Memoir/travelogue set in GREECE

31st May 2023

Unpacking for Greece: Travel in a Land of Fortresses, Fables, Ferries and Feta by Sally Jane Smith, memoir/travelogue set in GREECE.

Not all transformative journeys are life-changing in a positive sense — as author Sally Jane Smith  discovered on a solo trip to Sri Lanka.  After a whirlwind week of rough rides, exhilarating challenges, and magnificent landscapes, she found herself immersed in the traveler’s worst nightmare: a near fatal accident.  On January 27, 2006, hurtling along on a dilapidated bus, she has an epiphany: the humble tasks of daily life shared with locals is what makes travel so fulfilling. “It is a cruel irony,” she writes in the introduction to her new travel memoir Unpacking for Greece, “that this realization struck just minutes before we slammed, head-on, into another bus.”

Photo: the author

Sally was one of the lucky ones, and as the only foreigner on the bus, received preferential treatment. But the serious injuries she sustained—physically, mentally, and morally—cramped her life for almost a decade afterwards.  Chronic pain, physical impairment, depression, guilt, and fear robbed her of a big piece of her identity:  the thrill of “untamed” solo travel.  “My ferocious appetite for taking on the world had vanished.” Among other things – she could not bear the idea of setting foot on a bus again.  Her recovery unfolded with the help of yoga, a supportive partner, a rewarding job, and pleasant lifestyle – which many of readers will surely envy. Then changes came to her workplace, and what had been a dream job turned sour.  Trapped in “Middlescence” – the mindless complacency of middle age, she came to understand that solo travel was the only way out

Ten years after her fateful accident, we find her hopping aboard a bus on a solo tour of Greece, “unpacking” the emotional baggage she had carried since the crash. What follows is a delightful account of her journey by train, plane, foot, and bus from Athens to major tourist sites and out of the way spots for slow travelers – Meteora, the Saronic Gulf, the Peloponnese,  Santorini, Rhodes, and more –told with zest and gentle self-deprecating humor, documented along the way with SM posts. She regales her readers with plenty of nitty-gritty details of what it’s really like to travel light and solo: broken trolley handles, thieving ATMS, washbasin laundry, solitary dining, along with a genuine touch of romance with a local Adonis.

Photo: the author

This journey will also prove transforming for the intrepid author. Looking for a yoga retreat, she stumbles upon a writers retreat, where she is accepted as a guest, even though she had never thought of writing a book. Here she will discover her future vocation which will lead to a successful new career as a writer and solo travel influencer: @journeysinpages.

Historical research into heritage sites was part of her previous career – and she brings the skills honed there to this book, providing brief histories for the places she visits, alongside her own impressions. Deep below her narrative runs another current however – a search for the mother – the reverse of the old Demeter-Persephone myth which underpinned the Eleusinian mysteries. On this trip, the author has brought along a telegraphic travel journal her mother kept on a trip to Greece in 1978, discovering in those scanty lines unknown sides to her mother’s personality in which she finds surprising echoes of herself.

What better place to search for your origins – than the storied land of Greece, where every square inch of terrain is infused with myth, and every paving stone bears witness to the wanderlust of thousands of years and millions of feet? Part guidebook, recovery memoir, and odyssey au féminin,  Unpacking for Greece is an entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking  companion for those who dream of discovering a new self through travel.

Linda Lappin for the TripFiction Team

Linda is the author of Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne and The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook.

Connect with Linda via her website and on IG @linda_lappin_author  and  Twitter @LLitaly  and  YouTube @LLitaly and blog

Connect with Sally Jane Smith on Twitter @JourneysInPages and IG @JourneysInPages and Facebook @JourneysInPages

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