A Love Letter to...Home

We’re speeding down an empty highway on the outskirts of the city. The taxi driver has one hand on the wheel, his phone in the other- a duck’s quack emanating loudly from the handset. This is not how I envisioned my death.

Welcome to Fast & Furious: Greek Edition- much like the original but with more farmyard animals. We’ve been in the car for a whole minute in which time my father has made friends with the taxi driver and deduced they’re both game hunters- hence the quacking.

Our plane touched down at 10.30pm with a vague apology for the 20 minute delay. The native Greek passengers (not renowned for being in a hurry) are all poised, waiting for the doors to open. Tourists look on, unaware they’re about to see something phenomenal- not the pale imitation of the Olympics we see today, but the real deal. A hundred or so Greeks of various regions, engaged in a competitive sprint to catch the last coach to whichever corner of the patrida they’re off home to.

We make it to the coach and settle in for the uncomfortable 6 hour journey, passing in the dead of night through hushed villages, waterside towns with one bar left open, deserted motorways with pitch black on either side. The world has been abandoned and we are the last left, on this wagon to the East.

When we awake the sun is rising, an orb as striking red as the wildflowers dotted along the roadside.

We disembark outside the church, nobody yet awake; our welcoming parade a motley crew of stray terriers. Off the main road and down the wide lanes with one storey houses; to our left a view down to the fields and the river below. Strolling, birds chirruping, bursts of life arising everywhere. The air is green with fragrant jasmine and velvety rose notes every few paces.

The little house looms on the corner: vibrant blooms crowding the front porch. The creak of the gate, the metallic screech of the doors and in, in to the embrace of the jolly lady!

Four years gone yet all remains unchanged. The gallery of family photos and Kalimera embroidery adorns the walls. The round table with checkered red tablecloth. Sit sit, a hunk of bread torn. Little paper packets of sliced cheese, round salami, butter: all bought at yesterday’s pazari. The rich cherry juice trickles into a glass. We sit and discuss the journey; the grandparents smile lovingly, eyes roving their changed family.

I excuse myself, along the narrow window lined corridor and into the room at the end. I cast my eyes over the avocado bathroom and deeply inhale. Ah still the same musty aroma. The memories arise, my mother washing my hair in the small tub, the hiss and the red light of the boiler as we wait for it to heat.

I step outside into the yard, see the outhouses that once held sheep, the old farm machinery in the corner, the dilapidated brick shed where I once ventured looking for fresh laid eggs. Chickens scuffle to the side of me, the air filled with the sweet scent of the wild camomile sprouting amongst the overgrown grass. The vegetable patch is just visible around the corner with it’s orderly lines of produce.

The cockerel lets out a hearty crow and thus my week of feasting and relaxation begins. This isn’t the most exciting trip I’ve taken this year. But it reminds me: travel isn’t just about the adventures, where our senses are overwhelmed with the new.

Sometimes the best journeys are those into our memories, our nostalgia. A flick through a comic book of familiar tableaus: quirks and characters you realise are real, not embellished by your memory. The feeling that you have changed beyond recognition, but that somewhere, here in the middle of nowhere, it is still the same as it once was. The most beautiful journeys are those that take us home.