Over the next several days, Barbara, Anthony, Barbara’s friend Evelyn and the other travelers they’d met on the ferry hung out in Mykonos together. “That’s why I was a little bit standoffish – because of that, I didn’t want to get involved,” she says today. Not long before the Greek trip, she’d ended a relationship with a man who’d lived in the Netherlands, and she was still coming to terms with that breakup when she met Anthony. “I wasn’t interested in starting a relationship at that time,” says Barbara today. “I told him, ‘The island is very small and I am sure we will see each other,’” recalls Barbara.īarbara could tell Anthony was interested in her, and she didn’t want to encourage his affections. When the ship docked, Anthony asked if Barbara would be interested in having dinner later, just the two of them. Anthony & Barbara SallĪs the ferry traversed the turquoise Aegean sea to Mykonos, the travelers got to know each other, enjoying dining and chatting for the next few hours. The long-awaited introduction finally took place, and the Greek man invited the three newcomers to sit down.īarbara and Anthony got to know one another while exploring the Greek islands of Mykonos and Hydra. “All of sudden, Tony shows up – he had climbed over all the fences on the ship,” recalls Barbara. He told them how he’d been instantly captivated by Barbara, and how he hoped to speak with her.Īnthony’s new friends encouraged his quest, and before long the three of them were sneakily jumping over the ropes that separated third, second and first class. In the meantime, he chatted with a young American couple, Alan and Lili, who were seated with him in third class. On the other side of the ship, Anthony watched this all unfurl, wondering how he could engineer an opportunity to meet Barbara. The two friends agreed – while Barbara wasn’t interested in him romantically, she enjoyed meeting people on her travels. On the Mykonos ferry, the Greek man invited Barbara and Evelyn to join him in the first class section for a bite to eat. I turn around, and it’s this Greek gentleman.” “The next morning, I’m going with my girlfriend down to the harbor to catch the ship to Mykonos, and we’re standing in line and somebody taps me on the back. “In order to get away, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll meet you,’ But I never, of course, went,” recalls Barbara. The previous day, Barbara had met a Greek man in Athens, near the Acropolis, and he’d invited her to dinner. Not only that, there was apparent competition for Anthony’s affections.
Anthony & Barbara SallĪnthony hoped he could speak with Barbara on the ferry, but it turned out she was traveling in second class, and he was in third. She loved her job and flying for a living. In 1969, Barbara Olle was a flight attendant for Air France.
Barbara was clearly heading to Mykonos, so on a whim, Anthony exchanged his ticket to match. When Anthony spotted Barbara at the ferry port, he was holding a ticket to another island: Hydra. “We decided to go to Greece which at the time was very affordable, sunny and warm,” Barbara recalls. That summer, Barbara and her flight attendant friend Evelyn were making the most of a week off. “Meeting people, being in a different country every trip with my airline friends – on safari in Africa, walking the Champs Elysees in Paris, going to my favorite hairdresser in Frankfurt – I could go on and on,” Barbara tells CNN Travel. In the summer of 1969, she’d just turned 24 and was working her dream job as a flight attendant for Air France.įlying for a living suited Barbara to a tee. Later, she attended boarding school in Switzerland.īarbara’s upbringing gave her an international outlook, and in her early adulthood she enjoyed stints living in Paris and London. “She had a way about her that stood out all by itself, and it was mesmerizing and magnetizing to me immediately,” Anthony tells CNN Travel today.īarbara grew up in communist East Germany, but escaped to West Germany with her family when she was 10. When Anthony first saw Barbara, she was standing in line at the ferry port in Athens, waiting to board a boat to the Greek island of Mykonos. Anthony was a 28-year-old American college graduate shirking familial expectations to explore the world.Īnthony had rejected his father’s offer of a job in their successful family business to spend the best part of five years traveling.īy 1969, Anthony was nearing the end of his traveling stint, unaware its most life-changing chapter was about to begin.
The first time Anthony Sall saw Barbara Olle, he was “starstruck.”
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