Personal Narrative: My Life In Denmark

Sanctuary
I just spent two weeks volunteering at a donkey sanctuary. During my time there, I managed to lock myself out twice, have a donkey head-butt me, and trip over dog after dog, but apart from the occasional slip-up here and there, it was a stunning experience.

I arrived on Crete 5th May, setting my life in Denmark on pause and starting a new adventure. Moving from a busy Scandinavian city to a tiny village in the mountains of Crete created quite the culture shock that still haunts me after a month of living here. The roads of a big city are like veins, every crossroad is a pulse, every human is a blood cell and somewhere in the city there is a heart, whether it be a city square, a palace or a church. The whole city becomes one living organism. In the small village of Anogeia everything flows silently and discretely. At first glance it seems as if everything stands still, but if you stand and watch for a while you will realise that it has it’s own unique flow. The farmers driving through with their hay and straw, the

There was not a sound in the village, since all the buildings had been abandoned. Anatoli no longer had a pulse; it was an empty town, apart from the occasional pensioner here or there that had moved into the empty shell that was Anatoli. The ominous silence and dark interiors of the dilapidated buildings gave me a reason to hurry back before it got dark. I asked Alistair the day after why all the buildings were abandoned. He said that people simply did not want to live in the village anymore, so they packed up their stuff and left, leaving their houses to slowly fall apart. Now the houses are used as shelter and sleeping areas for the stray dogs that roam the streets. Most of the abandoned houses are still owned, though the owners do not try to sell them, they simply left them there to become rubble. Why these people did not sell the houses is still a mystery to