Living abroad, I have always been a foreigner. It was only when I could afford to visit Greece that I realized why.

 

My grandparents on my father’s side were both Greek. She was born in Hydra and he was Athenian.

 

They met in Spain, where she was raised and lived with her folks, and he was working, establishing port services for the Greek government. He was graduated in Mining Engineering, in Paris. She came from a family of skaphandrists and learned the ability to treat diver’s impairments with massage therapy.

 

In Spain, they got married and had 3 daughters. Because of his job, they lived in several different places in Europe, always harbor countries: Netherlands, England, France… Their 4th daughter was born in Marseille and baptized at the Greek Orthodox Church in Liverpool. All their children were registered as Greek citizens at local embassies.

 

In 1929, with the Great Depression, they had to leave Europe. They immigrated to Brazil, where they had 3 more children: 2 sons and 1 daughter. My father was the last one. When he was 4, his father, 20 years older than his mother, passed away.

 

My Grandmother had to use her therapeutic skills to support the entire family in a foreign country, when most women were still solely housewives. She ultimately introduced Physical Therapy in Brazil, in the early 1930s, working and training full classes of nurses and being granted merit honors by the Head and Chief of Orthopedics at the University of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, the capital at that time.

 

I lost my Grandmother when I was 8. My memories of her are few but precious. My parents divorced and I grew up with little contact with my Greek half. In spite of that, I always felt Greece in my blood and had the urge to retrieve my routes. Only when I had the chance to be there, I understood that it was the place where I belonged. I found my so long enclosed identity, and decided I had to move to Greece for good.

 

The problem is papers. In order to apply for the Greek citizenship, I needed to prove my origins with a family document issued in Greece. I had none. My father died without having ever applied for him or for me. No family member had anything, not even some useful information.

 

So I started a long, laborious search in loco. I had a lawyer in Athens going after records in all possible registration offices, but me having no clue in what prefecture of Athens my grandfather was born, nothing was found. Not even the Army had anything, because it was too long ago – he was born in 1873.

 

My last hope was Hydra. So I went there, and I recovered my Grandmother’s birth certificate. Reading it, I found out that her family was actually from Symi, sailors and deep divers who left Dodecanese because back then they were forbidden to practice sponge fishing. My grandmother was born in Hydra in 1894. Symi was the very last territory liberated and added back to Greece, only in 1948.

 

The family went to Hydra to try to make a living there, but there were no sponges. In Spain, however, there were corals. So they moved there, taking the diving apparatus for the first time outside of Greece, in the early 1900s. They established themselves in Cadaques, Balearic Sea, and did really well.

 

Grabbing the fact that my routes were actually Symian, I went to the island in search for family members. And I found them. Not only that. I managed to get ahold of my closest relative, my grandmother’s grandnephew, still living in Cadaqués, a truly Greek-looking beach town, where he owns a Greek restaurant (www.facebook.com/pages/Es-Grec).

 

In Hydra, I also searched for family records at the Museum of Historical Archives. I found many references to a relative of mine, a captain from Symi, who was in Hydra in 1825, collecting funds and making arrangements for the Aegean nuclei of the Greek Revolution. He gathered a fleet of 30 ships at Psara. As if that were not enough, his war ship had my name (users.sch.gr/fstav/epanastasis).

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Looking for further information, I simply threw the words “captain” and “Symi” on Google, and what was not my surprise to see that another captain from my family, a deep diver from Symi, was the man who recovered the Mechanism of Antikythera, an ancient Greek complex artifact, the first computer analogue in History, now kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (youtu.be/UpLcnAIpVRA).

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Naturally, after this successful odyssey, which granted me not only documents, but also family, history and extra pride bonuses, my wish to bring my blood back home grew stronger than ever.

 

I am an Eye Doctor and there are few Ophthalmologists in Greece. Due to the crisis, many specialists have left. I wait for the end of a long, painful, bureaucratic process, so that I can start working here.

 

Meanwhile, I try what is in my reach to stay somewhat close and to do something for my nation and my people. This website is my declaration of love to Greece, my homeland, where I hope to spend the rest of my days.