PORTES NO. 11 EDITOR'S NOTE

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Living our daily lives, we often get lost in the repetitive rhythm of reality. Then, suddenly, something unexpected awakens us—a song, a familiar scent, a photograph, a long-forgotten object rediscovered. In an instant, we are transported—back to a place we once knew, to people we loved, to moments long passed.

What floods in is more than memory. It is essence. It is yearning. It is… nostalgia.

PORTES No. 11 pays tribute to that elusive feeling—the way we remember things not exactly as they were, but as they made us feel. This issue is a journey through Greece in the 1950s–70s, captured beautifully in photographs and artwork, alongside stories dedicated to a golden era of Greek cinema, art, music, and beyond.

The sense of longing and awe is something I often experience while traveling, suspended between earth and sky. I’ve imagined what it would feel like boarding an Olympic Airways flight in the 1960s, when air travel possessed a rare charm. In those years, the Greek National Tourism Organisation unveiled its iconic travel posters, beckoning the world to visit Greece—the most beautiful place on earth. It is this yearning to return again and again to this magical place, that fuels the stories collected in this issue.

As a child visiting Greece, summers were filled with adventures, and when we were not out exploring, the steady background of black-and-white Greek cinema playing on TV guided our imagination. One film that never left me was Koritsia Ston Ilio. I recall the simple yet striking scenes and the haunting theme song, Ena Prwino. My sisters and I used to playfully say that music was so “giagia’s era,” since she has always been so “Greek cinema” in style. How fitting that both Anne Lonnberg, the young girl in the film, and my giagia herself are featured in this issue—Anne reflecting on her unique experience discovering, and being discovered in, Greece, and giagia sharing her story of immigrating to America.

THANK YOU to the wonderful contributors who shared their passions and life’s work with us, making this our most iconic (and largest) issue yet—the result of over 1,000 hours of collective effort! And to our readers, may it carry you, even briefly, back to moments of wonder and nostalgia. Enjoy!