The island beyond the coast

Hans Christian Andersen, deeply sorrowful by unexpected events in his life, in the autumn of 1865, decides to travel to Stockholm to meet his beloved friend, Fredrika Bremer. A sad event that occurred shortly after their reunion brought back memories and unforgettable moments he had experienced during his journey in Athens, Acropolis, Piraeus and Greek islands in 1841. The vividness of his inexhaustible imagination is engaged in narrating extraordinary stories of ninety-three other foreign travelers which took place there and he could write about but never did. The American writer and poet, Bayard Taylor, accompanies Hans Christian Andersen in his story-telling. In 1856, after descending from the Arctic zone, Taylor visits him in Copenhagen and then he travels to Greece to fulfill the strong desire he had always had since he was a child. Unfolding his feelings, facts and images of the Greek land, Greece appears to Taylor as the “football field across Europe”, like the motto written with black paint on the monument of the national hero Karaiskakis located in Piraeus.