As both a former dolphin trainer and a native of Roswell, I find it fitting to quote the dolphins’ departing words in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as my way of bidding you—my faithful friends and readers—farewell. But don’t be too alarmed! I will continue blogging. Just not at this website.
The first dolphins I worked with in Miami, saying “So long!”
Stick around to the end of this post, though, because I have a fun surprise!
The reason for the change is this: I am finally making an attempt to traditionally publish the book I wrote about Thasos, Greece: the first summer that plunged me off the deep end, that created “Greek Jenny,” that spurred my attempt to move to Greece, that ultimately led to finding my (half-)Greek husband. It was also the summer that made me finally understand poetry. Many of you have been reading since that time, and some of you even longer—since I first began blogging as a bright eyed graduate student thinking I could get published simply from being “discovered”! Oh, how sweetly naive I was.
Since my blog wasn’t serendipitously discovered by an agent, I am moving from WordPress to Substack to keep with the changing times. I will continue posting blogs with my typical minimal frequency, except I’ll be calling them “newsletters,” and I will likely include more book-related content. It’s an unfortunate game of numbers over content/quality when it comes to memoir, as agents are more likely to represent authors who have large followings.
Therefore, my wonderful email subscribers: you will be transferred automatically, so you won’t lose any updates (you are, of course, free to opt out at any time). WordPress subscribers: if you have enjoyed my content, if you would like to follow my publishing adventure, if you want to read a book about Greece, please continue by subscribing on Substack! (You don’t have to have a Substack account to do so.) I would love to keep in touch, and one of the good things about Substack is that we have more opportunities to engage with each other.
Request: If you are not a friend or family member and have decided to follow me, please respond to my welcome email and let me know you found me through my blog! My newsletter will be called “Wherever I Go.”
A final note about housekeeping: this website will remain active as an archive of all the posts I’ve written so far, and you can always find it at its original URL: fushilou.wordpress.com.** And who knows, maybe Substack will be a flop, and I’ll come right back to blogging here. I only know that presently, I do not have the bandwidth to maintain both websites.
**If you aren’t an OG reader and have no idea what a Fushilou is, I have an explanation.
If you’re wondering what will happen to my current domain (as I’m CERTAIN you are), I’ll be creating an author website so people can google my name. Give it a try in a few months – I’ll be adding “Shand” to the end of it (jennycurriershand.com), or as my friend Andie thinks of it, “Jenny Currier’s Hand.”
And with that, I’ll segue into my final gift as a WordPress blogger to my faithful readers, and that is the aforementioned surprise:
I am including an excerpt from the opening of my book!
I’d love your feedback. Please drop me a line about what you think.
Thank you again for keeping me accountable, just by being “out there,” especially when life got crazy. Though I might have gone months (or a year) between posts, I never forgot about the blog, or about you.
Καλό ταξίδι, friends, and happy travels wherever you may go!1
an excerpt from the first chapter, “Finding Thasos”
THE QUESTION I HEAR most often is, “Why Thasos?”
The answer is quite simple. I had no choice.
I blame Christopher Bakken, the co-founder of a program called Writing Workshops in Greece. Every year he takes a group of writers to Thasos—an island I had never heard of until we met—and he proceeds to let the island do its work. To be fair, he attempted to warn me the day we met, long before I arrived to Greece, but I didn’t understand what he was talking about. There’s no way to really understand what someone means when they say you’ll be on a remote Greek island, eating the best food of your life, swimming in a sea that is so hypnotizing that new words had to be invented just to describe its color—how all of these wonderful things will ruin you. In a good way. But since we’re talking about beginnings, I should start with the day I met Christopher, eight months before the wounding began.
We met in October of 2014 at a food tourism conference in Providence, Rhode Island. The magazine I wrote for had given me a press pass on this particular weekend to attend the “Taste Trekkers Food Expo,” where Christopher was one of the presenters. He would be talking about a program he co-founded called Writing Workshops in Greece.
“What is the difference between a traveler and a tourist?” he asked when he took the stage.
I sat up in my seat, notebook open, pen poised. I felt I had crossed the barrier from “tourist” to “traveler” after my first solo international trip, but I couldn’t figure out what the key ingredient was.
Christopher had the answer I was looking for.
“The tourist is someone who visits the must-see sites, takes nice photos, and returns home exactly the same, but perhaps with a nice tan a few souvenirs. The traveler, however, is someone who’s willing to step through the looking glass. He or she abandons what’s comfortable in order to experience a new way of life, to see how the locals live, to eat their food, to be malleable. The true traveler is one who transforms.”
