where the ocean is mostly the color of strong tea, which is a nice way of saying the color of dirt. Normally I'd be appalled if my leg touched slimy fish, but when you can see them, it's totally different. I like the delicate fish, quick and bright as sunbeams. Floating in the water, you feel outside of time, as if this could be any century. Hera's worshippers might be carting their stones over the hilltop, or British soldiers could be galloping by—a 'flash of red hunting coats through the olive-groves,' as Lawrence Durrell describes their trace on the landscape. But I can't stay in the water long. My arms are ice, and my chest is hot. 'It's your heart,' Alice says. A more organized traveler would have brought a towel, but lying dripping on the sun-warmed rock is better.
Analipsi 7, Kerkyra 491 00, Greece
Lunch at Pergola
This restaurant is in Corfu's Jewish quarter. The area was heavily bombed by the Nazis, and you can still see the gaps where buildings were destroyed. It makes you think about how full of history an empty space can be. Some ruins still stand, flowers growing through the blasted window frames. At the restaurant, we sit outside and order bread and salad and giant beans (that's what they're called: giant beans). A patchwork array of stray cats sit on their haunches, watching every bite we eat.
Ag. Sofias 15, Kerkyra 491 00, Greece
Kissing Saint Spyridon's casket
The casket is small, though it holds another, smaller casket inside it. The inner one has a removable bottom for slipper access, because each morning, worshippers come to kiss the saint's feet. About once a year, the slippers are replaced with new ones. The idea is that he wears them out by walking around at night performing miracles—or maybe it's all the kissing. When I'm there, we can't get at the saint's feet, so the women around me press their lips to the casket instead. There's a faint odor, and when it's my turn to bend down, I realize, to my shame, that instead of kissing the casket, I'm sniffing it. But the smell isn't coming from the saint. It's coming from us: the crowding people, the smell not of death but of life. Outside the crypt, a priest is blessing a baby in a blue onesie. While the pious wait in line for the saint, another baby waits in line for the priest.
Agiou Spiridonos 32, Kerkyra 491 00, Greece
Treats
If you go to Corfu, I recommend eating lots of things—salty and sweet things, but especially sweet things—enfolded in pastry. Here's a fun word: galaktoboureko. It's custard under phyllo dough, with sweet syrup poured on top, and we have the best version at Periklis Alexis. The back of the bakery is decorated, inexplicably, with framed photos of fighter jets from sometime in the past century, deadly silver in blue skies. I have a feeling that le Carré would have appreciated that—some menace to cut the sweetness.
Agiou Vasileiou 12, Kerkyra 491 00, Greece
The Merchant's House in Old Perithia
Here you can sleep in a cozy suite knowing that you're snuggled in a valley of spring wildflowers and ghosts. A printout in my room says that after Old Perithia was deserted, 'nature decided to reclaim the land, and in doing so she enveloped the village.' I like this part: The creeping roots of orchids, asparagus, oregano, and wild mint 'either protected many old buildings and churches, or sped up their ruination.' The village is abandoned except for the inn and a handful of taverns for day-trippers. We're there on the very first day of the season, so I think we get special treatment, but the food is delicious and the owner gives us big slices of walnut cake for free. We linger until he has to ask us to leave, because his wife is late for physical therapy, and the appointment is probably a long way from Old Perithia.
Old Perithia, Kerkyra 49081, Greece
Kanoni Beach
In Prospero's Cell, Lawrence Durrell writes about 'perhaps the loveliest beach in the world. Its name is Myrtiotissa.' Of course we go there. Nudist Only is spelled out in white pebbles at the top of the path. At the bottom is a tangled heap of discarded beach umbrellas, the metal rusting, the sunshades in tatters. Accustomed by then to the baseline beauty available anywhere you look, we decide the view is just okay. 'I've seen better beaches in England,' Alice says. But after a few days of searching, we find what is actually the loveliest beach in the world, or at least the loveliest beach on one April day in Corfu. It's in the northeast, below a green spit of land lifted high over the sea. In fact, there's a perfect beach on every side of the outcrop, but my favorite is this one, Kanoni. It was too cold to swim, or I'd still be there, diving off the rocks. Someday I want to go back and swim around the outcrop, stopping off at each side. Maybe I loved it so much because even while I was there, I was dreaming of returning.
Plous Books & Coffee
Corfu has plenty of tourist traps, long lanes lined with generic shops selling honey, body lotion made from donkey milk and olive oil, evil-deflecting blue-glass eyes, and—for some reason—tote bags with Frida Kahlo's face on them, as if they ordered all of their products from the same conglomerate's catalog. But this bookstore is quirky and sweet, with shabby damask chairs in a dimly lit back room where you can sit and drink coffee and read. I get a copy of The Dead, by James Joyce, in Greek. Notably: I can't find any books by John le Carré.
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Signs Someone Is American, According To Europeans
Signs Someone Is American, According To Europeans

