Postcard from... Maleme (The Dead Beach)

On the Dead Beach, it feels like there’s nothing. One middle-aged man sunbathing nude, and one other old man shuffles past, with wrinkled, deep-fried brown skin and a long scroungy grey beard and long grey hair, clad only in black speedos and sandals. He looks like the last remnant of Crete’s hippie past.

To either side the pebbly beach stretches for kilometres on end, disappearing in the distance in a haze of sunlight and spray from the surf. Behind the beach is an empty sea promenade, where confused tourist couples can be seen walking under the blind and shattered streetlights from time to time, trying to find a rainbow-coloured cocktail bar. The empty shells of the ghost estates stare back at them.

By Marcel Krueger