There are people who go camping. There are others who call themselves digital nomads and live in motorhomes with air conditioning, hydromassage showers and closets with hidden lights – and then there is Giannis. He roams the countryside like a semi-modern Pausanias, the Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, with a thermos instead of a jug and a cat instead of a laptop.
If driving around Greece in a van seems boring to you, you haven’t tried doing it with a cat, and especially with a cat named Fatsa. The two of them travel on the rural road network and on dirt roads, they camp in what used to be called “wild nature” and today is known as a “two-bar mobile signal,” and live the life that Instagram wants you to have – without Instagram.
Giannis and Fatsa are not yet a cute duo on social media. They are what Americans call “the real deal.” The first one is the one who drives, cooks, repairs the van with duct tape, saliva and hope. He has forgotten what a roadworthiness inspection (KTEO) means, and his van looks like it has been declared a mobile monument of alternative life by UNESCO.
The second one supervises – from the window, from the roof, from the branch of a chestnut tree, from above. Always from above. Because Fatsas never sits low, unless it is to pee ostentatiously next to Giannis’ beach chair.
I often wonder, if Giannis has realized that Fatsas is not just a traveling companion, but the real owner of the van. His vanlife is not a fad, it’s a religion. And Fatsas is the high priest. He doesn’t speak – he doesn’t have to. His gaze says it all: “You chose the role of driver. I chose to be a god.” Fatsas, of course, doesn’t drive (yet). But he has an opinion. He lets out a slight sigh of disdain every time the van parks on a downhill dirt road. He pinpoints the only spot in the cabin that doesn’t have cat hair on it and sits there. He has accepted his peripatetic fate with the dignity of a British lord who has just realized that the butler forgot to fill up his hot-water bottle.
For the past eight years, the two have explored mountains, canyons, snow-capped peaks and some run-of-the-mill tavernas that serve wine from a tank and cutlets from an expropriated goat. And while the rest of us suffocate in apartments with fiber-optics and 14 delivery apps, Fatsas and Giannis pose next to lakes, on steep cliffs, living a life that is authentic, unpretentious and completely incompatible with modern needs. While you and I circle the block looking for a parking space or a psychotherapist, Giannis wakes up next to the river, washes his face with flowing water and drinks coffee filtered through an ecological mindset and cat hair.
If you meet them somewhere, ask Fatsa if he misses city life. He’ll give you a look that says: “City life? My dear, I have a personal driver, heating and a view. Do you?”
This article was first published, in Greek, in Kathimerini’s K magazine.