What began by digitising archival imagery from my family’s holiday albums turned into an exploration of magical valleys, old towns, mystical forests, lakesides, as well as reconnecting with familiar sites that have not changed for decades. The photographs in family albums portray the way my parents used to spend summers in Slovakia during socialism; when the freedom of movement was extremely restricted. To travel and see the world was to be allowed only under very special and specific circumstances, unless one was connected to the communist party, which is why many could only travel locally. Through this work, I familiarise myself with the locations from the found photographs tied to my parents’ youth and memories of vacationing in Slovakia, though also returning to places ingrained as my own “childhood sites”. By the Creek, Opposite of a Meadow represents an allegory to a dream-like place in rural Slovakia, where I used to spend almost every summer and winter as a child, situated by the creek and facing a verdant meadow opposite. Through reconnecting with my roots and analysing my relationship with the native land that I left as a young woman, this projects searches for the traces of my memories and childhood scattered in the contemporary Slovak landscape. The photographs portray nostalgia for youth in Slovakia, its complex political and historical climate, with the focus on places and people that I have left behind when moving away. Moreover, it examines a transgenerational connection to our native environment, including understanding the remnants of socialism that continue to be present in countless locations across the country.