Christopher then went on to describe Writing Workshops in Greece (WWIG). He said that for one month, he takes a cohort of writers overseas where they live on a Greek island and discover local cuisine. The restaurants he chooses don’t have six languages on the menu—in fact, they’re lucky to get a menu at all. Typically, the daily specials are explained by the owner, i.e., the fisherman and chef, who says, This is what we caught today. This is what we have in the oven.
“In this setting, there are no tourists,” Christopher concluded, “only travelers who engage with the country by eating and drinking, who literally ingest the new culture. This is what my students do, and we discuss how to write about it in my Food and Travel Writing course.”
I would have followed that man anywhere.
At the end-of-day networking cocktail event, I spotted him and beelined toward his table, not even stopping to get a drink first.[1] When I sat down at the table, he was chatting with someone, so I made small talk with his program assistant and girlfriend (now his wife), Allison, as I waited. Then he turned to me.
“So, you’re a writer.”
I said something along the lines of, “Sort of.”
“Do you want to come to Greece?”
“Obviously.”
He laughed. “Have you ever been?”
“No, but it’s on my bucket list. It seems beautiful. And I love eating and exploring a place through its food. Basically, everything you mentioned.”
“Hmm,” he nodded. “I think you’d be a great fit. I’m sorry to say, though…after Greece, you’ll never be the same.”
“Perfect!” I said, unknowingly.
I may not have considered myself a writer yet, but I did see myself as a traveler, and I figured: Yes, I can go through the looking glass. Yes, I can be transformed. Yes, I am ready.
***
I followed GPS to the west side of Providence, to a residential neighborhood with narrow streets that were already lined with cars. It was dark and quiet when I found a place to park and backtracked to what I thought was the restaurant. Where did it go? I wondered, and then I saw it: a neon sign glowing a soft blue light, with “north” written in cursive script, inside the first-floor window of what appeared to be someone’s apartment. I opened the door.
Inside I found bustling movement—bartenders pouring drinks, a waiter delivering food—yet it seemed hushed, as if everyone belonged to a secret society, and it was prudent to not be too loud. Christopher, Allison, and a Bread Maker from the conference had arrived before me and put our name on the list. The restaurant didn’t take reservations, so they asked for our phone number and offered to call us when a table would be ready, in an hour or so.
The Bread Maker suggested we go across the street for a drink while we waited. There’s a bar across the street? I wondered. Great food writer I am. Only after we’d stepped outside did I realize I’d walked by the entrance of a bar on my way to North without noticing. There was no sign, and the lighting was so dim I needed to press my face to the glass to see inside. The four of us entered into a cavernous room that belonged not in the middle of Rhode Island, but inside the enchanted forest of a JRR Tolkein novel. Carved wooden walls, comfy leather chairs and a long cushioned booth, artsy naked women carved from metal and backlit along the walls as if by torches. This was the first place I ordered a Moscow Mule and received it in a hand-hammered copper mug, and as the four of us sat at the bar talking, I wondered how I’d never known this place existed.
The rest of the evening was a blur—our dinner at North; conversations about backyard wood ovens and sourdough starters; hours that passed like seconds that felt like years—an adventure into an alternate reality within my own city. We ate family-style: a side of caramelized sweet potatoes, a dish of diced beef heart, a bowl of dan dan noodles made with squid and goat meat. I would have never ordered these dishes for myself, but the ambiance and the company, the savory smells coming from the kitchen and the secret-ness of it all made me trust that it would be delicious. And it was.
As we said our final goodbyes, Christopher gave a final piece of advice about Greece. “Apply early. We only have eight slots. If you have any questions, email me. But I look forward to receiving your application.”
Christopher didn’t explain where we would go or what we would eat, but I assumed every night would be like this one: we’d find obscure Greek alleyways with hidden restaurants, unmarked entryways and secret stone stairwells, small living-room sized spaces with only three tables. We’d explore a different alley every night, a village here and a village there.
I did not realize there would be only one restaurant in one village on one island, or that it would change my life forever.
That restaurant was Archodissa. That village was Aliki.
The island was Thasos.
[1] Or three.
- This post is dedicated to my dad because it is his birthday today. Happy Birthday, Daddio! I love you. ↩︎
Travel & Food Writer 