Sura traveled throughout Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands, enjoying the paintings, architecture and sculptures she had spent years studying in books. Shura traveled with a friend from college, and the two connected with other travelers along the way, enjoying, she says, “the experience of just being a young hippie hitchhiking in Europe.” “There were so many of us back then,” Sura tells CNN Travel today. One night, drinking in a London pub, Shura spoke to a guy from Greece and mentioned that Athens was her next stop. In response, the man wrote an address on a piece of paper. “Look for my friend Haris Sevastopoulos when you get there,” he said. “He’ll find you a cheap hotel.” The address turned out to be a small, family-run restaurant near Athens’ main airport. The restaurant was located opposite a sandy beach, bordered by deep blue waters. Haris Sevastopoulou was the son of the owner of the restaurant. She welcomed Shura and her friend, exuding a friendly, relaxed confidence. Harry told Shura that he was training to be a shipbuilder, but all he wanted to do was play music. As promised, Harry found the two Americans somewhere to stay. The hotel was full of Greek naval officers, and slightly overcrowded, but seconds from the beach. Soura spent the next few weeks swimming, sunbathing and exploring Athens. She did not cross paths with Harry, who was in hiding trying to pass his final exams. Then one day, Harry was leaving his dad’s restaurant when he spotted Sura, wrapped in her towel and heading for the beach. “Hi,” he said and caught up with her. “How do you think of Greece so far?” “I like it,” Shura said. “You know what, it’s so hot. Let me go across the street and get my bathing suit and come with you,” Harry suggested. Seconds later, the two were jumping into the sea, splashing the cool water on each other, laughing. “That was it. The relationship started right away,” Harris tells CNN Travel today.
Summer romance
Soura Krats and Haris Sevastopoulos became inseparable in the summer of 1971, while Soura was visiting Greece. Courtesy Sura Sevastopoulos Over the next five days, Harry and Shura became inseparable. “We were just having fun together,” says Sura. “We had the same sense of humor, so we could play in the water, make jokes and have fun.” After spending the day at the beach, the two stayed out all night dancing. “There were dance clubs with blues and underground music and they were great,” says Sura. “So he and his friends and I would go to them every night, and we’d dance and go crazy.” While Harry and Shura enjoyed each other’s company, neither saw the relationship as anything more than a vacation. This crystallized the following week when Harry went to the Greek islands with a friend, hoping to flirt with tourists. This was something of a tradition for the two friends, they would catch the ferry to Mykonos or Kos or Corfu for a few days every summer. Even though he had met Shura, Harry decided to leave. “When he left, I continued to go out with friends,” says Sura. “And then I started seeing one of his friends.” Soura fell in love with Greece. Sura Sevastopoulos When Harry returned and saw Sura in the back of this friend’s machine, he was disturbed. Shura just rolled her eyes. Harry was the one who left her. Besides, she was going home in a few days. “I’m just passing through,” he reminded Harry. Harry and Sura went out together on the last night of Sura’s trip, but something had soured between them. “It wasn’t what it was for the five beautiful days we spent together,” Harry recalls today. The next day, Shura left.
Pen friends
A year has passed. Shura began working as an art therapist in Cleveland. Harry continued to defy the expectation that he would become a shipbuilder or take over his father’s restaurant. Shura had stayed in touch with the guy she’d met after Harris, and they’d written a few letters back and forth between Ohio and Greece. One day, Harry’s friend mentioned this correspondence to Harry. “How’s it going?” Harry asked, often finding himself wondering about the American girl from last summer. The friend relayed the address, suggesting Harry write to Shura and find out for himself. Shura was surprised to hear Harry, but answered him, telling him what he had done in the past year. These letters began a friendly friendship that lasted for the next three years. And as time passed, the letters of the Sura and Haris became larger and more familiar. The result, says Haris, was that they became “true friends” and learned to “respect each other’s needs and ways.” “We got to know each other well,” agrees Shura. “I couldn’t wait to read what he was doing, how he was feeling. It was a very close friendship. We would tell each other everything.” Soura started collecting money to return to Greece. Partly because she wanted to see Harry again and partly because she wanted to experience Greece again. “Of all the places I had traveled, this was the place I wanted to go back to,” he says. “It was warm, and sunshine, and blue skies, and blue, blue, turquoise sea and just splashes of rocks and things like that and ruins. “And the people were amazing — and the food was amazing. It was a whole different world for me, which had changed everything in me.”
