My best friend Marilyn and I made a deal back in 2003 when we were flatmates in LA. My return to Oz was imminent and we knew we wouldn’t see each other again for at least a year (it ended up being closer to two). Such are the perils of being best friends across continents.

To console ourselves, we decided that by age 26 we’d go to Italy.  Why 26?  Because after that we would be “too close to 30″, which is embarrassing reasoning, in retrospect.  Why Italy?  ’cause it sounded cool and I like pizza (possibly less to do with it being Italian and more to do with the Ninja Turtles – more embarrassing reasoning here).

Or perhaps it was an English teacher we had back in high school who planted the idea in our heads.  Mrs Wells (I’m supposed to be on a first-name basis with her now that it’s been 10 years since I graduated, but it still feels weird!) made English inspiring and fun. She’s at least partially responsible for the professional pedantry and language nerdery I’m known for today.

Think of her as the cheeky, delightful English lady version of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, except without the boring poetry, miserable teenage boy themes and Williams’ renowned body hair. And from memory, we never stood on our desks saying “oh captain, my captain”…

Okay, so it was nothing like Dead Poets Society.  But it was cool.  There were tears when our advanced English class discovered we weren’t getting her for our final year. Tears, I tell you!

One day in year 10, Mrs Wells was explaining the word “glint” to us.  She said that when we got to Florence (“when” she said, like it was par for our course in life – told you she was the best!) and saw all the goodies in the marketplace there, there’d be a ”glint” in our eyes.  It sounded adventurous and exotic, like pirates and treasure and bandannas.

I, of course, took this to mean that we had to travel to Florence in order to genuinely grasp the meaning of a single word – which was sound reasoning as far as I was concerned. Maybe Mrs Wells told year after year of students this and was receiving kickbacks from the Italian Tourism Board but, still, it was good enough for me.

Marilyn and I mentioned “Italy 2006″ for years but, as it turned out, she ended up going with other friends in 2005!  I could’ve gone with them, but the crappily paid, disastrously horrid job I had at the time wouldn’t allow it.  So I missed Italy, and our dynamic duo travel plans “before we’re too old” never happened.

Still, we knew we had to go somewhere, sometime…

“How about Greece?” I suggested out of the blue – almost.

“Ooh, Greece!” Marilyn enthused.

We picked a year, too – this time, 2008.  Sure we’d be closer to 30, but that didn’t seem old anymore…

“Italy 2006″ had become “Greece 2008″ – and, no, it’s not because I paint the entire Mediterranean with the same brush.  Though if I did, it’d be cobalt.

I had images of aquamarine seas, azure skies, white houses with blue doors, olive trees, smashing plates, lazy afternoons and late nights, narrow cobbled streets, and old dudes with worry beads.

But there was another reason for Greece 2008 – a more important one, perhaps. It’s the reason I didn’t really acknowledge when I first made the suggestion to Marilyn.

You see, not everybody knows this but I’m half Greek.  But I was raised in a predominantly Anglo nation, surrounded by Anglo relatives, and befriending people from all over the world. As a result, I didn’t see myself as being any culture in particular (or, as some would call it, ’Australian’).

I never saw any point in talking or even thinking about the other half of my heritage because it really was, as they say, “All Greek to me…”

But then it struck – it being my Late Twenties Quest For Meaning Or Whatever (LTQFMOW – catchy, no?). As part of my LTQFMOW, I set out to learn more about the other half of my genes, to see if there is more to me than my upbringing.  It’s that old question of nature vs nurture - can culture be in the blood too?

So I booked a flight to Athens, enrolled in Greek language classes, and found myself eating more feta (though that may have more to do with the award-winning cheeses I tried in the Hunter Valley, but details-schmetails - we’re talking Important Issues here).

Would I have things in common with the Greeks just because I’m related to some of them?  I guess I’d find out soon enough – and before age 30, no less.