Sura Crutch, a recent graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, headed to Europe for three months, in the summer of 1971. She traveled around Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands, soaking up the paintings, architecture and sculptures. In Athens, she met Haris Sevastopoulos. They were meant to be together for 50 years after that and still counting! Read about a true romance, like a movie, in Greece.
Sura traveled with a college friend, and the two connected with other travelers along the way, enjoying, as she puts it, "the experience of being just a young hippie hitchhiking through Europe." "There were so many of us then," Sura told CNN Travel.
One evening, drinking in a London pub, Sura got talking to a guy from Greece and mentioned Athens was her next stop.
In response, the man scribbled down an address on a piece of paper. "Look up 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 restaurant near what was then Athens' main airport. The restaurant was across the street from a stretch of sandy beach, bordered by cerulean blue waters.
Haris Sevastopoulous was the son of the restaurant owner. He welcomed Sura and her friend, exuding a friendly, laidback confidence. Haris told Sura he was training to be a naval architect, but all he wanted to do was play music.
As promised, Haris found the two Americans somewhere to stay. The hotel was packed with Greek naval officers, and slightly run down, but seconds from the beach.
Sura spent the next few weeks swimming, sunbathing and exploring Athens. She didn't cross paths with Haris, who was holed up trying to scrape through his final exams.
Then one day, Haris was heading out of his dad's restaurant when he spotted Sura, wrapped in her towel and making her way to the beach.
Seconds later, the two were jumping in the sea, splashing the cool water on one another, laughing.
"That was it. The relationship started immediately," Haris tells CNN Travel.
Over the next five days, Haris and Sura became inseparable.
After spending all day on the beach, the two would stay out all night dancing.
"There were dance clubs with blues and underground music, and they were fabulous," says Sura. "So he and his friends and I used to go to those every night, and dance and go crazy."
While Haris and Sura were enjoying one another's company, neither saw the relationship as more than a vacation fling.
This was crystallized the following week when Haris went off to the Greek islands with a friend of his, hoping to flirt with tourists.
This was something of a tradition for the two friends, they'd catch the ferry to Mykonos or Kos or Corfu for a few days each summer. Even though he'd met Sura, Haris decided to go anyway.
When Haris returned and saw Sura on the back of this friend's motorbike, he was annoyed.
Haris and Sura went out together on the final night of Sura's trip, but something had soured between them.
"It wasn't what it used to be for the five beautiful days we spent together," recalls Haris today. The following day, Sura left.
A year passed. Sura started working as an art therapist in Cleveland. Haris continued pushing back against the expectation that he'd become a naval architect, or take over his father's restaurant.
Sura had stayed in touch with the guy she'd gotten together with after Haris, and they'd written a few letters back and forth between Ohio and Greece. One day, Haris' friend mentioned this correspondence to Haris.
"How's she doing?" asked Haris, who often found himself wondering about the American girl from the summer before. The friend passed on the address, suggesting Haris write to Sura and find out for himself.
Sura was surprised to hear from Haris, but she wrote back, telling him what she'd been up to over the past year.
These letters kickstarted a pen pal friendship that spanned the next three years. And as time passed, Sura and Haris' letters became longer and more intimate.
The result was to became "true friends," and learned "to respect each other's needs and ways.", says Haris.
"We got to know each other well," agrees Sura.
Sura started saving up money to return to Greece. Partly, because she wanted to see Haris again, and partly because she wanted to experience Greece again.
"Of all the places that I had traveled, that was the place I just wanted to be again," she says. "It was warm, and sunshine, and azure blue skies, and azure, blue, turquoise sea, and just diving off 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."
In summer 1974, Sura returned to Athens. Haris picked her up from the airport. The two went straight to the beach where they'd first swam together.
By then, Haris was living in a cave-like apartment built into the Athenian hillside, with his brother. Sura stayed there for two months, and she and Haris translated their pen pal friendship into a real romance.
They enjoyed exploring Greece together, visiting the islands of Crete, Santorini and Mykonos.
When the time came for Sura to return to the US, she and Haris started wondering if Haris could go with her. A meeting at the US embassy made clear there was only one real way to make this happen. Sura and Haris would have to get married.
At first, Sura wasn't convinced this was a good idea. But the alternative was leaving Haris behind, indefinitely. After a long evening discussing their options, Sura and Haris decided to give marriage a shot.
The next roadblock was their parents. Haris' father wanted him to stay in Greece. Haris' Orthodox Greek mother didn't like that Sura was American and Jewish.
Meanwhile, Sura's mother was taken aback at the idea of her daughter returning from her travels with a fiance.
There were bureaucratic complications too. Haris was Greek, but he'd been born in Turkey. He hadn't claimed Greek or Turkish citizenship, as he didn't want to do military service in either country.
Eventually, the couple navigated the paperwork. Sura went on ahead, and then Haris moved to the US in September 1974.
He arrived with no baggage beyond the clothes on his back.
Haris and Sura married two months later, in her home city of Cleveland. Sura wore a flower crown and a long white dress with billowing bell sleeves. Haris wore white too. Sura took Haris' last name, becoming Sura Sevastopoulos.
It was an interfaith wedding, incorporating both Haris and Sura's religious backgrounds and cultural traditions. There were sections of the service in English, Hebrew and Greek.
The early months of Sura and Haris' marriage weren't always easy, and the couple often argued.
Haris also kept recalling an interaction he'd had on a boat that summer. En route to one of the Greek islands, a fellow passenger had offered to tell Haris' fortune, and he'd humored her. Then the fortune teller pointed at Sura and said, in Greek, "This woman will destroy you within three months."
Haris had brushed it off, and hadn't told Sura. But the words would haunt him late at night, especially when the couple fought.
But even after their bitterest arguments, the two always made up. The date the fortune teller pinpointed came and went, and Sura and Haris remained solid.
Almost two years later, the couple got married again in Greece at the request of Haris' parents. This ceremony took place in Athens, followed by a reception at Haris' father's restaurant on the coast.
Before the Greek Orthodox ceremony, Sura was baptized.
"My Jewish mother had concerns about [the baptism], but did not want to mess anything up for us," recalls Sura.
By then, Haris' father had come to terms with his son moving to the US and he and Sura had grown close.
But Haris' mother still hadn't accepted Sura. Almost two years in, this was less because of religion, and more because of their different personalities.
This relationship remained strained for several years, but eventually the two women connected.
In subsequent years, Sura and Haris welcomed two daughters and built a life together in the US. Sura continued working in the art world, while Haris pursued music and also works in construction.
It's now been over 50 years since Sura and Haris first met in Greece. Over the past five decades, the couple have experienced incredible joys like the birth of their children and grandchild, and travels together across the globe.
They're still dreaming of future adventures together.
Source & Photo Credits: CNN Travel
