Around Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki is a city of contrasts.

Strong daylight, white and glaring; sunsets soft and red-gold and hazy over the sea. In the morning all the shadows are sharply defined, like ink-drawings below the buildings, and by evening they take on a slightly fuzzy quality, strange and diffuse.

The seafront and the harbour and the town centre is all apartments and eight- and ten-storey buildings, ceaseless traffic and the rattle of buses. But on the edges of broad Aristoteleou, opposite the Panagia Halkeon - the tiny, ancient, church of the Virgin of the Coppersmiths, a church become mosque become church again in its long history - almost hidden behind a screen of trees, lies the Bey Hammam, once home to the Turkish "Paradise" baths. Old, crumbling red-brown brick and rambling tiled domes without, and within -

Silence. Dimness, lit through tiny round skylights in the domes. Marbled floors and disused basins, crumbling plaster decorated with geometric patterns in many colours, narrow triangular-arched doors and tiny annexes, and everywhere the scent of old damp and the sense of ruined grandeur.

Twenty paces uphill, crammed in an opening between modern appartments and offices, are the remains of the Roman agora. Ten metres beneath modern ground level, with four lonely re-erected marble columns and a broad expanse of gritty, brown grass. One descends past the Roman latrines to the covered hollow of the cryptoporticus, running the length of one side of the forum, diagonally opposite the bouleterion/odeon. In the cool arched dimness one can rest and imagine an older world, before entering the small, bright, air-conditioned, white-walled underground museum.

Once, to the west, they think, lay a complex dedicated to the imperial cult. But it is long gone now.

From the church of Agias Sofias, red-brown brick and bright tiles, one walks up Odos Agias Sofias towards Odos Demetriou, passing another church - well below modern ground level now, the church of (I think) Athanasios, its doors standing open at the bottom of the steps leading down from the street. Inside two men in shirtsleeves are cleaning the icons with squeeze-bottles and cloths, white walls and columns and gilt and bright many-coloured paint on the old, solemn pictures of the saints. Candles are burning in shrines. It is much the same in larger, more famous Agios Demetrios, where a gold and silver tryptich of the saint stands just inside the main entrance, and tourists wander curiously in while Greek men and women cross themselves, light candles, and kiss the icons' feet. They kiss, too, the reliquary of the saint's remains, standing in a columned circular shrine to one side of the columned basilica, beneath the upper gallery. While at the nave, behind the gold-screened altar, come faint rustlings and once, the appearance of a black-clad Orthodox priest, his robe brushing the floor.

Above Olymbiados, one street further up from Demetrios, lies the Ano Poli, the old town. Here the streets are narrow, in contrast to the broad modern thoroughfares below. The great fire of 1917 did not reach this far, and two- and three-storey houses overhang streets where an inauspiciously-parked motorbike or car can block access entirely. Occasional music filters out through closed shutters, and cloths hang out to dry on overhanging balconies.

Up and up Akropoleos street, to Odos Eptapirgou, Seven Towers' Way. Here one is brought - in the Saturday morning quiet, all but devoid of passing cars - right up against the remnants of the Byzantine (and Ottoman) fortification wall. Or Wall: it rather deserves the capital. A dozen metres tall, crennelated, crumbling turrets visible at intervals along its height; grass grows on the embankment which in places has come up against its buttresses, and on both sides the houses of the old city crowd near. The arches of the gateways still stand here entire, wide enough for a car to pass through but not wide enough for two, and in the lee of the one at the end of Eptapirgos stands a small taverna and a handful of Greek men and women sitting in the shade.

I was seeking the Vlatodon monastery, in the old town. I failed to find it, and choose the better part of valour as the pleasant 30-degree heat of the morning advanced towards the 35 of noon, retreating down towards the sea and regular buses. Off Aristoteleou, I wandered into a narrow flea market, like a souk or a bazaar, fish and meat and vegetables cheek by jowl with household goods and shoes and clothes, narrow and crowded and tumultous, everywhere "Tria evro para kilo!" and "Kotopoulo!" and other such shouts, the smell of cheese competing with the scent of fresh and pickled olives and the stink of fish, the ground underfoot wet from the melting ice of the fishmongers and butchers, and awnings and covered arcades overhead cutting the glare of the sun.

I believe I may be growing fond of Thessaloniki, despite the heat. There's a lot I wish I could show you guys, and a fantastic distinctive Greekness about the place. Although everywhere is graffiti and the Greek equivalent of "To Let" signs on shopfronts, and the urban sprawl is not what one might call minor. Apparently the reason the nearest beaches are an hour off is because there's a sewage outflow into the harbour bay, to which I say: ah, so sort of like home then? (I jest. They stopped putting untreated sewage into Dublin Bay ten years or more ago, though when I was a kid, and swimming every day in summer, they were still doing it.)

Anyway. This afternoon is a shockingly cool 32 degrees Celsius, with only minor humidity, and we even have a chance of rain. So I'm going to enjoy the (relative) comfort while I can, and not do my homework until tomorrow.

Yia sas apo tin Thessalonikin, as they say around here. How is life in other parts of the world?

