The Rise of the “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”, Loutraki, Greece! (Part 4)

The Rise of the “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”, Loutraki, Greece!

(Part 4)

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_{(Sunset over Hera’s Temple, photo taken from Loutraki, Greece, the upcoming and rising “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”. Can you spot the sun spot on there too? )}

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The visit to the upcoming and rising “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”, Loutraki, was about to take a turn and a half, shift over to fifth gear for a race to the finish line of my 5 days light-speed trip out in Greece!

Following an evening on a terrace, meters away from the Mediterranean Sea and an unforgettable sunset, a tidal wave of Russian-speaking dancers and singers from all over the old Eastern Block, I went back for shower #3, crash for another solid yet too short night sleep. Still recovering from jet lag, I woke up to a day unknowingly promising to be the maddest one I have had out there…

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Temperatures were already soaring into the thirties by the time @onceuponatime, @kencode and I were picked up by our trustworthy local guide and avid Steemian crypto-trader @liondani. His soft and warm welcome was far from foreshadowing the events of the day, yet listening to the description of the bureaucratic madness we were about to encounter coming out of his mouth, my feeling relied on his every word and psyched myself accordingly.

_{(The sun has risen on Corinth and its mountain. On top, a miraculous upwelling sprung from which a spring flows since and served the population which had taken refuge inside the walls of a fortified castle centuries ago. Named “Acrocorinth” during Antiquity, the castle in ruins hardly visible on this picture can still be visited. Photo taken from the balcony of my third floor room, in Loutraki, Greece, the upcoming “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”. )}

As we all pack ourselves into the car, I am strongly reminded of the priority of the intention and start to envision the quest I am here dedicated to, the rise of Loutraki as the “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”. Located just over 80 km west of Athens, the location is ripe for the development of a crypto-currency revolution. Visited by thousands of people from all over the world, including a large quantity of Athenians, Loutraki is a highly welcoming seaside resort. Judging by photos from the area before the economic downfall of Greece a while ago, following their inclusion among the Euro-Zone, the 2008 economic crisis brought this almighty country of Antiquity to its knees, but not its population. They are a proud people, resourceful and community oriented where robust values surrounding family, community, land and church are still lively today.

Seeing the city’s many buildings in various state of deterioration indicates on one level that a relatively small amount of capital would be needed to recapture the glamorous and magnetic allures from the recent past. The many different edifices still seem to hold their sturdy infrastructure and seem only as weary as someone who had just returned from a long and arduous hike. All there is needed is a decent influx of financial support and willfulness in moving forth with the vision and set up the cryptographic component to absorbs the impact of crypto-tourism. From what I gathered after hearing and speaking with local business owners, the economic movers and shakers in town all seem to be giving their thumbs up in relation to this revolutionary idea.

Driving passed the palm trees and locally landscaped waterfall, we headed for what I deemed to be the “House of Madness”! Taken after the famous *Asterix *and *Obelix cartoon where the heroes go to this Roman building looking for Pass A38, one of the 12 works they have to perform and succeed in order for them to be able to keep going on their journey, the heroes manage to trick the highly convoluted administration by asking for some help from the gate-keeper of the famous and yet illusive Pass A38…

Arriving around 11 a.m., we almost made bet as to when we’d be out of this apathetic governmental maze. In this drab and overtly serious environment where computers are almost as hard to spot as a smile, we managed to keep our cool by addressing the matter with humour, dance and a bit of irony and a touch of sarcasm which, in this case, somehow seem to help on the long run!?. A very rare case of productive sarcasm.

On the other hand, every office was inundated with arrays of heavy stacks of files, binders and books often reaching the ceiling! I’m sure if you were to lay on the floor, looking up to the ceiling, you’d quickly believe yourself to be in New York city downtown trying to look for the sky. There seems to be an organized chaos focused on the idea that everyone had to go through a procession of bureaucrats: The first one almost always saying no, having the longest waiting line, while the latter one was more often saying yes having a shorter line of people coming and going seemingly in an actual process of resolution coming to an end after long and exasperating procedures. A situation that should have taken about 15 minutes to deal with still had us waiting for a decent ending an hour and a half later… Meanwhile, we found our way across the street where a local blue-collar café was playing traditional Greek music in an atmosphere of cigarette smoke tumultuous with mutually loud exchanges among two different and seemingly very well acquainted groups.

