Posted on 10/09/2018 3:39:56 PM PDT by DFG
Last night, we returned from a two week trip to Greece. We visited Athens, Crete, and Thessaloniki.
Athens and Crete are familiar American tourist destinations. Thessaloniki is not, and for good reason. It’s interesting, but not interesting enough to cause many American tourists to visit it. We went because it’s where my wife’s father was born.
At that time, in the early years of the last century, Salonika (as the city was called) was one of the most fascinating cities in the world. My wife and I arrived 100 years too late.
Thessaloniki, Greece’s second most populous city, is located in Northern Greece, in the region of Macedonia. It’s named after the daughter of Phillip of Macedonia, the half sister of Alexander the Great. The name celebrates one of Phillip’s great military victory — his conquest of Thessaly, a powerful kingdom to the south.
Given its strategic location as a kind of southern gateway to the Balkans and Asia Minor, Thessaloniki was an important outpost of the Roman Empire. During the Byzantine Empire, the city was, at times, second in importance only to Constantinople.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Greece is gorgeous. I stayed half a month in Epidaurus - about 2 hours outside of Athens for a grad school project. I want to go back and visit places like Thessaloniki.
When I was in college I belonged to the Geography Club. We would invite guests to speak about different parts of the world they had visited.
One was Dr. Agnew. He was head of the classics dept.
He had taken an extended vacation, visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey and Crete. He also had a large number of slides which he showed. I could not believe all the places and he had not even come close to visiting them all.
Some of the more interesting places were Petra and Knossos. One thing was the throne of King Minos. He said so many tourists had sat on it that it was beginning to be worn. Someone asked him if he had done so and he admitted he had.
One of the toughest things for all us humans to face up to is "You can't go home again." Tom
We once had an airbase near there.
5.56mm
Interesting read thanks for posting. I love the Greek islands; have never been to Thessaloniki.
What sort of people live in the region that used to be Sparta?
The region of Macedonia was given to Greece in the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913. The rest of the Macedonian lands were divided up to Serbia, Bulgaria, and a small part to Albania. The ethnic Macedonians in Thessaloniki/”Northern Greece” were forced to learn/speak Greek, had their names changed/Hellanized, and had all their books and records in the Macedonian language burned. Macedonian villages were all renamed. People were not permitted to speak Macedonian. Many people were tortured and killed. Many children were taken from their families and trained to be “Greek”. Lots of children fled to the Northern Slavic areas to escape. (”Detsa Begalci”) Extreme ethnic cleansing of all the remaining Macedonians in Greece. The name Macedonia was never Greek. They stole it, and now Greece continues to attempt to obliterate our history and identity.
Tax evaders for the most part - much like the rest of Greece.
When I got there, nothing was built and it was obvious that they had barely glanced at the drawings since they got the order. The son of the owner of the fab shop spoke a bit of English and through him, I basically told them "Look here... I brought a cheque for $X with me and by tomorrow, you will have cleared out an office for me. I'm now the new shop manager (for the parts they were making for us) and depending on our progress over the next few weeks, that will dictate whether or not I give you this cheque."
We shipped all the fabricated components about 2 months later. While there, I toured much of Greece and saw most of the interesting historical places around Thessaloniki.... so long ago, I'd have to go find a few photo albums to refresh my memory. Got to meet a lot of nice folks there... a few of the folks at the plant liked to play chess which we did all hours of the night after the local tavernas closed.
>>Greece is gorgeous. I stayed half a month in Epidaurus - about 2 hours outside of Athens for a grad school project.<<
I spent two days in Epidaurus in June with a tourist group, and got wasted for the first time in about 30 years. Took me almost four days to return to normal.
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