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| View from our room at The Pink Palace |
I was 23 and sick of my new found independence as a stripper named Isis. So when the opportunity came to go on a three-month backpacking Euro Trip with my Asshole-Reason-For-Seeking-New-Independence-Ex-boyfriend, it took me five minutes to pack.
I had no idea what to expect in Europe. Luckily, movies like Taken and Hostel hadn’t come out yet and I was too naïve to know about black market organ harvesting or slave trade. I was more eager than a four-year-old with cake to go on an adventure to the other side of the world, to places where I didn’t speak the language with the man-boy that I despised at the moment.
Ex-boyfriend and I had met during our Freshman year in college. We majored in History and it was our passion for Greek and Roman history that brought us to the first two countries. Italy was epic. That’s an understatement.
It was transforming in a way that resembles what it’s like to actually see a blade of grass when you test your vision in a new pair of eyeglasses. It’s like duh, the world actually existed long, long ago before I was born and, unless the world really does end in 2012, will probably continue to go on long after I die.
But my story does not take place in Italy. Somewhere between our exploration of the ruins in Rome and the ruins in Athens, came a layover on a tiny island called Corfu. I had no prior knowledge of Corfu, but we had heard that the hostel there was legendary.
The Pink Palace was the second largest hostel in the world. It boasted endless days of booze-cruising, cliff diving and private beach sunbathing, as well as endless nights of toga-partying, debauchery, internationally represented nudity, bi-curious attempts and mind-fucking cyanide-esque shots for 1 Euro each.
AWESOME!
After a treacherous hover boat sail across the Mediterranean Sea that was not unlike the Hindenberg disaster, we arrived at what seemed like a 100 ft cliff with a boat harbor at the bottom. We were met by a friendly Australian dude (I’ll just call him Koala Dave because I was too drunk during our stay to stamp into memory the minutiae. I had to look that up just now. Had no idea how to spell minutiae and I’m probably not using the word correctly.)
Koala Dave didn’t say much, but he did mention that he had been a visitor just like us a couple years ago but had decided not to leave. It was like hearing about Hotel California. Anyhow…
After the Pink Bus arrived at our very pink establishment, Koala Dave escorted a bunch of nauseous and sleepy, globetrotting young adults from all over the world to a meeting room. It was there that we were assigned our rooms, maybe one rule, and a list of activities we could sign up for. And after the three-minute introduction, we were promptly served with our first shots of pink Ouzo. It was 7:30 am.
This was a sign of yet to come.
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