Buzz Feed

time12 minutes ago

  • Buzz Feed

Signs Someone Is American, According To Europeans

Want to know how to spot an American abroad? Ask a European. 'As someone who works closely with American clients through destination weddings and food tours, I've picked up on quite a few telltale signs,' Portuguese tour guide and food critic Carol Batista told HuffPost. From coffee orders to outfit choices to general vibes, many different kinds of signals can indicate someone is from the U.S. While some are endearing, others might raise more than a few eyebrows. 'I try to avoid generalizations ― a Brooklyn creative won't travel the same way as someone from Texas or the Midwest,' said Stéphanie Pons, the founder of Lisbon Insiders. 'But there is a shared sense of optimism, confidence, and curiosity.' Below, find 23 signs that someone is American, according to Batista, Pons, and other Europeans: Comfort-First Fashion 'You'll often see Americans in athleisure, sneakers, baseball caps, or hoodies, even when traveling, which is often a contrast to more polished local fashion in such European destinations like Italy, for example.' ― Jane Iskra, Iceland-based elopement photographer at ISKRA Photography 'That unwavering confidence of walking into a centuries-old basilica dressed like you just left a reformer Pilates class. Think: athletic leggings, oversized hoodie, and maybe ― just maybe ― sandals with socks. Practical? Extremely. Contextual? Not quite.' ― Luli Monteleone, Lisbon-based digital marketing specialist Big Spending Habits 'At supermarkets or stores abroad, Americans often buy in bulk or stock up more than locals, who tend to shop daily.' ― Iskra 'Americans love to spend ― and often do so more generously than other nationalities. But they also like to feel they're getting great value in return. I would say that the mix of enthusiasm and practicality is very American. Coming from a country with much higher wages, they sometimes don't realize how large the gap is. For example, in Portugal, the average monthly salary is about 1,100 € (~$1,250), so what feels affordable to them can seem extravagant to locals.' ― Batista On The Hunt For Iced Coffee 'The iced coffee hunt. Even in the middle of winter ― and ideally in a 500ml cup. There's a kind of dedication there that I honestly admire.' ― Monteleone 'I would say if they have a drink with lots of ice (either water or iced coffee).' ― Steffi Crivellaro, U.K.-based blogger at Steffi Daydreamer Loud Confidence 'One of the biggest indications is usually that you can hear them before you see them. It's not necessarily that they're loud, but they command attention wherever they are, which also leans into how confidence is built in America. I have often found that Americans are very confident. Even if it does not come naturally to each individual, they seem to have been conditioned or taught to be confident, which means they tend to take up space wherever they are.' ― Ronke Lawal, PR and communications consultant in London 'Americans tend to find everything 'amazing,' and they're not shy about saying so ― out loud and often. They speak with a volume that's just slightly above local norms, even when whispering. And in a world where many cultures lean toward discretion, that kind of openness stands out.' ― Pons Stanley Cups 'Reusable Stanley-style coffee mugs are a giveaway ― they seem to go everywhere with them, even when traveling!' ― Iskra 'Carrying a Stanley or huge water bottle.' ― Crivellaro Large Engagement Rings 'The big, sparkly engagement ring tradition is very American. In some countries, engagement rings aren't as flashy or aren't even a thing sometimes.' ― Iskra Jumping Straight Into English 'It's not the accent ― it's the cheerful assumption that English will always do the job. Most locals do speak it, but trying a simple 'ciao' or 'bonjour' tends to unlock a different kind of experience. It's a small gesture, but it changes everything.' ― Monteleone Seeking Air Conditioning 'In the summer, Italians love to stay outdoors: The squares fill up, and the outdoor tables are always the most desired. Americans, on the other hand, almost always choose the indoor spaces with air conditioning. For them, climate comfort is an absolute priority.' ― Diana De Lorenzi, Rome-based lifestyle blogger 'Americans are notoriously hot all the time and expect lots of air conditioning and ice when they travel, two things that aren't so easy to come by in Italy!' ― Livia Hengel, founder of The Italy Edit Warmth and Friendliness 'I've traveled extensively in the US, and if there's one thing I've consistently noticed, it's their amazing ability to start a conversation: openly, spontaneously, as if they already knew the person in front of them. It can be quite disconcerting for us Europeans, but it's a deeply rooted part of their culture. In France in particular, this kind of attitude is sometimes seen as insincere or self-serving. But I've always defended it, I actually find it refreshing to have even a short exchange with someone who is smiling, warm, and quick to compliment your outfit or haircut. Personally, I love good energy, and I take the good where I find it.' ― Kenza Sadoun el Glaoui, Parisian digital creator 'In Ireland, people are known for their friendliness, but we don't have a patch of the Americans. They say hello to everyone, they chat to locals, they ask questions, and it's lovely to see. There's a sort of genuine, open curiosity about an American abroad that I, personally, find very endearing.' ― Tara Povey, blogger at Where Is Tara? Genuine Enthusiasm 'Americans are often very expressive ― big smiles, open curiosity, confident energy. And when they feel they've been well taken care of, they're incredibly grateful. I've had food tour guests react like it was Christmas morning just because of a market tasting or a pastry they'd never tried before, and a bride bringing me a full suitcase with gym clothes as a souvenir from LA — and it's truly heartwarming.' ― Batista 'My partner Luca Veralli is a master gelato maker, and his gelato has been awarded by Gambero Rosso. Every time an American tourist tastes it, they always ― without fail ― say the same phrase: 'Oh my God!' For us, it's a joy. They say it with genuine enthusiasm that truly makes us happy. But it's funny how this exclamation is almost always identical, as if it were a ritual.' ― De Lorenzi, Generous Tipping 'One immediate giveaway is that American