Naration:

The place where I grew up is called Pentaplatanos of Giannitsa.
It is a village in the Pella region with three thousand residents.

When I was young, my stimuli came from the main straight road of the village, that well-known straight road.
A single road with everything necessary: a mini market, a church, a school, and a football field. That’s it.

The first ten years of my life I spent outside,
in the square and at school, from morning until night.
We played football, volleyball, hide and seek, and any other game we could imagine.
Endless hours of laughter, joy, and fights, far from screens.

Back then, the bicycle was essential.
When we met in the afternoons, we compared who had the nicest one and who could do the best wheelie.
Then we took to the roads, and the farther we went, the better we felt.
We were free and did a lot of stupid things.

At noon we threw olives at cars and then ran away.
We built ramps for bikes in other people’s fields,
and when we were noticed, we disappeared.

I will remember these years forever.
I grew up as a person in the village, outside the house.

Before I turned eleven, we moved to Thessaloniki.
It took me two years to go out of the house alone.
My mother wouldn’t let me; she was afraid.
My life changed radically and very suddenly.

Suddenly I was locked inside the house and watched TV all day,
until I made my first friends and started going out in the neighborhood.
In Depo, near Kalamaria.

It is not a rough neighborhood, but compared to my village, it opened my eyes.
I met new cultures and different ways of life,
started listening to hip hop
and tried my first cigarette.

In the neighborhood I met many people, examples to avoid,
but very few to follow.

When we were young, the groups were all fine with each other.
As the years passed, someone would eventually do some stupid thing
and conflicts would arise between areas.

I was fifteen when I understood that in the jungle you are alone.
It is not bad to bond with people;
in the wild, packs survive longer.

Year after year I saw more things.
From the first drug user shooting up on the pavement
to scams for a few extra euros.

Kids my age trying whatever they could find
and others rolling their eyes from too much alcohol.
Everything is part of the game.

But you have to be careful where you sit.
The neighborhood truly raised me, not the village.
The city showed me the path to become who I am.

The sidewalks and the dirty benches.
That’s how I grew up.