Not Friends, Family

Day forty-five, Greece. The Meteora Garden campsite is a quiet place, and I am using it to go on learning how to trust things. In the daytime the cicadas work in the grass. At night a kind of ceremony settles over the garden while the outlines of the Meteora rocks stand against what is left of the sky.

„A lot has changed these last few years,“ says Sofia Karakosta, who runs the place with her daughter Magda. Covid in particular altered how people are with each other. Friends fell out. Families split.

„It isn't clever,“ says Magda. „It only costs you strength.“

They were able to open again after the pause. The family keeps the pitches, the pool and the bar, and they like the company of travellers who stay a night or a week or longer. Grandfather Aristedis opened the site in 1983.

„We learned from my father not to treat guests as friends, but as family,“ Sofia says.

That is exactly what it feels like. I work at the laptop and small kindnesses keep arriving next to it. Kittens sleep on the sofa. The children play under the trees and now and then tug at my attention to see what happens.

I have not been at home anywhere in a long time. I am careful about the word. But it is the right one.