Tomorrow night, I return home. And no, not in the sense of where I live or where my post goes to... but my spiritual home.
That is, of course, to those who know me well - Lithuania. The country I was born in, where my Mother is from, and for me the one place in the world I love more than anywhere.
I will be staying in the most nostalgic of places - my grandmother's old flat, which we have kept even since she passed as a holiday home, in the loosest sense of the word. For it is not in a holiday destination, oh no, far from it. It is in the small village of Baisogala, flat bang in the middle of Lithuania. You quite simply do not get more rural, more village, and more Lithuanian than Baisogala. It is so far removed from anywhere a tourist might visit that its name loosely translates to "the worst place."
Yet, to me, it is quite simply... home.
From the smell of the decades old wooden floors and dust-filled knitted blankets and duvet covers, to the centuries old photos of my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. It's a place where there is little to do, yet I always find I've never spent enough time there when I leave.
Even in the darkest depths of winter, where temperatures will reach -25 degrees Celsius during my stay, I love it like no other place on earth.
It's home.
No comments:
Post a Comment