Back to Greece
Here are Sura and Harry, reunited at the airport in September 1974. Courtesy Sura Sevastopoulos In the summer of 1974 Soura returned to Athens. Haris picked her up from the airport. The two went straight to the beach where they had first swum together. “We went – without even communicating – straight into the water with our clothes on,” Harry recalls. “I couldn’t wait,” says Shura. “We were so happy to be together,” says Harry. Until then, Harris lived in a cave-like apartment built into the hillside of Athens with his brother. Shura stayed there for two months and she and Harry turned their friendship into a real romance. They enjoyed exploring Greece together, visiting the islands of Crete, Santorini and Mykonos. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. It was obvious to Shura that Harry drank too much, and at one point she gave him an ultimatum. “Shura is a very dynamic woman,” recalls Haris. “He said, ‘Either you’re going to get better or I’m going to see another friend in Norway.’ When it was time for Shura to return to the US, she and Harry began to wonder if Harry could go with her. A meeting at the US embassy made it clear that there was only one real way for this to happen. Shura and Harry should get married. At first, Shura wasn’t convinced it was a good idea. “We really loved each other,” she says. “It’s just — I was very hesitant about marriage because I’d seen too many marriages fall apart and I wasn’t looking forward to going through with it.” But the alternative was to leave Harry behind, indefinitely. After a long night discussing their options, Shura and Haris decided to give marriage a chance. The next roadblock was their parents. Harry’s father wanted to stay in Greece. Harry’s Greek Orthodox mother did not like that Shura was American and Jewish. Harry ignored them both. Meanwhile, Shura’s mother is taken aback by the idea of her daughter returning from her travels with a fiancé. “Is it someone you love and want to spend the rest of your life with?” asked Shura. “All I can tell you is that I love him. I can’t tell you for the rest of my life,” Shura replied. Her mother admitted it was pretty good. “Nobody else said that,” Shura says today. “Everyone else thought I was out of my mind.” There were also bureaucratic complications. Haris was Greek, but had been born in Turkey. He had not claimed Greek or Turkish citizenship, as he did not want to do military service in either country. Haris and Sura decided to get married and move to the USA together. Sura Sevastopoulos Finally, the pair navigated on paper. Shura moved on, and then Harry moved to the US in September 1974. He arrived with no luggage other than the clothes on his back. Harris and Sura married two months later in her hometown of Cleveland. Shura wore a flower crown and a long white dress with bell sleeves. Harry also wore white. Soura took the last name of Haris and became Soura Sevastopoulou. It was an interfaith wedding, incorporating both the religious background and cultural traditions of Harry and Shura. There were parts of the service in English, Hebrew and Greek. The first months of Soura and Haris’ marriage were not always easy and the couple often argued. “It’s different to be a tourist and have a girlfriend. It’s another thing to live together all the time,” says Haris. “The reality sinks in that there’s a lot of hard work, responsibilities. And, you know, you still have that playful feeling. But you also have to be serious about serious things.” Harry also kept remembering an interaction he had on a boat that summer. On the way to one of the Greek islands, a fellow passenger had offered to tell Hari’s fortune and humored her. Then the fortune teller pointed to Shura and said, in Greek, “This woman will destroy you within three months.” Harry had brushed it off and hadn’t told Shura. But the words would haunt him late at night, especially when the pair fought. But even after their bitterest disagreements, the two always made it up. The date the fortune teller spotted came and went, and Shura and Harry stood still. Soura and Haris had two wedding ceremonies, one in the US and one in Greece. Courtesy Sura Sevastopoulos Almost two years later, the couple remarried in Greece at the request of Harry’s parents. This ceremony took place in Athens and was followed by a reception at Harry’s father’s restaurant on the beach. Before the Greek Orthodox ceremony, Sura was baptized. “My Jewish mother had concerns [the baptism]but I didn’t want to…
