A Trip to Ancient Greece

22 – 24 June 2018

During my journey through Europe I decided that I would also pay a brief visit to Greece. I wouldn’t go all the way to Athens, because transportation would be quite expensive. Instead, I hope to one day do a separate trip to Greece and explore more of the country. During this visit I mainly visited Thessaloniki in the north. Thessaloniki is an ancient port city located in the northwestern corner of the Aegean Sea. The city is second only to Athens, and is renowned for its nightlife and vibrant cultural life. Thessaloniki has a rich history and throughout the city you can find many ruins and ancient structures. Some examples are the Roman Rotonda, the Arch of Galerius and the iconic White Tower. These buildings have witnessed the rise and fall of several great empires, like the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire. Thessaloniki used to be full of mosques and the city’s skyline was dominated by their minarets, similar to Istanbul today. However, when the city was liberated from the Ottomans the people destroyed all the minarets, except for one. This one stands next to the Roman Rotonda and it is unclear why only this one survived. The northern region in which Thessaloniki is located, is named Macedonia. This can be rather confusing since their neighboring country is also named Macedonia. The Macedonian region itself is thousands of years old and is even mentioned in the Bible. The region covered all of modern-day Macedonia and northern Greece and it was not really a country, but more a region with its own culture. This is one of the reasons why Greece doesn’t agree with the name of their neighbor and wants them to change their name. Of course, there is also a lot of politics involved and it is said that Macedonia chose this name because they also wanted to make the Greek region Macedonia a part of their country. It can be quite a sensitive topic, depending on who you talk to. This is a feud between neighbors and a lot of emotions are involved concerning this search for identity.

My host in Thessaloniki was Aristotle, a boy slightly younger than me who moved to the city for his studies. During my visit he was actually very busy studying for his final exam, after which he would return to his parental home in a small town for the summer. I was really grateful that he was okay with hosting me during this period, since it’s not always that easy to find a host. During my first day I explored the city and I looked on Couchsurfing for people who were willing to hangout. As it turned out someone was showing his friend around the city and I could join them. The Greek guy knew quite a lot about the city and its history and it was an interesting tour. After the little tour we went to get some lunch at a popular and cheap place. Meanwhile, two other friends of his had joined us as well and we all had lunch together. After lunch we sat in the backyard of the restaurant and two Spanish girls joined us. In the end we were with two people from Greece, two from Italy, two from Spain and then there was me from Holland. We were sitting on some crates outside, while we talked about our travels and shared some raki (local strong alcoholic beverage). We had a good time. After this lunch I continued to explore the city on my own. In the evening my host Aristotle had enough of all the studying and we went to get something to drink at a bar. While we were sitting there with our drinks, I mentioned that I saw quite some people playing games at these bars during the day. He told me that the game they were playing was backgammon and he offered to teach me how to play. So that night I learned to how play backgammon as we were enjoying the nice weather and our drinks.

On Saturday I went on a day trip to Olympiada. Or, more accurately, I was going to the ancient ruins of Stagira, next to Olympiada. Stagira is the birthplace of the famous philosopher Aristotle, who once was the teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle himself had Plato as his teacher, so they had quite some influence on the course of history. The ruins of Stagira are beautifully located on a hill overlooking the bay of Olympiada. The ruins are in the middle of nature and it’s very quiet and peaceful. After my visit to Stagira I went for a swim at a nearby beach, after which I walked back to the town. In the late afternoon I arrived back in Thessaloniki. I had been in touch with Raquel, the woman from Peru whom I had met in Bucharest. It turned out that she had just arrived in Thessaloniki today as well, so after I came back we decided to meet each other. It was very nice to hear how she had continued her journey from Romania through Bulgaria to Istanbul and from there to Thessaloniki. She told me that there was a Greek party at her hostel, so I joined her on her way there. It was a birthday party, but they had invited a popular local band to play, and they were amazing! I also met some fellow travelers and we had a great night. When the party had finished, Aristotle invited me to come to the bar where he was with his friends. It was a small place but it was packed with young Greeks who were enjoying the live music. The ambience was amazing and it soon turned out into a Greek party where everyone was singing along and people starting to dance spontaneously in the Greek way, while their friends were hitting the floor with their hand as they do in the Greece. Pitchers of raki got passed around and it was an absolutely amazing night!

On Sunday I slept in and I stayed at home. I video-called my parents, as I do every now and again and I started packing my stuff. Even though it was only a brief visit to Greece, I do think I can say that I’ve really gotten the “Greek experience” and I loved it. My next destination is Skopje, the capital of Macedonia (or FYROM; the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia), and, as it happens, so was Raquel’s. This is why we met at the train station to travel to Skopje together. This turned out to be quite some journey and not everything really went as planned. But more about that in my next post about Macedonia!