Photography and story by Theo Vranas
I keep saying to myself “Don’t repeat yourself, don’t repeat yourself!” It’s hard not to repeat myself when it comes to snowboarding and my inexplicable feelings I have for it. It’s hard not to repeat myself when I’m constantly saying that I miss it.
Every single year. Four months of unexplained, absurd, immature obsession about snow and snowboarding and the constant lack of both of them. It’s a routine. Eventually, there are times, very few of them, that this excessive, worthless routine is broken.
Winter is still here and thanks to a few people that I call friends, the opportunity arose and I was suddenly in deep snow just an hour away from the centre of Athens. Snow, burned trees, exploded tree trunks, African dust, silence and desolation. A few hours on a landscape like this one can trip your mind in multiple directions of illogical thinking. Yet there is this fun little snowy playground built by none other than master shaper Dimitris Liossis & Co that somehow dissolves anything that has to do with mindless negativity. So, contrary to the deafening silence of the mysterious landscape you can hear shovels digging snow, grunts, puffs, squeaking bindings, slashing, grabbing, giggling, laughing and cheering. The essence of what surrounds snowboarding activities.
Myself, on the other hand, strapped in once, just to get to the spot. I wasn’t disappointed though as the scenery was quite stunning, beautiful and eerie at the same time. Either way, if I had chosen to try out the kicker, chances are, I would have ended up like the German guard in the movie “Top Secret!”. Yep, that movie is so old and underrated like my age and my abilities to write a paragraph as bad as this one.
