From the Grammo to covid-19: eight decades of takeoffs and derailments, all seen through numerous images that the author recalls more as focal points than as testimonies. From Eisenhower's visit to Athens (1959), to a meeting at Orly Airport (1979) and a trial in Strasbourg (1999), in the pages of this personal narrative, faces - more or less familiar - ideas and arguments parade, connected by a thread: to move forward, with a Greece that is European and open to all major challenges. Something far from obvious in a country that, every 15-20 years, seems to bet with itself to backpedal. Hence the title Two steps forward, one step back, a paraphrase of someone else, much more well-known of course, chosen to show that somewhere, around 2035, another abrupt turn awaits us.