I rented a bike, or rather, the Kavallahuset curator Elisabeth helped me rent one. With the camera placed in my backpack, I cycled through the surroundings of Kavalla, each roll of film filled like pages in a diary, each picture a sketch of days that floated by in a timeless fog. With Elisabeth’s help, I also got to meet two people who quickly became my best Greek friends – Demitris and Elisabeth.

There is something special when you meet people you immediately feel a connection with, as if you have always known them. Together we explored the surroundings of Kavalla – far east on birdwatching trips, through forests with deep ravines, and at dinner tables where families gathered for late dinners. In the meantime, I continued to photograph, and the rolls of exposed film slowly but surely filled the plastic bag I had brought with me from a store with a red logo ICA EKO Mellringe. It was a time of return. A return to photography as it once began – for the pure pleasure, for the inherent desire to express oneself through images. I cycled lap after lap around Kavalla, visiting ruins and nunneries, villages high in the mountains and bird sanctuaries where I let the birds overshadow the camera. Eleonora’s falcons, Balkan woodpeckers, Eastern Mediterranean stonechats, Cetti’s warblers, Southern nightingales, Alpine swifts and spur lapwings followed each other like notes in a visual impression. The city became my living landscape that I explored at all hours of the day.

I met people on late bar visits, greeted acquaintances during early morning walks and exchanged words with my uncle on the corner every time I passed. Towards the end of my stay, I gave a lecture about my photography for the Kavalla Photo Society. It was an evening filled with warm meetings and conversations that enriched my time here even more. So if the beginning of my journey was filled with hesitation, it dissolved the moment I set foot in Kavalla. Here I found a place that felt like home, for real. Kavalla became the place for me, and I know that I will return here time and time again, to continue my sketching, just photographing simply with desire and out of a need to express oneself in images. And I look forward to seeing my newfound friends, Demitris and Elisabeth, who are now a part of my life. I am grateful to the director of the Swedish House in Kavalla, she helped me meet the people I needed to meet to land softly even in Greek Kavalla.

Thanks also to all the other staff at the Sweden House in Kavala for all the nice things you do, and thanks to all the other guests in the house. You made my two weeks here something completely different than what I imagined when I left Sweden.

/Roine