Thessaloniki 2
Wednesday morning we met our second tour guide, Efie. She was/is a professional tour guide who had
done some work in Samothrace. She kindly gave us three guide books, one on
Thessaloniki, one with Greek recipes, and the last a copy of the pamphlet she
had written on Samothrace’s history and geology (in Greek, German and
English!). We got into a large van, driver
paid separately, and she took us south west of the city to Pella. The highway passed the large port area, and
then through many rice fields on the way.
As we got closer to Pella you could see occasional tiny hills sticking
up over the flat ground. These
represented old hill tombs (a tumulus,
or barrow), all of which had been ransacked by grave robbers in the past, much
like Egyptian pyramids. It’s a little
too obvious that’s where the goods are!
Pella means something like ‘clay’ or ‘stone’ in ancient
Greek. As we would see later in the
museum, it had a large business in ceramic goods, from roof tiles to religious
statuary. Our first stop was an
archeological site near the museum. While
it was overcast, it wasn’t raining, so we were able to explore without getting
wet. There were the remains of a several large villas, and a tremendously large
agora (forum), which must have been the size of three or four football
fields. The villas still had some
fantastic mosaics in place, but some had been removed to the museum, which was
a bit uphill from the digs. One
difference between Greek and Roman mosaics is that the Greeks used only natural
pebbles from river rock or what they dug up, so the colors are more muted and ‘natural’,
whereas the Romans felt free to use artificially shaped cubes of colored stones,
ceramic or glass.
We were the only ones at the archeological site, and there were few others in the museum, since it was the off season. Pella was a functioning city (the birthplace of Alexander) until a tremendous earthquake hit it around 90 BC; afterwards the large city centers moved towards Thessaloniki. Pella was designed in a Hippodamian grid. One interesting thing we learned in the museum is how silted up the Thermaic Gulf has become over the last 2000 years. Four rivers run from the mountains to the water, and they have deposited enormous amounts of material. Pella is now several kilometers inland, and it was once oceanside. My guess is that (if human beings still exist) Thessaloniki will have to start dredging ship canals in the next couple hundred years.
The museum has lots of examples of mosaics, pottery, and gold artifacts.
Afterwards, we drove northward away from the ocean to Vergina (ancient Aigia). As we increased a bit in elevation, the rice fields stopped, and we began to see acres of fruit trees – mostly kiwi and peach. Some trees were in bloom. We had a souvlaki lunch in town just before the archeology museum there, which is devoted to the massive hill tomb of Philip II, the father of Alexander. No one knows where Alexander is buried - - he died in Babylon. Lucas (amongst others) speculated that his tomb is somewhere in Egypt. I believe there is a secret order of assassins who prevent the secret of his tomb from leaking out.
Anyway, the museum is built into the tumulus itself, you
descend into a long dark corridor, and the only lighting present in the museum
is from the displays. Philip’s
tomb, and that of a young prince (probably Alexander IV, Alexander’s son from
Roxanne) were not desecrated by robbers, probably for two reasons: 1) the tombs were deeper underground than average
(although it is unclear to me how deep), and 2) there were some other nearby
tombs above it that robbers had plundered - - perhaps they mistakenly thought
they had found everything.
Mistaken they were! Manolis Andronikus
was the archeologist who found the tomb in the 1970s after forty years of
searching. The tomb was filled with all sorts of precious artifacts. Philip was buried with one of wives, Cleopatra
(Eurydice), and her infant son. That
is, it’s thought to be Cleopatra, because allegedly she came from a culture where
it was expected that a living widow would be buried with her husband. Of course, Alexander’s mother, Olympias, may have had
something to do with it.
It was an exceptional day of really interesting
museums. We drove back to Thessaloniki,
and said farewell to Efie and the driver.
That evening we went to a dinner on the outskirts of the tavern district
called Mamalouka. We had a salad with apaki (Cretan brined and smoked
pork), minced lamb with allspice in a pastry puff with yogurt, cheese wrapped
in kataifi (birds nest-y shredded phyllo) with jam, beet risotto with goat
cheese, and for dessert Armenoville
(a semifreddo ice cream
with meringue, chocolate, and nuts that might be unique to Thessaloniki) and a lemon cream. They threw in some extra ice cream as well! It
was an excellent meal.
