By Nikolas Bardis

The clock shows almost 08:00 and the first rays of the sun paint the horizon with red colors. The tranquility of the place is almost eerie. In the background, a flock of flamingos can be heard, which have woken up and are looking for their breakfast in the Delta shrimp. Mrs. Artemis, however, with her husband, Mr. Nikos, have been awake for hours, and after making the first coffee, they entered the boat for fishing. “At 25 I got into the boat, and I haven’t gotten out since,” says the lady of Delta, the only remaining female fisherman in the Evros Delta, speaking to the camera of “Where Greece is”, the new show of SKAI, with Evlampia Revis and Giorgos Kourdis.

By her side, however, she always had her husband, and while they have now been together for 50 years, she was not separated from him “not even for a moment” as she characteristically tells us. The marriage may have been intimate, but love came and stayed. It has kept them together all these years, through thick and thin, in an area far from the comforts of modern life. The truth is, they may not have had much in their cabin, but they had the most important thing: love. And this love kept their presence alive in the area all these years.

Tirelessly both of them, like all the fishermen, breeders and hunters of the area, give life to the place and keep Greece alive in a difficult border. And the Greek flag is always there and waving proudly. “Each hut has a Greek flag”says Mrs. Artemis with watery eyes, “and there is no greater thing than that”. “If it wasn’t for us, the Turks would have taken the area”he emphatically points out.

However, the issue for the residents of the area is not the neighbors, Turkish biowrestler fishermen, but the state. They want a support, a help, a presence, to be able to continue their difficult task: to protect the borders of Greece and at the same time the borders of Europe. For the residents of Athens and Thessaloniki, Evros may be the end of our country, but in reality it is the beginning. The staircase of Europe. Greece starts from there and we all owe a big thank you to these akrites, who are the unsung heroes of our time. Tomorrow, a new day will dawn in the Evros Delta, and life in this great river will flow at full speed to the Aegean…