9th Feb 2023.
I’ve never associated Thessaloniki with the sun or sea as much as the haze. The haze intensified all the new colours I met at age eight; the evening skies of amber and empty fields of bronze and earthy terracotta roofs that welcomed me to a new kind of life.
I knew it was a special place the moment I arrived. I hadn’t found myself dropped into the bustling, overdeveloped mess they call Athens. Thessaloniki has a calm, self-assured, almost patrician sensibility, which then as now manifested itself through its geography. Tall, thin pefka trees scattered the landscape, only yielding to the warm bay breeze that blew through the city, past the ruins, up to the hillside villages. Riding bikes along the waterside promenade downtown, I often found grand Olympus stood on the horizon if it was a clear enough day. Nights were never cold, and coffee shops always attracted its fair share of sedate, cigarette-smoking youngsters on school nights. Blessed by gentle geography and wonderful weather, the locals inherited a carefree yet dignified culture. Thessaloniki’s haze acted like an invisible pair of sunglasses, keeping life’s sharp glares out of everyone’s eyes.
This said, it isn’t a straightforward place to live, especially as a xenos. There were countless cultural nuances my parents had to navigate, such as the ubiquity of small bribes, or the quiet reticence most shopkeepers had towards us. Downtown could be truly chaotic — in the absence of actual spaces, we had to learn the subtle art of curb-parking. We met truly unscrupulous landlords, village chiefs who pumped our sewage into the nearby forest and made eye-watering moonshine my dad was obliged to try. But from my perspective, none of it really mattered. In the same, quick way children learn languages, I learned my Greek hosts’ morals. And as an English-speaking child, I was treated with a mix of curiosity and adoration from the adults around me. Their constant gifts and kisses on the cheek served to remind me that I was amongst safe, good-natured company.
Sat in the basin of the Balkans, Thessaloniki attracted people from neighbouring tribes who wanted to share in the city’s glamour. My school was filled with Albanians, Bulgarians, Turks, Serbs, Romanians and more. My classmates used to insist how different their kin was from each other before being picked up by their moms in identical cars — usually the Mercedes M-Class SUV in jet black.
In the summer, everyone used to drive down to the beaches in Halkidiki, usually the sandy, salty ones on Kassandra. You could go as fast as you wanted on those highways, because Greeks didn’t believe in useless laws. Life seemed more vivid because the people wanted it to be that way.
