In May of 1993, Padma and I and our VW camper van left Syria with the hopes of spending a few months exploring Turkey.

That didn’t quite work out the way we had planned. Our VW wasn’t was licensed in Syria and the Turks didn’t accept our international registration. It’s all complicated but in the end we had to pay a USD5000 bond and were given five days to pass through Turkey.

Amazingly we got our $5K back at the Greek border but our plans of a few months photographing the highways and byways of Turkey were squashed. Instead we decided to take the VW back to its home in Germany.

I didn’t keep a journal and didn’t write any stories about the trip. Here are the photos and a few recollections.

3 May. Depart Aleppo

I tested the van out before starting on our long journey.

7 May. Ipsala, Turkey

We arrived to the Turkish border in four days rather than five but we arrived late on a Friday afternoon. We could have passed through but we had paid a $5000 bond on the car … and the banks were closed for the weekend. We had already gone through immigration so we were told we’d have to wait in no-mans land till Monday.

It was pouring rain that evening when we got a knock on our van door. One of the border guards came and told us to come. We were obedient. We went in reverse direction back to Turkey but he worked out some kind of temporary pass with his border colleagues for us. Before long we discovered he was taking us back to the village of Ipsala. He brought us to his home to meet his wife and two children. They fed us and took care of us that evening. It was an incredible show of hospitality. (I don’t recall if we spent the night and weekend with the family or just one night … although the daytime photos indicate we must have spent some of the day there).

10 May. Greek border to Thassos

On Monday, we miraculously received the $5000 bond which we deposited on the Turkish/Syrian border. We crossed no-man’s land and arrived at the Greek border with a fear of what could now possibly go wrong. But we were delighted when the customs officials hardly glanced at our dodgy international vehicle registration papers and allowed us to bring in the van into the European Union.

After days of rain through Turkey, we finally found sun on the Greek island of Thassos. We opened up the van to dry out everything and then found a camping site on the island

All seemed now as if we could have a good three months on the Mediterranean until I made a collect call home. My stepfather’s cancer had progressed quite significantly and the suggestions were that his time was limited. Padma and I decided to skip the months-long travel in a van and beeline it to Germany and then back to Wisconsin.

12-13 Mt Olympus

From Thassos we drove to the Greek town of Littochorro, the gateway for hikes to Mt Olympus.

Reaching the summit of the mountain was beyond our skills but we spent a couple of days hiking around the base from road’s end at Prionia. We hiked mainly in the rain on the first day. On our second day we had reasonable weather, and hike from Litochoro to the Enipeas Waterfall, a 12 km roundtrip via the Enipeas Gorge Trail.

14 May. Meteora

Meteora is a collection of monasteries in the centre of mainland Greece. The region has what appears to be inaccessible sandstone peaks, but monks settled on these “heavenly columns” from the 11th century onwards. Twenty-four of these monasteries were built, despite incredible difficulties, at the time of the great revival of the hermitic ideal in the 15th century.

16 May. Corfu

Padma and I took a ferry from Ladochori, Greece to Corfu. We spent a few days on the island then took a ferry to the Italian port, Bari.

We camped at a campground somewhere and explored Corfu city and the surrounding beaches. I don’t remember much at all.

25 May. Rome

After the crossing from Corfu, we spent a few days hiking in Gargona National Park and then drove to Rome. A friend worked at FAO and knew of a villa a bit outside the city where we could park the van. We had no desire to drive through Rome!

We stayed with our friends in Trastevere and discovered Rome for a few days.

28 May. A Dolomite Detour

We were heading north on A22 bound for Austria after spending a night at Lago di Garda. But the to east the Dolomites were beckoning. We pulled off the A22 at Ora Auer and drove up a windy road past vineyards to Canazei. We found a campground in Canazei and spent the next day hiking up the mountains as far as we could go until the snow turned us back.

1 June. Illerbachen and Tauberbischofsheim

We drove from the Dolomites to Illberbachen in Southern Germany in a day. We were greeted by our friends the Linkes, who once were the owner of our green VW. After a few days with them, we continued north to Tauberbischofsheim to visit our friend Heiko Schnell.

I wanted to sell the VW but after taking it for inspection at the TUV we realised it would cost a small fortune to get it back to German standards. As I was eager to return to the US to be with my ailing stepfather, Heiko said to leave the car and he would take care of it. And he did. He bought used parts and eventually passed the inspection and sold it.

We departed Germany on 9 June from Stuttgart.