Happy & Healthy

VACATION LOVE ON SAMOS

I was 15 years old, but I told the boys that I had just turned 17. This made me more appealing to the slightly older guys on the island. And it had to be that way, because at 15 I was already almost as tall as I am now (1.83m) and the boys my own age were really still kids and therefore super small. I was on vacation with my best friend L. We listened to songs by the band Blue all week and we had brought our entire wardrobe. Eight bikinis, four different types of hip belts, eight scarves for our hair, and dozens of large wooden bracelets. We wore a lot of the same clothes, so whoever said first in the morning what they were going to wear that evening had the right to wear that item.

Every evening we had 15 euros to spend, we hadn't saved more. We could choose between either a frozen strawberry daiquiri at that one beach bar or a ticket for the disco. Most of the time we tried to hustle one of the two and we succeeded. No problem to flirt with a Greek Stavros, Spiros, Lucius, or Hercules if you are blonde and sun-kissed. But then there was Lucius who made me feel a bit fluttery. He could kiss medium (but I probably could too) and there was a total language barrier, but his eyes and smile... And he felt the same. I had already decided to maybe live there and give up everything in the Netherlands. So naïve, but I really felt it.

But there was also a Stavros, a Spiros, and a Hercules. And the island of Samos was small, so I had to play it smart and not start kissing Spiros if Lucius was also there. And also not with Hercules if Stavros just walked up to the terrace with his surfboard under his arm. With Lucius, I didn't care. Because I was vacation-in-love with him and I would definitely come back for him and give up everything I had in the Netherlands. At least, that's what I thought. When I saw that Stavros, Spiros, Hercules, and Lucius suddenly stood together at a party and clinked glasses because everyone had won the bet...