After a quick snack of dips, bread and kebabs, rounded off with a strong coffee, we slowly made our way back to the lady gate-keeper who was dealing with the diplomatic @liondani. In dire situations such as these, it is always good to have a “long arm” as we say in French, solid connections that run deep, far and wide into the communities. A quick phone call to @vpbokos relayed another one to the ministry and things got moving rather promptly. Out of the blue, a smile poked out of the infamous administrator who came out of her glass-protected office where one has to bend down to the almighty bureaucratic powers that’d be. Proper papers were exchanged. Jokingly, @onceuponatime and I surmised that she had passed along her phone number to whom had been some sort of a magistral opponent for the passed three hours. To our surprise, she had!

Still laughing about this one, we mustered our courage to go to Athens meet with @vpbokos and notaries. The temperatures were now passing 36 degrees and the traffic was quickly building up. Rush hour there had more to do with the one found on Montreal’s Metropolitan Highway than the one on Haida Gwaii, more than I would have ever hoped for: Clocking speeds over 170 km/h zigzagging and weaving the sedan through up to three lane traffic, not even clipping a single mirror as we traversed in diagonals we time travelled to Athens. Somehow trading hats from guide to driver, @liondani had now deservedly and respectfully been entitled “Andretti”, after Mario Andretti considered by many as one of the top 10 greatest race car drivers of all time.

As my camera had been left in the trunk, for once, giving us a bit of space to travel in, I only wished I had it then. Sitting dead centre in the backseat, I had a first-hand account of what was really happening. As in these classic European narrow street car chase, it felt as if the playback had been set on 120%, hard to believe really. At this point, I perfectly knew I was in the hands of God and there was nothing I could do to change the matter. I was ready as, in such situations, one fully internalize the illusory nature of control.

Still alive and somehow on time for the dealing that still had to go through today, @vpbokos welcomed us with fresh glasses of water topped up with a lemon wedge in a humble yet cosy high-class office, warm to my sentiment and welcoming to the unacquainted. The high-speed spaces we had just travelled through followed by a grounding almost motionless scene painted a surrealist canvas in my consciousness. This time though, it wasn’t the lack of luster of the government office, but the erudition in knowledge and arts, architecture and relationships that shun through. The voices were calm, sharp and to the point. The deep friendships, clear vision and understanding of the matters at hand made this business a fairly short one. It had to as we still had to go visit with notaries a few blocks aways…

We made good time in the taxi ride over to the other office. I might have caught up to a quick 10 second glimpse of the distinctive Acropolis as the cab drove up a narrow crowded street perfectly aligned with what might be the most prominent edifice in Athens, if not Greece. Echoing @liondani’s spectacular and daring skills, the taxi drivers magic brought us there in minutes. Our posse walked into a group of offices where an elegant, gentle, and sophisticated woman awaited our arrival. Her soft demeanour, bright-eyed presence only offered too small an opportunity to dialogue and exchange on what would have promised to be a very deep well of connections between her and I.

One of two dealings had started and a second one had to be dealt with in, yet, another office. While the rest of our group relocated to the other room, she kindly took me by the soul and brought me into a chamber where an associate, maybe her husband but definitely someone who owned her respect, was occupying himself at his paper-cladded office. The room was about 30 feet wide by 40 feet deep with a fairly high ceiling and was seemingly doubling as a museum gallery. Paintings and sculptures adorned the walls and the wide floor. The space commanded my deferential regard, almost reverence.

The owners of these spaces were obviously respectful and kept in high regards Greek artists, especially painters, sculptors, architects and writers. Every new angle travelled would offer you a stirring glimpse into another masterpiece.

After a long and fastidious conclave with another lawyer from northern Europe, we wrapped up on a grand finale of signatures, deep and sincere looks of complicity, solid hand-shakes, a soothed and settling mood alleviating the day’s frenzied emotions, schedule and tasks. Ravenous, we engulfed a quick meal before heading back to Loutraki. The hay hit me that night… Mission accomplished!

The Last Day

As early as 7 a.m., I was surprisingly awake and thought to myself it was now or never time for me to go experience the healing waters of the Mediterranean.

I jumped in a pair of shorts, quickly made my way down the three stories, crossed the street, dropped my camera, hat and t-shirt on the beach, and proceeded to immerse myself in the “cooler” morning waters. Somehow refreshing, my pace didn’t even slowed down and found myself floating in an unusual manner in a matter of seconds.

