Since I moved from Belgrade to Athens, I started attending Greek lessons. We completed by now many subjects and new words and yesterday’s subject made me thinking. We read a story about a family, parents with kids, moving from a big city to a village for better life conditions. Before we started reading, the professor asked if some of us (students) came from a rural environment. One colleague confirmed and presented the benefits of living in the countryside. Those were: organic food, nature, silence, clean air, slow life and so on. Our teacher Eleni listened to her and agreed with her facts although herself could not imagine life in a small environment, adding that she would be tortured by feeling of loneliness. So no village for her, that’s for sure. What about me?
This topic of living in the city or in the village comes from time to time to my mind. I lived in a small town, then I moved to a bigger one and now I am in the biggest city of all I have lived in. The big city brings lot of advantages into our life and provide good facilities for education, medical treatments, job opportunities and cultural activities. Looking for all this opportunities in our life we forget about the bad things: pollution, noise, big traffic, fast food, felling unsafe, feeling stressed and big distances. I wouldn’t like to live in a city bigger than this one. I am wondering how people deal with the size of a city of 20 million. Do they use only one part of the city for all their activities or do they use the whole city and travel a lot, spending time in cars, buses, metros, bicycles.
MY PARENTS
My parents grew up in the village and they stayed there till they finished their high schools. Studying and working brought them to the big city. For them it was great to live in the city but they were planning to return to the village as soon as opportunity came. The “opportunity” would come when they retire from their work. My father used to say that he never had a headache when he was visiting his village. It was very nice seeing him happy there. He was preparing himself for returning, he was planing to cultivate a plum grove. He was talking about it a lot. Also about fixing the house of his parents. He started doing that. It is a big house and he started to make a second bathroom on the first floor. It was for my sister and me. He wanted for us to also come regularly to the village, and we did. However we were spending only the summers in the village because my parents were working too far from the village we couldn’t visit very often. Suddenly my father died. It was a big shock for us and the plans changed, for my mom especially. After his death she found his notebook with plans for renovating the house. She started doing everything how he would have done. It was sad and very emotional to see that she wanted to finish what he started. Now she finished all the work and she spends a lot of time in that village during the summer. She also feels better there than in the city but at the same time sad because she is alone. I also like to go there, probably because of those summer days from my childhood. I have always been a city child, like I said, while summer holidays I was spending as a young girl in the village with my grandparents. I was lucky that my parents were bringing me there. It was quite a surprise for me when some kids didn’t go into their own villages to visit their grandparents. I thought everyone has a village. I was always looking forward to visit my grandparents and spend some time in the nature playing with their dog and having a lot of space to run around.
ATHENS
Now I am living in Athens. That means living in the big city. I realized how big it is when I got up on some of the hills around the city. I was standing on the hill looking first to one side, then to the other side, then the first again… Wow! It was huge! And you can even see the sea from the hill, how great that is. The bad thing about the city is the noise, it is high due to a large number of motorcycles. I get annoyed by that traffic blast. Life in a large urban environment definitely creates stress, nervousness, anxiety. The days when I feel stressed or upset with some things, are usually the days when I start thinking how life in a village could be nice. More quite and slow, at least. In the last two years I noticed that I changed. First of all, while looking for a job, I had a lot of free time to think and rethink the same things. I was desperate to meet new people. I was afraid of loneliness in the new city. After some time, I met some people, but we were and still are, far from each other. It is not easy to have spontaneous coffee with someone if you want to because of the distance. As time passed by, I got used to be alone again. I didn’t have problem with it. I am a social person and I like to hang around with people, but it is not my priority anymore. Probably because of the big distances, I became less interested in social activities like hanging around for coffees with friends. I started for the first time to enjoy myself being alone and not feeling lonely. My sleeping routine changed as well. I never had any problem getting up early but never that early as now. At 4 am I can be active and energetic. That never happened before. That’s why getting up early makes me tired for evening activities, and they usually include people. So, when you look better, I am on my good way to move to a quite and uninhabited place.
PARORI, PELOPONNESE
One of my first destinations when I came to Greece was the village Parori. Since my first visit I always propose to my partner to go there again. With every visit there, I like it even more. It is the same feeling of joy but somehow the place looks different every time, more fascinating. I always get delighted with beautiful mountain Taygetus, with it’s breathtaking height of 2,404m. In winter time, when there is snow on the top of the mountain, the view from the plains at the foot of the mountain is magnificent. Oftentimes, driving from village Parori to the city Sparti, I would like to stop to look and admire Taygetus. I always think that every time I stop, I will make the best picture. I will keep trying. After I make a long break of not visiting Parori, the moment I do come I ask myself why I didn’t come earlier. It is like a dose of coffee, you need it. Not every day, but every second day.
KALAMATA
From the village Parori if you want to visit the city of Kalamata, you need to cross the Taygetus mountain. The road over the mountain is curly but I didn’t mind. I was relaxed and happy, the weather was great, I had a nice company, and the day was promising to be nice. The view from the mountain was spectacular, the trees with beautifully colored leaves, autumn colors all over the mountain. Even if it was the end of October, lots of tree leaves were still green. I often hear that autumn is a second spring. It is, at least in Greece it is. From the top of the mountain I could see the city of Kalamata. I didn’t expect to see a big place but it was quit impressive. We arrived in the center and started exploring it. Our first thought was how great it is there. “Maybe we should move here?” was one of the first thoughts that crossed our minds. The life in Kalamata looks quite but not in a boring way. I noticed bicycle paths, organized parking, order in general. A big pedestrian part, nice shops. Sea and mountain. Kalamata olives. In a couple of hours of staying in this city, visiting the fortress, passing the Philharmonic building and a big dance studio, I caught myself thinking about life in a small town. Life where it’s possible to quickly complete some of your duties because you do not have to travel long distances and looks like a nice place to live when you have a family.
URBAN PLACE OR COUNTRYSIDE
After three beautiful days in the nature, I returned to my big nosy city. The first thing that welcomed me was very loud music from the cafe close to me. That was very unpleasant especially after the peaceful days in and around Parori. My first thought was that I want to go back there! I guess that till now living in the city is still more comfortable for the majority of people because there are more opportunities to progress in the city. That means that villages will always stay villages, because people will not move to live there. That will perpetuate the special feeling of silence of the village.
All our lives we are running to reach something, to study, to find a well paid job. People are not searching these things in a village or small city. Usually you go to big city for that. The bigger the better. Even then, I still wonder why people do not choose to live in the countryside since we all know it is healthier for us. I wonder, although I am living in the big city myself. Rhythm of life is slower, you have more time to relax and probably to see your friends more often. In the big cities, most of people are tired from running around, job, kids, school, after school activities, and there is not much time for relaxing.
The new thing in the world now is working from home, through the Internet, and it certainly makes life easier and possible to live in small cities. It is now possible to study online, it is no longer necessary to be present at the lecture. Now, every arrangement with a mentor is done through Skype or Mail. The Internet also gives us an insight into many institutions, museums, through virtual tours. Seminars and courses are done through sites dedicated to it. That means studying and working is possible from home. We will see in the near future whether there will be migrations from cities to villages. Everything is up to personal choice and feeling. I’m not yet ready for making that decision.
I read somewhere this:
The best thing about living in small village is: When you are not sure what’s going on in your own life, someone in the village usually does! (Maybe that’s why no one wants to move there)