travelers are generous tippers ― even though the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world where a 20%-plus tip is expected as the norm. On the other hand, with average salaries nearly double those in Italy, tipping makes sense and is a great way to show appreciation for good service, especially in places where it's not expected.' ― Hengel 'America has a very generous tipping culture, unlike any other country I've ever visited. When Americans travel outside the U.S., leaving large tips is a sure sign of where they are from. In Ireland and most of Europe, we only leave tips if the service or the food has been particularly good, and servers definitely do not expect or rely upon tips.' ― Povey Paying By Credit Card 'Americans always pay by card, even for very small amounts like a 1 euro espresso. This is another cultural difference we see every day.' ― De Lorenzi Wide Smiles and Perfect Teeth 'Americans are known for having great dental care and wide, confident smiles. Smiles and perfect teeth are often one of the first giveaways.' ― Iskra Full Of Compliments 'I've always found Americans to be sweet and genuine! I can especially tell when a woman is American because she'll go out of her way to give me a compliment, and it's usually thoughtful and specific. It happens multiple times a day whenever I'm traveling in the States, and I've never experienced that kind of spontaneous kindness anywhere else in the world.' ― Kelsey Heinrichs, blogger at Kelsey in London Wanting To Customize Everything 'There's a kind of customization instinct ― asking for dressing on the side, almond milk in the cappuccino, or a dinner reservation at 6 p.m. (which still feels like mid-afternoon in Portugal). I see it as a reflection of their strong sense of personal agency, the belief that services can and should adapt to you, not the other way around.' ― Pons, Saying "Like" All The Time Paramount / Via 'The overuse of the word 'like' — especially with people from LA. Sometimes you'll hear 'like' eight times in a single sentence! It's a casual, filler-filled way of speaking, and of course, there's the unmistakable clarity of American English.' ― Batista 'Saying things like 'awesome,' 'you guys,' or the ever-present filler word 'like' always catches my ear with a 99% probability I hear it from an American.' ― Iskra Limited Geographic Knowledge 'A general lack of geographical knowledge is a sure sign. Americans tend to refer to any country in Europe as 'Europe,' as if we are all the same. There is a huge difference between Norway and France; they're completely incomparable. Referring to us all under one sweeping term of 'Europe' or 'Europeans' is sort of ridiculous. I once met an American man who asked me where I was from. When I told him I was from Ireland, he said that he had just been visiting my neighbors. I assumed that he must mean the United Kingdom (which I could understand). However, he then declared that he had visited Italy. Needless to say, neither Italy nor Ireland would ever refer to the other as a neighbor. It would take 27 hours to drive from Dublin to Rome. That's the equivalent of Miami to Minneapolis. Florida and Minnesota are not neighbors.' ― Povey Cappuccino With Dinner Peeradon Warithkorasuth / Getty Images 'If someone asks for a cappuccino with pasta or pizza and also at dinner, you can be sure: They are an American tourist. It's a cultural habit that always makes us smile because for us Italians, cappuccino is a morning ritual, part of breakfast, but it's nice to see how every culture experiences food in its own way.' ― De Lorenzi, Different Portion Size Expectations 'I notice this a lot during food tours ― Americans are frequently surprised by how small European portions can be (while we are shocked when we see their portions). I've heard more than once 'Wait, this is for one person?' and it's always funny.' ― Batista Fast-Moving Itineraries ''I've been to Europe' often means a whirlwind through Paris, London, and Rome in under two weeks. Honestly, impressive cardio — but also, you just missed the good bakery next door. And truthfully? Europe's charm often lives in the quieter, slower corners.' ― Monteleone 'Rushing to include their ancestry in an opening conversation. Don't get me wrong, I love that Americans are so enthusiastic about their heritage, and it certainly does wonders for Ireland's tourism industry. However, they are the only country that does it. Never have I met anyone from outside the US who has launched into their grandparents' origin story when we have just been introduced. While charming, it's definitely a telltale sign that someone is from the US.' ― Povey Steves' Love Of Rick Steves Guidebooks 'In Reykjavík, I immediately pick out Americans out of the bunch because they explore the country using Rick Steves Iceland as their compass. Not Lonely Planet. Or ,odors. Or even a local source. Good 'ol American Rick Steves ― who I met in person when I was his local guide in Reykjavík and is as 'Merican as they come. I'm sure other nations use guidebooks too, but Americans carry Rick with pride. Not tucked away in their backpack, ashamed of getting caught with something as gauche as a guidebook, but loud and proud. Out in the open.' ― Auður Ösp Ólafsdóttir, Iceland-based marketing professional walked That Intangible American Vibe 'As someone who works across lifestyle and hospitality in Europe, I often find myself noticing subtle (and not-so-subtle) clues that someone is American. The most obvious is the accent, but beyond that, there's a specific energy that's easy to spot.' ― Pons 'I somehow pick Americans out of a crowd, but I can't put my finger on how. It's something about how they're built and how they're dressed ― I really can't articulate it. They're just so essentially American that their Americanness shines, even in a culture where you'd think it would be harder to pick them out. Once upon a time, I think Americans just walked around with a certain air of confidence about them. They were proudly American, and you could tell in the way they walked. Nowadays, many conversations with Americans start with apologies. Their once-proud stance has been replaced with slightly hunched shoulders. Like they're aware that tolerance for American politics is wavering around the world and they don't want to take up too much space. But it's still something about how Americans walk in the world that makes them recognizable.' ― HuffPost.

