It is easy to miss the obvious sometimes, like when you cannot find your glasses because they are sitting on your nose — or when you don't see the large military facility that's hidden within one of the world's most famous landmarks. After years of passing it by, I have finally visited Fan Bay Deep Shelter, a curious place with a serendipitous history.
The ship approaches Spinalonga at a leisurely pace. The island looks like a yellow scar on the face of the tranquil Mediterranean azure. The sun is slowly reaching its zenith, and the heat weighs heavily on the passengers despite the marine breeze. More often than not, tour operators sell the excursion as a nice outing for the whole family. Yet, I see very few children on board, as if the idyllic pictures on the brochures couldn’t make up for the tragic atmosphere that surrounds the islet.
Jon is used to my quirks (which I am sure he finds charming), but I guess even he didn’t understand what I was on about when I insisted we should spend the night in Dartford on our way to Scotland and go to the train station “in order to see a landmark”.
I remember my first day in England as clear as day. My school had organised a trip to London for us to practice whatever we were supposed to have learnt in our English course. I was fifteen. The sun was shining in the early morning, the sea was calm and my friends and I were on the deck of the ferry from Calais.
Belgium has its lot of oddities, but I had never realized that military surpluses might be one of them until I had a conversation with my friend Gareth who claimed never to have seen such a thing in Wales. That’s when I started to think that maybe, such stores aren’t as popular in other countries as they are in mine.