Around Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki is a city of contrasts.

Strong daylight, white and glaring; sunsets soft and red-gold and hazy over the sea. In the morning all the shadows are sharply defined, like ink-drawings below the buildings, and by evening they take on a slightly fuzzy quality, strange and diffuse.

The seafront and the harbour and the town centre is all apartments and eight- and ten-storey buildings, ceaseless traffic and the rattle of buses. But on the edges of broad Aristoteleou, opposite the Panagia Halkeon - the tiny, ancient, church of the Virgin of the Coppersmiths, a church become mosque become church again in its long history - almost hidden behind a screen of trees, lies the Bey Hammam, once home to the Turkish "Paradise" baths. Old, crumbling red-brown brick and rambling tiled domes without, and within -

Silence. Dimness, lit through tiny round skylights in the domes. Marbled floors and disused basins, crumbling plaster decorated with geometric patterns in many colours, narrow triangular-arched doors and tiny annexes, and everywhere the scent of old damp and the sense of ruined grandeur.

Twenty paces uphill, crammed in an opening between modern appartments and offices, are the remains of the Roman agora. Ten metres beneath modern ground level, with four lonely re-erected marble columns and a broad expanse of gritty, brown grass. One descends past the Roman latrines to the covered hollow of the cryptoporticus, running the length of one side of the forum, diagonally opposite the bouleterion/odeon. In the cool arched dimness one can rest and imagine an older world, before entering the small, bright, air-conditioned, white-walled underground museum.

Once, to the west, they think, lay a complex dedicated to the imperial cult. But it is long gone now.

From the church of Agias Sofias, red-brown brick and bright tiles, one walks up Odos Agias Sofias towards Odos Demetriou, passing another church - well below modern ground level now, the church of (I think) Athanasios, its doors standing open at the bottom of the steps leading down from the street. Inside two men in shirtsleeves are cleaning the icons with squeeze-bottles and cloths, white walls and columns and gilt and bright many-coloured paint on the old, solemn pictures of the saints. Candles are burning in shrines. It is much the same in larger, more famous Agios Demetrios, where a gold and silver tryptich of the saint stands just inside the main entrance, and tourists wander curiously in while Greek men and women cross themselves, light candles, and kiss the icons' feet. They kiss, too, the reliquary of the saint's remains, standing in a columned circular shrine to one side of the columned basilica, beneath the upper gallery. While at the nave, behind the gold-screened altar, come faint rustlings and once, the appearance of a black-clad Orthodox priest, his robe brushing the floor.

Above Olymbiados, one street further up from Demetrios, lies the Ano Poli, the old town. Here the streets are narrow, in contrast to the broad modern thoroughfares below. The great fire of 1917 did not reach this far, and two- and three-storey houses overhang streets where an inauspiciously-parked motorbike or car can block access entirely. Occasional music filters out through closed shutters, and cloths hang out to dry on overhanging balconies.

Up and up Akropoleos street, to Odos Eptapirgou, Seven Towers' Way. Here one is brought - in the Saturday morning quiet, all but devoid of passing cars - right up against the remnants of the Byzantine (and Ottoman) fortification wall. Or Wall: it rather deserves the capital. A dozen metres tall, crennelated, crumbling turrets visible at intervals along its height; grass grows on the embankment which in places has come up against its buttresses, and on both sides the houses of the old city crowd near. The arches of the gateways still stand here entire, wide enough for a car to pass through but not wide enough for two, and in the lee of the one at the end of Eptapirgos stands a small taverna and a handful of Greek men and women sitting in the shade.

I was seeking the Vlatodon monastery, in the old town. I failed to find it, and choose the better part of valour as the pleasant 30-degree heat of the morning advanced towards the 35 of noon, retreating down towards the sea and regular buses. Off Aristoteleou, I wandered into a narrow flea market, like a souk or a bazaar, fish and meat and vegetables cheek by jowl with household goods and shoes and clothes, narrow and crowded and tumultous, everywhere "Tria evro para kilo!" and "Kotopoulo!" and other such shouts, the smell of cheese competing with the scent of fresh and pickled olives and the stink of fish, the ground underfoot wet from the melting ice of the fishmongers and butchers, and awnings and covered arcades overhead cutting the glare of the sun.

I believe I may be growing fond of Thessaloniki, despite the heat. There's a lot I wish I could show you guys, and a fantastic distinctive Greekness about the place. Although everywhere is graffiti and the Greek equivalent of "To Let" signs on shopfronts, and the urban sprawl is not what one might call minor. Apparently the reason the nearest beaches are an hour off is because there's a sewage outflow into the harbour bay, to which I say: ah, so sort of like home then? (I jest. They stopped putting untreated sewage into Dublin Bay ten years or more ago, though when I was a kid, and swimming every day in summer, they were still doing it.)

Anyway. This afternoon is a shockingly cool 32 degrees Celsius, with only minor humidity, and we even have a chance of rain. So I'm going to enjoy the (relative) comfort while I can, and not do my homework until tomorrow.

Yia sas apo tin Thessalonikin, as they say around here. How is life in other parts of the world?