The blue and yellow flying dolphins don’t just take me to Aegina, but they take me back to the most carefree and happy memories. I can close my eyes and picture the line of passengers, waiting to get aboard into this retro looking yellow thing, impatient and bored in the same time, as most of them “fly” daily, with the flying dolphin: there are businessmen wearing suites, with a folded newspaper under their arm, there are people with bags full of flowers; roses, carnations and myrtle branches, cut only minutes ago from a cool Aegina yard, the kind of yard that stays hidden behind an iron door with a hand shaped door knocker… There are people holding bags with fresh fish inside; how fortunate; the line of passengers is forming meters away from the city’s small but charming fish market. There are tourists and there are students. There am I too, all cheerful and lively if the ticket in my hand is not the “return” to Athens ticket.
You see, Aegina is my childhood miracle place. I have no other word for the experience of playing chase among the pistachio trees, for getting lost in the countryside riding a bicycle or for watching the sunset from a neoclassical roof top hearing the edgy doves before they go to sleep; it’s like a red sea made of the city’s ceramic roof tiles that spreads all the way down until it meets the water. Aegina is full of stories. But most of all, Aegina is a walk at the port, a kind of 60s flair gazing the sailing boats and the old mansions. After all, most Aegina stories start and end at that beautiful port.
Dedicated to Spyros and Zaneta, Manolis and Lefteris
photos by christos drazos
words by maria alipranti