Greece and Turkey battle wildfires and extreme heat; Turkey sees 122 F
Greece and Turkey battle wildfires and extreme heat; Turkey sees 122 F

UPI

time2 hours ago

  • UPI

Greece and Turkey battle wildfires and extreme heat; Turkey sees 122 F

1 of 2 | Firefighters and volunteers battle a wildfire in the area of Kryoneri, in the suburbs of Athens, Greece, on Saturday. Photo by Yannis Kolesidis/EPA July 27 (UPI) -- Extreme heat, high winds and fires have plagued parts of Greece and Turkey amid the high tourist season as temperatures in Greece have risen to 111.2 degrees and in Turkey to 122.9 degrees. In the Karabuk province of Turkey, firefighters have battled fires for four days. In Eskisehir, Turkey, 10 people died on Wednesday, BBC reported. Ibrahim Yumakli, Turkey's forestry minister, said on Sunday that areas affected by fires were "going through risky times" and that it would be several days before they were fully contained. Some local authorities have restricted water consumption, including for the resort of Cesme on Turkey's west coast. Greece is battling five major wildfires with extreme temperatures likely to continue. There are 11 regions of the country at "very high risk of fire." Greece has formally asked for assistance from the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for six firefighting aircraft. Two major fires are on the islands of Kythira and Evia. Kythira, which is popular with tourists, is just off the tip of the Peloponnese peninsula, and Evia is a large island northeast of Athens. Firefighters were still battling to control major blazes on Kythira and Messinia, on the Peloponnese peninsula, Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis, Greece's fire service spokesperson, said. A fire in Kryoneri, a suburb northeast of Athens, has been contained. On Kythira, a blaze broke out Saturday morning in the village of Pitsinades. According to initial estimates, about 20% of the island has been affected by the fire. New evacuation alerts were issued Sunday, when the government ordered residents of several villages to leave. The fire service would not have been able to cope if "there had been another two or three fires like the one near Athens," Vathrakoyiannis told the New York Times. "The state mechanism has been called to engage in a titanic battle, simultaneously responding to dozens of wildfires across the country," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement. "To those who saw their properties destroyed by the fury of fire, know that the state will stand by your side." Climate crisis and civil protection minister Giannis Kefalogiannis previously said they "have injured firefighters, human lives were put at risk, properties have been burned, and forest areas have been destroyed." Public broadcaster ERT reported on Kythira that "Tte first images are resonant of a biblical disaster as huge areas have been reduced to cinders and ash," The Guardian reported. The island's deputy mayor, Giorgos Komninos, was cited as saying: "Everything, from houses, beehives [to] olive trees has been burnt." Fires in Greece are becoming more frequent in the hot summers. Earlier this month, a fire forced 1,500 people to evacuate from homes and hotels on Crete, a popular tourist island. Scientists have designated the Mediterranean, including much of Greece, a "wildfire hotspot" as blazes become more frequent and destructive during hot, parched summers. Governments of the affected countries say the climate crisis is the cause.

