Vasso Savanaki

Vasso Savanaki comes from Velestino, Magnesia. She used to live in Athens and worked for a multinational company as a product manager. She notes: “My everyday life was very different from what I had imagined as a child in the countryside. Stress, rush, being far from nature...”. In February 2020, all that changed with the lockdown due to the pandemic. “I started feeling pressure; there was a pervasive fear; I was suffocating; I was not used to living locked up in an apartment all day long. After 15 days of quarantine at home alone, I decided to leave and go to my village or another rural place. I was only working from home anyway, and that was the plan for quite a long time.”.

She came to Rapsani because of her friendship with a local who hosted her. She already knew the village, was familiar with life in a small place, and understood from the beginning that it was very nice to work in such a beautiful landscape. However, not everything was rosy... “The first difficulty came right from the third day: suddenly the internet was no longer our ally, and I had no way to attend an online business meeting. This stressed me a lot because I was afraid that they would tell me, ‘Come back; we doubt that you will be able to cope with the demands of the job’. I was shaken by this difficulty and thought I should go back in order to be able to fulfil my working obligations.”. But that was not all: “Another thing that made it difficult for me is that it’s not nice to sleep, wake up, eat, and work in the same place. I wish there was an open space to work, indeed something like the library, where it wouldn’t be crowded.”. The third thing she would like is to have a place to stay so that she doesn’t have to be hosted for long.

To sum up, Vasso Savanaki claims that “housing, a place to work, and the internet are the three elements that make up the ideal condition for a young worker to leave the difficult city and work in a nice place, to be productive, have a good time, and be able to work and walk in nature at the same time.”. She concludes that if Rapsani can offer these three things, it is an ideal destination.