My love for Greece:
I can write and write on Greece and its beauty: the sun, the islands, and the salty beaches. At times, I think all my beautiful memories have been elaborated by my nostalgia or nostos, a painful sickness that torments those who choose to leave the magic country to build a home elsewhere. However, the spirits of the past are always with them as a compass in the turbulent waters of life, a well of rejuvenation, and a reference point against stagnation.
It is not only the magic of the landscape, the African winds that blend with the sea salt, or the humility of the people that elevate the soul. It is the existential peace one feels knowing that the deepest and most agonizing questions of our existence have been walked through, talked about, wrestled with by those ancient minds. When you take the trail on the same path great philosophers walked upon thousands of years ago, a sense of tranquility and fearless regard towards the human affair surrounds you.
Ilove the sea, the music, and the poetry. Inside my heart, my grammas' voices are alive telling me fairytales about strong fighters and kings, beautiful Byzantine queens and respectable patriarchs. The pain of a nation sentenced by its volatile location to millennia of warfare comes alive in those stories to haunt me.
To those stories and those sweet voices that told them to me is this site dedicated as a memorial of love and appreciation for the eternal gifts they offered me.
About me:
I was born in Sparta, Greece, but grew up on one of the slopes of Mount Taygetus. The magnificent mountain that nurtured the Ancient Spartans taught me my first songs: the music of the wind that blows through the forest trees. Later, I learned about the history of our nation through songs and fairytales. I heard my grammas sing the "death songs" (miroloyia) in funerals, and men sing teasing songs in dances and gatherings. Women baked the bread the way it had been prepared for thousands of years, the men walked on the grapes to make wine the same way ancient Greeks did, and the villagers hit the olive trees with a stick to gather the olives exactly as their ancestors had done it for millennia. Life was not only the present but contained the past as well.
When we moved closer to the sea, I missed the mountains, but discovered the mysteries of the "meltemia" winds, the salty taste of the iodine, and the lazy fishermen who sewed their nets stretched for hours on the beach. During the summers, we would go for swimming under a relentless sun that baked our lean bodies while the waves played lazily with us.
I left when life seamed small. I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and lived a wonderful student life in the most elegant of the cities. Later, I moved to Canada and continued with my Bachelor of Education at the Unversity of Alberta. I found the forests telling me stories again, but my nostalgia for the sea has not found comfort yet.
My most favourite moments are when I tell Alexandra and Vassili about all those fairytales, the songs and the legends of my childhood. I wonder, sometimes, if she is as fascinated as I am. If she keeps in her heart all the love and wonder of the simple everyday life of the Greek people, a life as lean and pure as the olive trees that grow on the rocky slopes of Taygetus.
Alexandra
Vassili