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REMEMBRANCE: Greek Cypriot women hold pictures of their missing loved ones, whose disappearance they blame on Turkey
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The sun had not yet risen over the Turkish mainland, so the lights of Asia were still visible along a near shore as our wretched fishing boat motored through a placid Aegean Sea. The captain — an alarmingly chipper, chain-smoking Greek of about 50 — was showing off his new radar and lambasting other captains for their ignorance of the most basic rules of marine safety. Suddenly a fast moving blip appeared on the edge of the screen a few hundred meters off the port bow and headed for a Greek islet. In the misty darkness, we couldn't see a thing but heard the outboard's muffled roar. "Probably a smuggler," scoffed Georgios Tsorvas, who disdained pretty much everyone else on his native waters. "Probably a Turk."
Not so long ago, these boundary waters and a few rocky outcroppings to the north brought nato members Greece and Turkey to the brink of war. These days things are quieter and there are signs of improving relations between the old enemies. I wanted to find out whether the rhetoric was changing attitudes on the ground. Our captain, for one, was having none of it. "With Turks we have a saying," he told me, wagging a finger. "You can shake his hand with one hand but hold a big stick with the other." Sure, Turkey and Greece would become friends, he added grimly, "in 4000 A.D."
I was traveling through the Greek islands at the start of a journey that would take me by boat, plane, train and limping automobile around the ragged edge of Europe from Athens to Yugoslavia. Within the space of a few weeks I walked the "green line" in Cyprus, rode the Balkan Express from Istanbul and feasted on freshly picked red peppers in southern Serbia. In conversations along the way I found that abstractions about a new borderless Europe seemed remote, while nationalism was alive and well — especially in the frontier areas where I spent most of my time. But equally apparent — thankfully — was a strong sense of the region's potential for change: the toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia promised a new openness in the heart of the Balkans, and detente between Greece and Turkey raised some hopes that old wounds could eventually heal. "We are ready to be part of Europe," said a local politician I met in Serbia.
After a flight from Athens to a nearby resort island, and uneventful crossing by night ferry, my trip began on the small eastern Aegean island of Kalymnos, known for its sponge divers and territorial spats. In 1996, the mayor of the island, Dimitrius Diakomichalis, paddled out to an unprepossessing islet between Kalymnos and the Turkish mainland and planted the Greek colors, enraging the Turkish military and triggering a full-fledged international incident. Today, local fishermen have not forgotten the episode. "If we leave," a trawler captain told me, "the Turks will take Kalymnos."
Last year, a delegation of Turks visited for the island's traditional honey-making festival and were literally chased back onto their yacht when one misguided delegate tried to raise the Turkish flag as an expression of solidarity. "If someone annexes your garden and then invites you out to the pub for a beer, would you go?" Mayor Diakomichalis asked me, slapping his desk in defiance.
After a few days of this, I moved on to the other side — the Turkish town of Bodrum. Viewed from the water, the stucco walls and copious bougainvillea could have been Greek. But when I climbed ashore the illusion soon vanished. Red and white Turkish flags hung from every stay and mast, local women were invisible and tobacco dirt cheap. As for the Turks, fishermen included, they seemed to have a decidedly more relaxed view of their neighborly relations with Greece. The biggest complaint was that it was hard to go there. One businessman told me a bitter story about immigration officers ordering Turks to wash their feet before they disembarked onto Greek soil. But there was no fear of a military confrontation. "We have a different culture and a different history," said an elderly fishing captain, eyes watering in a cloud of cigarette smoke, "but we are perfectly hospitable. This will not change."
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Wandering Borders
Squalor on the Balkan Express through lands where old atrocities linger in the memory but the borders are blurring
Photo Gallery
Check out the photos from this leg of TIME's Fast Forward Europe voyage
Crossing the Line
Joint efforts to find bone marrow donors for children with leukemia bring the two halves of Cyprus closer
Paper Curtain
East European countries moving toward E.U. membership are cut off from their neighbors
Points to Ponder
Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek on globalization and life's big questions
Good Riddance
Slobodan Milosevic's home town was a private playground for his delinquent son — until recently
Looking Forward, Looking Back
The artwork and lives of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are as historical as they are avant-garde
People To Watch: Radu Georgescu | Slavi Trifonov
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