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Introduction

This book is all about Skiathos Island, a beautiful Greek island in the Aegean, and how it changed my life. Before I arrived there, I had been a Grammar School kid, a computer operator (when computers were massive boxes, kept in dust free, controlled environments, and had less memory than the cheapest mobile phone), a factory floor worker, a drop out (Hippie), worked in a betting shop, smoked a ton of dope and dropped quite a bit of acid, and had hitch-hiked around a lot of Europe. I was a boy/man in search of himself – but of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I was just too busy living and learning by moving from experience to experience. In retrospect, fate brought me to Skiathos and Zorbathes, the place where I found the love of my life and taught me to love life and live it to the full. It taught me what was really important in life, nearly killed me, and continues to bring me happy surprises even in my 70’s.
The quote from Lawrence Durrell, at the beginning of this book, “Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder - the discovery of yourself.” is true in many ways, except, it seems to me that it has not been hard. Skiathos, and its residents, made it easy for me.

My life before Skiathos is worth a book in itself, but that is not what I am here to write about now.

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