I'm a travel expert who has visited 70 countries—these 7 phrases make you sound like ‘an obnoxious American'
I'm a travel expert who has visited 70 countries—these 7 phrases make you sound like ‘an obnoxious American'

CNBC

time8 hours ago

  • CNBC

I'm a travel expert who has visited 70 countries—these 7 phrases make you sound like ‘an obnoxious American'

I know what it's like to have inconsiderate houseguests — the kind where you can't wait for them to leave. I don't ever want to be that person when I'm in another country. I've been traveling almost as long as I've been alive. I've made it to all seven continents, 70 countries, and 47 U.S. states. Along the way, I've learned how much what we say and how we say it matters, especially when navigating different cultures. For example, words like "conquer," "explore," and "discover" have colonial undertones that may not be welcome in countries still recovering from the impacts of colonization. Calling a place "unspoiled" can erase its indigenous history. The last thing I want when I'm abroad is to be labeled an obnoxious American. As a professional traveler, I've learned through experience the best way to avoid that is by not saying things that can come off as rude, offensive, or ignorant. Here are 7 phrases I'd never say that Americans traveling abroad often use: I can't tell you the number of times I've seen an American whip out their dollar bills at a foreign market only to be met by a shopkeeper's blank stare. The U.S. dollar isn't the only currency in the world. Acting like it is — or demanding locals tell you how much something costs in dollars or "real money" — can make you look clueless and self-centered. Look up a country's currency before you visit, and use a currency conversion app to keep track of your spending. You may as well walk around wearing a sweatshirt that says "entitled and privileged." There are many reasons other countries may be more affordable than where you're from, and they often involve violence, exploitation, and systems designed to perpetuate global inequality. Canada has provinces. Singapore and Monaco are city-states that aren't divided into smaller sections. Asking what state a person is from outside of the U.S. is a quick way to show you haven't researched your destination or can't respect that things are different elsewhere. When you go to a foreign country seeking out corporate chains, you're missing out on an opportunity to try something new and to support local businesses. I could have gotten Starbucks on a trip to Athens a few years ago, but then I wouldn't have had a chance to taste incredible Greek coffee and visit several cute cafes I hope to get back to one day. On another trip to Mexico City, I stop at Starbucks — the closest coffee shop to my hotel and a place where I knew for sure I could get a cold brew on a hot day. I got so much side eye from my friends and so many questions about why I didn't opt for better coffee while supporting the local economy. Next time, I'll remember my own advice. English is the most commonly spoken language in the world, with an estimated 1.5 billion speakers around the globe. It's an official or widely spoken language in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Malta, Singapore, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and several Caribbean islands and African countries. It should never come as a surprise to encounter someone who has impeccable English in a predominantly English-speaking country. Yet, I've lost track of the number of times people have said that to me in the U.S. and shudder to hear it when I'm traveling. Calling a country — especially one you're visiting — a "third-world" country can come off as judgmental. Instead, I use "developing country," a phrase that doesn't carry the same connotations. It just doesn't feel right to judge a place whose people I hope will welcome me. I was once invited to a tasting menu dinner at a Michelin-star restaurant not far from Paris. After the second or third course, an American at our table interrupted the meal to request a green salad like he normally eats at home. I've never seen such a mortified waiter, and I don't think the chef ever complied with the request. One of the best things about travel is that it exposes you to new ways of thinking and doing things. Focusing on how it's done at home can blunt the transformative impact. Visiting countries all over the world has opened my eyes to so many different ways of living — and that's exactly the life-changing perspective that makes me so excited to book my next trip.

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