By now used to the levels of salinity found in the Pacific Ocean along the Northwest Pacific, as well as the different levels of salinity of the Saint Lawrence River, I was not expecting the experience I was having now: Here, the salt levels are well above anywhere I had swam and found my body floating above the gravity points around which my body revolves in the air instead of under the water level. That, first equated with me feeling like my body wanted to dive forward as if my hips were trying to push me down in the depths while somehow floating higher than my head over the surface! As if this wasn’t enough, when came the time to crawl forward by alternating the classical overarm movement with coordinated kicks from my legs, my body automatically started flopping over the rotating axis from one side to the other as soon as my correlating arm started its movement forward. Therefore, I didn’t even need to use muscles to actually tilt the body to make it twist form one side to the other, gravity did it for me! I was floating above the barbecuing axis of my body!

Turning on my back to experience the new acquainted strangeness, I tried to find conjectures where someone could drown in such condition. It was hard to imagine. A childlike giggle throbbed through and bliss diffused itself right through my being. I underwent the same weightlessness I experienced as a child as I would empty my lungs from most of the air in them, relaxing at the bottom of a pool’s 4 feet deep, looking at the sky. Two main differences reigned though: There was no water between the sky and I and the warmth of the early sun seemed to be at the exact same temperature as my body making me feel as if I was floating in the sky, an experience usually only encountered during meditation or dream states. While floating like a pasha -as my mother would tell me when I was a kid- with my arms behind my head, it was glorious a swim and exhilarating, transforming even.

Following a good shower and a long breakfast pondering the experiences I have had the opportunity to encounter and live through over in these long past five days, I tried to assimilate some of it while meditating on the matters and moments. The trade winds had just picked up that morning, and like a sailboat getting ready for another adventure, the end of this journey in Hellenic lands was coming to a close and new horizons where calling me.

I decided to go out and venture on the streets to go find myself a mandatory traditional short sleeved white cotton shirt or two. I found what was needed before returning to the hotel where I met with @onceuponatime who thought it to be a timely opportunity for both of us to go enjoy the number one attraction of the area, a complex of pools build atop natural hot springs locally highly recognized for their healing properties.

After an official questionnaire and a hardly formal visit with a doctor I was given the authorization to go soak in the pools. Located both inside the building as well as outside, they were surrounded by jets of all kinds coming from under you, beside you and even over your body. Some tickled, some massaged but they provided indubitable benefit to every single soul present. Many shared smiles and the glazed looks in the eyes of the ones having had the prescribed 38 minutes visit foretold much as to the results of such a visit.

Loosened up, @onceuponatime and I leisurely walked the few hundred meters back to the hotel. Just outside the staircase, a small ice-cream shop had its doors open and, after heating ourselves up we thought a bit of extra cooling might not hurt. I was in for what I would deem a hedonistic ice-cream experience bordering on the sensual… Though found at the base of the building where I lived for almost a week, I had totally missed on an adventure of the senses I would have otherwise reiterated a few times over, had I known about it earlier. It was so good I enjoyed three in a row! Sharing good talks with @onceuponatime for a while gave us a bit of time to recap on some of the weeks madness. As if called for the meeting, came out our friend @kencode who stopped by for ice-cream and a long chat about crypto-currency issues, steemit.com and life. Anyone spending any quality time with me will know that it is one of my very favourite topic of discussion. Somehow, there might be some Athenian genes from Antiquity flowing in my blood or a piece of the Philosopher Stone in my bones…

The morning after, still mildly dealing with the aftermath of the 10 hour time difference between Vancouver and Athens, our dear friend @liondani pick both of us up, @onceuponatime and I, and kindly gave us a ride back to Athens, a short and uninterrupted hour away from Loutraki. No pains, no traffic, no problem!

I still can’t find all the words that would start to give enough credit to this amazingly generous crew of Steemians over the course of these pricelessly packed days, memorable on all aspects. Gratitudes abounds their way often since those days and it is only with a very easy smile that I thank them gratefully from the very bottom of my heart for their warm welcoming hearts, kindness of soul, deep friendship, bounding thoughtful exchanges, cooperation and dedicated time. This series of articles is dedicated to you all, first and foremost @onceuponatime, @liondani a.k.a. “Archangel Andretti” and @kerkyra, as well as @kencode and @vpbokos, you more than deserve it!

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This is it!

This was the last episode of my adventures in Loutraki, Greece, the upcoming and rising “Crypto-Friendliest Place on Earth”. I hope you all found part to appreciate here and there and would love to hear from you about your favourite passages and the reasons behind it.

Your feedback have been nourishing my soul over the past months and such a quality fellowship only inspires me to write more while uplifting my soul and the spirit of my penmanship.

So, on this, I will say so long, keep your smile and take good care of the ones you love as well as the ones loving you, thrive on and namaste :)