The Perfect Travel Companion

Sometimes you meet people who you could just listen to all day. They have a mesmerizing voice, a fascinating outlook on life and just radiate this inexplicable quality that is contagious. It makes you want to be around them and just listen.

Vasillies is a friend of the Kaplan’s and he accompanied us on almost every weekend trip we took. He is Greek and grew up in Greece but then he moved to the States where he now lives with his family.   

This man shared nuggets of wisdom throughout our weekend trips that could become famous Greek proverbs. Vasillies just has a way of stringing words together in a poetic and meaningful way. I found myself gravitating towards him on our weekend trips because I always wanted to hear his thoughts about the site or ask him to share what knowledge he had of the site. I wish I could have recorded everything he said just so I could go back and listen to it again and again. Vasillies speaks with purpose and is very inspiring. And the thing is I don’t even think he knows the influence he had on our group. Throughout our trip I heard multiple students mention how something Vasillies said encouraged or inspired them, and one student even said that Vasillies changed his life with a nugget of wisdom that was shared.

When we visited Delphi we stopped by a beautiful monastery and I stuck near Vasillies for most of that site visit, which resulted in greatly expanding my knowledge about that particular monastery. It’s one thing to walk around a historical site, it’s another to have your own personal tour guide translating the Greek inscriptions and explaining the significance behind different aspects of that site. The monastery had a calming, peaceful effect on me and it was just so enchanting. The majority of us ended up sitting on the edge of a building and gazing out over the olive trees scattered across the valley. This is where I had my favorite conversation with Vasillies. We were sitting next to Mark and Vasillies said something that completely sums me up, without even knowing it. Trust me when I say that I wouldn’t be able to give his original words any justice, I tried to type it out and then deleted it. But what he said actually left me speechless (and let’s be real that doesn’t happen very often). Since I am falling short of finding the right words to explain what he said, I guess it is just one of those moments that lives on in my memory. He reminded me that it’s important to find yourself, know who you truly are and learn to be comfortable with yourself. And Greece is the ideal country to do exactly this, find yourself.

Vasillies was the perfect travel companion addition to our group and I am truly grateful to have been lucky enough to have met such an inspiring man. 

Lily, Erika, Vasillies and I after our trip to Delphi