It’s a cliché, but like all clichés, it’s also very true: most of us are “waiting all the time summer vacation“. Some plan for the long haul, others find some last-minute solution, some want total relaxation, some want unbridled fun, some are determined to throw everything away and indulge a little, and still others explore nature more forcefully than Bear Grylls did in Man vs. Man. . Wild’.

However, no matter which category you fall into, small parts which happen to almost all of us every year and are a small holiday ritual that unites us all.

If you didn’t rush to the boat to get a good seat – those with canapés, or even a whole table in the dining room, for the most ambitious – and the best thing you could do was find a place on the deck where the sun illuminated only one of your profiles.

Unless you were “spying” on those strangers around you on the boat. We don’t mean it literally, but when you see that family sitting in front of you, walking along the alleys of the island, that couple that was next to you drinking next to you again at the bar at night, and that lonely traveler with a huge backpack, so that everyone morning drinking Greek coffee at the same table in the central cafe of the island, reading your book and saying: “He was in the same boat as us”, you know, the vacation has begun.

Unless there is a surprise hidden in the room you have booked. We don’t mean nice. You know, it says sea view, and through binoculars there is a hint of water on the horizon, in the bathroom there is a shower the size of a hobbit, humidity permeates every bone (and your nose), you listen in Dolby Surround to everything that happens in neighboring rooms, mosquitoes and others insects hang around your bed and are generally tortured.

If, again, you are campers, even if you have written the kilometers along with your tent, something will go wrong again this year. You pitch your tent at the wrong angle and the sun will be in your face from 6am, that stake you weren’t sure if you pitched it right will disappear in the middle of the night with the first strong breeze, your back will be bruised because that you forgot your mattress and had to sleep on rocks.

Unless the inside of your suitcase was again disproportionate. For another year, you forgot your hairbrush or shampoo (you will be in vain trying to find something close to them in the local minimarket) and brought a bunch of extra clothes that will return to Athens intact, because you walked all day in a swimsuit and shorts.

If you have never lost your way on the island, even if all the GPS in the car were turned on. And how not to get lost, after all, on these dirt roads that look like arteries and have such names as “Parade A'”, “Route 4”, etc.

If you haven’t caught a country station on the radio which made you wonder how many Greek folk singers there are that you don’t know about, but also how many times “the same” song can be written.

Unless your slipper is broken. How many ups and downs between mud and pebbles can it handle? The bad thing is that, following Murphy’s law, this will happen at some point when you are away from “civilization”, so until you get a replacement pair, you will try to “bind” the damaged trigger up to and including one. stapler if it comes before yours.

If you haven’t been in the sun lounger fight. Bad lie, we’ve all become Cerberus, waiting for someone to make the slightest move to indicate they’re getting ready to leave. In the chrono de te we were over his head with a glazed eye to take a seat in his deck chair.

Unless, accordingly, you fought in an umbrella battle. You have found the perfect place, of course, this does not mean that the umbrella will work with you. You repair it as best you can, you find the biggest stones for its foundation, you take pride in your building. Until the first rudimentary breeze brings it all to you and you repeat the process from the beginning. At the same time, all the other umbrellas and umbrellas around did not move one iota.

If you remember to apply sunscreen at least once, both general and topical. And in the end you got a light lobster color on the shoulders or that spot on the back that you could not reach.

If you have not yet tried to capture the beauty of this magical beach or the full moon on your mobile phone and you ended up filling your photo gallery with 40 identical images, showing a normally normal coastline and a bright dot on a black background, respectively.

If you didn’t get at least one extra dish in a tavern, which you hardly touched after all. We understand you were very hungry after your bath and those pumpkin croquettes looked delicious, but you have already ordered 4 more appetizers and 3 main courses.

If it doesn’t hurt your eyes and you got one of the worst dishes on the list. But why take meatballs in a tavern where all the tables eat fish and seafood? At best, they will look like juicy ping-pong balls.

Unless you’ve been fighting flies and sphinxes. If the restaurateur did not take care to put burnt coffee on the tables in the hall, then, by rough math, you spent 60% of your time in the tavern brushing off insects, and 40% actually eating (tired).

If you haven’t been to trendy cocktail bar Chora and after painstakingly browsing the catalog to order the most delicious and original cocktail, you finally got one that just looks like someone mixed the juice of 8 fruits with vodka in a beautiful glass with lots of ice.

If you haven’t succeeded as a DJ in an island bar with a characteristically comfortable and “walking” style who, in fact, “brews” the same list of 50 tracks every night (often in lousy remixes), the last of which came out when we took the Euro.

If you remember to put on mosquito repellent before going outside and now you see who has become more pointy than the other from the bites.

Unless you’ve tasted one of the worst coffees in your life. Unfortunately, coffee is usually hard to come by on the islands and in the villages, and you’ll be lucky to find freno espresso that tastes even slightly better than groundwater.

Unless you catch that pesky hipster tourist. who asks for an almond milk latte at a traditional local bakery and vegan meatballs at Vangelis Steakhouse.

If you did not put at least 3 brick books in your suitcase, determined to “hack” the amount of reading in a year, and ended up barely reading 40 pages from just one of them. After all, the sea and those around us will always conquer us.

If, having agreed that you will not read much this year either, you have not taken up the crossword puzzle. And if you have not made a bet that you will solve at least one of them, then you will not succeed. But really, who knows who this Romanian gerontologist with 7 letters is?

Unless you meet the one you last expected to see on the same island, on the same beach, on the next sunbed from you. This fellow student you liked but were never close to, this colleague from your previous job, your maternal second cousin, and generally people you dated for more than a decade, not to mention shortly after. your baptism.

Unless you have sworn that this is the last time you go on a collective vacation. Between us, if you’re over 25, why go on vacation with 6 other people who each want their vacation in different ways, from how they drink their coffee to how they perceive relaxation and fun?