Crete – a chronic condition. Part two.

When night falls, Crete changes species. It stops being an island. It becomes a living creature that starts testing you.

During the day it’s harmless – olives, cats, monasteries, sunshine. In the evening, however, Crete lays its cards on the table:

“Well then, two-week tourist – you want to understand us? Sit down, have a drink, and try to make it to the morning.”

Because Cretan night isn’t a party. It’s a rite of passage. A baptism of fire and water, a crossing of the Red Sea, a full-blown catharsis carried out with local moonshine.

At first you think you’re going “for dinner”. Foolish child. “Dinner” is a euphemism. It’s a stress test of your body, your mind, and your liver, with elements of folk theatre.

First comes the tsikoudia. Always. It doesn’t matter if you’re hungry, drunk, or just arrived from a funeral. Tsikoudia is like a sacrament of redemption – served with the solemnity and smile of someone who knows things are about to get interesting. Here everything is reversed: first comes redemption, then penance. You will confess, and you will be the confessor. You’ll find yourself deep in the night with your soul lying bare on the table among glasses, bottles, and pitiful scraps of antikristo.

You can’t refuse. Refusing is an insult to the whole family, four generations back and half the village.

You must drink. And that’s when life actually begins.

After the first shot you become a filos. After the second – a brother. After the third you’re planning to open a taverna together by the sea.

After a few more you no longer know where you are, but you do know that you love each other like brothers and that Greece and Poland should have a joint national football team because “we share the same soul and the same hatred of paperwork”. If the evening goes well, by the end of it you and your new brothers will be designing a highway connecting Poland and Greece, proudly named “via Kurva-Malaka”.

Cretans are like mountain weather – beautiful, unpredictable, and a bit dangerous.

They’ll invite you to the table with a smile, and a moment later they’ll ask what you think about Turkey.

Don’t answer. Ever. It’s not a question. It’s a trap.

If you say “I don’t know”, you’ll get a lecture on Byzantium, Venizelos, and the betrayals of the Great Powers.

If you say “I have an opinion”, you’ll get a lecture on Byzantium, Venizelos, and the betrayals of the Great Powers.

And so on, until you forget what the question even was. It’s never about your answer; it’s always a test. A test of who you are, what you carry inside. You’ll undergo emotional vivisection under general anaesthetic made of distilled grapes. You’ll drag your soul out into the open and if you’re lucky, someone will do the same to you. That is your reward – entry into the closed circle.

Be careful, unsuspecting tourist. If you’re mad enough to admit you know who Venizelos was and that you can tell Sofoklis from Eleftherios, you’re done. You’ve just issued your own death sentence and stepped into a higher level of initiation. Now you’re doomed. This night won’t end early, and it won’t end gracefully. It’ll be a night full of Sienkiewicz-style tales about heroism, betrayal, bloody uprisings, and freedom. Eleftheria i thanatos – freedom or death. This phrase will open the door to the seventh circle of initiation. But tread carefully – this memory is still alive, still burning.

Then comes the dance.

There’s no music from speakers – someone always has a lute, a violin, or a smartphone with YouTube, and it will not be “Zorba the Greek (extended version)”.

Dancing in Crete is not entertainment. It’s an exorcism. And the demon to be expelled is you.

Everyone rises, even the grandfather who had a heart attack last spring. In a circle, slowly, then faster, and at some point you can’t tell whether it’s still dance or collective mystical frenzy.

From a speaker somewhere a woman sings in a hoarse voice. You’ve heard it before. And suddenly the whole group erupts into a loud: Είμαι καλά, είμαι καλά, πολύ καλά, για σας το ίδιο επιθυμώ. And now, dear tourist, do not admit you know who the singer is, what she’s singing, or who wrote it. You are a tourist; your knowledge of Greek culture should be limited to sirtaki and moussaka. Admit anything more and you’ll be dragged into yet another circle of hell, drinking with both hands and discussing philosophy until dawn.

Do you want to live to see tomorrow? You do, trust me. Then do not say you accompanied Mikis on his final journey, do not say you know who Prevelakis or Kazantzakis were. By morning you’ll regret it.

And then comes the tragic moment when they tell you to dance, because if you refuse, someone will say:

“Don’t worry, it’s easy.”

No. It isn’t.

In theory: a few steps left, a few steps right. In practice: a fight for your life and dignity, because the tsikoudia severed all nerve connections between your brain and your limbs long ago.

There will always come a moment when you stumble, and then everyone shouts opa! and declares you their own.

Because Crete doesn’t judge – Crete embraces you in your failure.

At some point someone will propose going “just for a moment, to see something beautiful”.

It is never “just for a moment”.

It is always a serpentine road, without railings, a northern wind, music, two dogs, and suddenly – at four in the morning – a tiny chapel, ruins, the sea, and a man who says:

“Here my grandmother was born during an earthquake. No one died, because Panagia was watching.”

And you say nothing, because you know that in that one sentence the whole island fits: the mystery of death, the miracle of birth, and the certainty that things will be fine – they always have been.

Then dawn arrives. You return with people whose names you don’t remember (miracle that you remember your own), but whose numbers are saved as “Nikos from the mountains” and “Yannis with the sheep”.

And you know that if you returned a year later, they really would recognise you. Maybe not by your face, but by the way you hold your glass.

Because Crete is not tourism. It’s a relationship with people.

Between you, the sun, the dust, the wine, and that peculiar pride that means no one here ever asks for anything – but they give you everything, and always too much.