Paradise for me is my home town.

I am very fortunate that I was raised and lived in this place. My home town, Vrontou Pierias is a small city with not over five thousand people, located at the feet of the tallest and biggest mountain in Greece, the great mount Olympus where the twelve Greek Gods lived, and Poets wrote Greek mythology. I can easily say that my home town was blessed, everything is beautiful and the plants are growing fast in the fields. Most of the people there are farmers or they have big fields with kiwis, grapes and tobacco.

Mount Olympus has many secret places that you can visit or even climb. There are so many paths that I can follow and lead me to amazing places. Churches have been built at the edge of a big rock, at the gorge of the mountain or near a small river. There are so many places in this mountain to describe to you but if I do that it will take me two days of typing. Sometimes when I wanted to relax, to clear my mind and get some fresh air I went to the mountain with my bike and I sat on a rock with the view of my town and the sea. It was so quiet the only thing that I could hear was the music of the birds.

From the other side of the mountain we have beautiful seas and plazas with crystal clear water that you can swim and enjoy the sun. One of the greatest feelings that I’ve ever had was when I was swimming at the sea with 90 degrees and I could see the top of the mountain full of snow. I felt excitement with that beautiful view in front of me.

In my childhood me and my friend were free; we had that freedom that the kids in a big city don’t have. We were ridding our bicycles or playing soccer in the middle of the street without a problem or fear that a car could hit us. It is a friendly environment to raise your kids, but you have to work hard at the fields to be able to feed your family and that’s the hard part of the story. Fields of kiwis, grapes or tobacco are hard, you have to be there all day working hard. All that is summer time work with the sun above your head and burning your back, it’s hard to do work under that situation.

Now I am here at the United States, everything here is different; kids here don’t have that freedom and the people are not enjoying life. They are living to work not to work for living and they dont do anything to enjoy their life.

I left paradise because of the crisis in Greece and young people like me don’t have future there.   The only place that I could work over there was the fields and I didn’t want to spend my life working hard in a field to earn a small amount of money to feed my family. I wish everything was different; I wish I could stay there, find a good job and stay at this paradise with on my right hand the mountain and on my left the beautiful seas.