From Gramos to COVID-19: eight decades filled with ups and downs, all viewed through equally numerous images that the author recalls more as stimuli than as testimonies.

From Eisenhower's visit to Athens (1959), to a meeting at Orly Airport (1979) and a trial in Strasbourg (1999), the pages of this personal narrative feature, in addition to more or less familiar faces, ideas and arguments connected by a thread: to move forward, with a European Greece open to all the major challenges.

This is not at all self-evident in a country that, every 15-20 years, seems to wager with itself to step backward. Hence the title Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, a paraphrase of another, much more famous one, chosen to indicate that somewhere around 2035, another sharp turn awaits us.