Thursday
This was another day without a tour guide. The rain had returned and Cindy and Lucas had
planned our route to try to be efficient with stops inside various venues. Our
first stop was the Jewish
museum of Thessaloniki. Like in
Sofia, there had been Jews in
Thessaloniki since the fall of the second temple, but the big influx came
with the migration of Sephardim after the Spanish Inquisition. At one time
Thessaloniki was the largest Jewish community in the world. One leader of great renown was Sabbatai Zevi, who has
an important off-stage role in Olga Tokarczuk’s Books of Jacob. Something
around 50% of the city was Jewish in 1900.
However, there was a horrible fire in the city in 1917, which burnt out
the center of the city which was where most of the Jews lived. This was compounded by the failed, horrible Greco-Turkish
War from 1919-1922 where about 1.5 million Greek-speaking Christian Turks
(and 500,000 Muslim Greeks) were more-or-less ‘repatriated’ to Greece and
Turkey, respectively. So now, not only
were many Thessaloniki Jews homeless, but they were competing with refugees for
shelter and jobs. This is about when the
old walls of the city were torn down.
Another result of the fire was urban ‘renewal’ of the city center.
Antisemitism was on the rise, which concluded in WWII, first
with the ‘ransoming of Jews for several billion drachma, the destruction of the
Jewish cemeteries, and the usual creeping Nazi atrocities, ending with the
forced transport of about 50,000 Jews to death camps. It was only worse in Poland.
Anyway, other parts of the museum showcased Jewish life:
children’s toys, music, religious life, etc.
Then we walked past some roman ruins – the Arch of Galerius and the Rotunda (which was later converted into a church, than a mosque, and then a church. It was used as a refugee shelter in the 19teens and 1920s)
We walked past the
ruins of an ancient Roman palace. We ate lunch at a ready-made food/bakery shop near
the white tower, looked at the Alexander and umbrella sculptures near the
seaside, and went back to the White Tower.
The rain was taking a short break, so we were able to go
outside to see the view from the top of the tower. There are 6 interior exhibit rooms that
branch off the spiral staircase. Sadly, all of the exhibits in the white tower
were in Greek, and we couldn’t figure out how to get them in English on our
phones. However, they were mostly about
the pre-history and history of Thessaloniki, most of which we had already gleaned from
our previous tours and walks.
We went to dinner at the nearby Frutti di Mare restaurant, which
apparently is a franchise operation founded by some Greeks in Germany. Still,
the food, as we had come to expect, was quite good. We had sardines, white taramasalata,
cuttlefish in ink with orzo, a shrimp dish in orzo (supposed to be barley), pasta
with shrimp and truffles finished tableside, tiramisu and semolina halvah, and
four kinds of flavored grappa made in house – pomegranate, lemon, coffee, and
mastic.
Friday
This was our last day in Greece, and once again pretty rainy. We met our tour guide Dora (short for Dorathea), a tall, red-headed woman who was a volleyball player in University. Her parents were Scandinavians, but she has called Thessaloniki home for most of her life. She drove us in her Land Rover to Dion, where we saw the ruins of a shrine to Zeus. Most impressive was the hypocaust.
From there we drove little roads up into the park areas of Mount Olympus, and took paths up to waterfalls. A cloud had set up shop on the mountain and we walked through the mist, hearing the rush of water next to the trail. Portions of the pathways were not for the faint-hearted! Later we walked over a covered aqueduct that took water from one of the waterfalls directly to a small village down slope. We also visited an area with a semi-abandoned church, nearby it was rumored that pagan rituals were held.
Our flights home were without incident. I saw Jordan Peele’s Nope (I vote nope), Dunkirk (I vote yep),
and Strange World
(I vote nope).
This was a fun trip, despite the rain that started Tuesday
and never fully left. Everything pretty
much worked out as scheduled. Everyone
we met was hospitable, helpful and friendly.
There is still more to see in Thessaloniki - - we never went to the
northern parts of the city. One thing that cast a pall on our trip there was
the terrible train
crash that occurred on a train from Athens to Thessaloniki, carrying mostly
students, who had been visiting home for the four day Ash Wednesday weekend. On
the other hand, Bulgarian authorities cancelled
a right-wing nationalist neo-nazi march.
Henry
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