And, to my surprise, the place didn't change at all! Surprisingly, many of my childhood friends from there are still living there, and they haven't forgotten about me! The main place of the village - the church - was completely reworked. It had a new bell tower and a new coat of paint. It was one of the most fun activities I've done in a while, just catching up with old friends over some beers, visiting the places of my childhood and meeting dear old folks.
Gosh that must have been interesting. I wish I had an old place like that, which I could go back to. The places I grew up are like cities and they have changed so much that one can't even find your way around them. Very few familiar places can be located and certainly no friends. They all seem to be long gone. My parents also moved around a lot when I was young.
I grew up in the big city and it is all new now, most of the people I went to school left the area to get away from the cold and better jobs. My hometown was big during the steel times and suffered when the jobs left the city.
I also mostly grew up in a city, but I used to visit my grandparents a lot during summers as a child. Both my grandfathers settled down in nearby villages. So far, I visited the one my mother grew up in. I'll probably visit the other one next weekend, but I never did like that one as much as the one I've already visited.
So glad that we had that chance to visit a place of your past. It is always nice to step back in time to a place the holds so many memories. A place so dear to your heart. Even though places have changed, people have moved on and time has past, you still have all the wonderful memories of the way things use to be. Reconnecting with old friends and reminiscing is good for the soul.
It really is fantastic to reconnect with faces from the past, but it is still very important to keep looking at the future and live in the present, or else you risk getting tangled in the past with no way out.
It's great to visit a place where you were being raised in the past, because all the memories are back with you, and if your best friends remember you, it's even better! You can spend time with them and share your thoughts, talk about your life and just take a rant really. I hope that you enjoyed your stay at your grandmother's village.
This reminds me of my first visit to my mother's hometown when I already had a family. Previous to that, my last visit was when I was still a teenager. After 20 years or so, I was asked to be a wedding sponsor of a niece in the province so I had to go there. The place looked so different but my cousins looked the same although they just grew older. With me, everyone's saying that I became chubby because I was quite skinny when I was a teenager. It was nice to bond with my cousins because we had lots of memories during our childhood days.