Around the world in 80 days
Past midnight and I am rolling around in my sheets, my mind in heated turmoil. Anticipation and worry give place to one another as I am counting tasks in my head. Tomorrow’s schedule besides fieldwork, includes a very long flight in the late evening. It’s been 348 consecutive days since I last treaded my home country’s soil, the longest I have ever spent away from home.
Throughout my childhood I was well rooted in my little Greek hometown, travelling abroad for the first time at 18 years old thanks to a school trip to a neighbouring country. Since then, I would gradually take a step farther away, although strictly to various parts of Europe. In my late teens and early twenties, airports induced a feeling of excitement and fun. They always seemed as though places of adventure and new experiences.
In 2012, I had hopes of studying abroad but, still then, it was difficult to convince my parents to send me to Japan as a foreign student. Scotland required less persuasion, so airplane rides from southeast Europe to its northwest started to become frequent. It was close enough to visit home for holidays, for the summer, whenever something came up- my hometown friends and family visited me in Scotland, too. Everyone joked that I had turned airplanes into commuter buses. It was hard to object. After all, I used to travel back and forth with only my backpack.
In reality, it was the airports which had changed the most for me. I started travelling alone, via the same airports, the same stops. Soon, they felt familiar almost comfortable. But I was never looking forward to going to or being at one. Went missing was not only the excitement for new experiences but also the sense of “parting” at an airport or with the airport itself. In the past, when I travelled somewhere as a visitor or tourist, I could say goodbye with a city at its airport. However, during that period certain airports started to feel unavoidable, places of habit. There was usually a plan to return to them, too, especially the Thessaloniki International Airport, which I used the most.
Narita International Airport has been echoing similar familiarity now but also profound emotions. It is a place that causes me both relief after such long flights and anxiety for the responsibilities that await me. However, it often serves as a sobering realisation, as well. My arrival means that I still have a reason, a right, and the luxury to live and study in Japan.
Very soon, I’ll be seeing the Thessaloniki airport again. Its image already transformed once more, for the past couple of years it has become a place where a variety of affectionate gestures find expression, where a bittersweet melancholy overwhelms me, whenever I am pulling suitcases full of souvenirs into and out of its gates. Nowadays, there is always someone waiting at the airport to pick me up, family or friends who make sure I have passed the security gates, bringing back the lost excitement in the air. What is more, this particular airport has become part of “home” itself as well. Arriving home starts with arriving at the airport, instead of, for example, arriving at my parents’ house. In other words, despite feeling my feet currently tied to my Japanese location, touching base continues to happen where people I feel closer to my heart live.
Yet, that is not limited to Greece. Over the course of the years, I’ve met many friends whose own path has lead to different parts of the world. Countries and airports that were not originally included in my mental map, have now popped up on it, and have become potential destinations because they are home to people I feel connected to. In turn, airports are hosts to the vessels which connect these destinations, whether it is aircrafts or people. Accordingly, I, too, become an associating link among these acquaintances and places. In the future, there is a specific journey that I would like to make. Rather than travelling back and forth from my base, I would like to circle the world via connecting one airport to another in order to see familiar faces in unfamiliar places until I finally manage to return to my starting point, wherever that may have been.
