He wanted the farewell to be a celebration. With a glass of wine and music from the 80s, with people who loved her during her short life – friends, relatives, former classmates from the Faculty of Communications and Media of EKPA, colleagues from film and television, where she worked until 2014, but also the most the last of the magazines “Kathimerini” – to answer yesterday in the courtyard of the 1st Athenian cemetery, near the civil funeral hall.

Those of us who worked with Maria Kovaiu, who passed away on Monday, May 29 at the age of 47, will remember her for her soul and professionalism, for her directness, disarming honesty and special humor, for her dedication and love for words, which she cared about. both in texts that she signed or translated herself, and in those that she edited before printing. But she will also be remembered for the courage and sensible judgment with which she dealt with her illness, learning to live with it, with its ups and downs, coolly and sincerely, no matter how often her daily life was difficult. Moreover, the eight years that we shared in the magazines “Kathimerini” were accompanied by illness. In each dive, he retreated a little, just a little. And as soon as he regained his strength, he hurried to give the “gift”. “I feel good, I can, send me a job.”

An integral part of the newly established Kathimerini travel and tourism publications department, which she joined in 2015 after deciding to change her professional path, Maria Kovaiou brought with her an excellent knowledge of Greek and English, in which she wrote with the same comfort and quality. . She also brought her passion for literature, film, music, Lindy Hop and favorites of Tsumerka, her place of origin. And her endless creativity, which she channeled into her passions, including: making handmade travel diaries that she shared with her Instagram followers and exchanging postcards with people from all over the world on postcrossing platforms.

She used to say that in another life—old or not—she could be a 1920s flapper, like the fictional persona Aurelia Gould behind the eponymous blog she ran until 2017: independent, energetic, and deeply cultured. The girl who danced the Charleston beautifully.