Autumn 2020, the pandemic is almost over but the airports are still half-empty. I decide to go travel despite of all because prices are low, there is less people around and I can enjoy being on the road without too many rescritions. Greece part two mostly because I don't feel like going too far and because after having seen an island on the Mediterranean and the capital Athens two years before, I want to see the eastern part of the country and the second main city Thessaloniki. This was going to be a camping trip after the Algarve one (Portugal part one) and it was going to be a relatively easy one: not too many stops, going around but also chilling at the beach.
Thessaloniki is busy, noisy but catchy. Thessaloniki had a Ottoman occupation, followed by the arrival of a huge Jewish community (it was called the mother of Israel), destroyed by a great fire in 1917 and subsequently occupied by the nazi in WW2. Of course all the series of events shaped the character of the city and made Thessaloniki a city of a high historical value. It hosts also the native house of mr. Kemal Ataturk (which I visited), father of the modern Turkey, a pretty controversial, vital and strong personality, who took the country into a more progressist and free direction despite of his strong nationalistic will, for example giving the right to vote to women for the first time in history. Seen from the outside, its native house looks like a standard ottoman house, pretty minimal but very cozy. It does not have much of an impact on the surroundings and I had to struggle to find it at the point that a couple of turkish officers approached me to ask what I was doing there around and finally gave me direction to find the house.
Chalkidiki is divided in three small Peninsulas. As far as I was told the left one is full of resorts and mostly exploited by tourism while the right one is partly governed by the monastic community of Mount Athos and might be not accessible to public (apparently also forbidden to women to visit it). Therefore what was left was the central one Sithonia and concerning the fact that lots of camping in Greece have no constant access to internet and the season was almost over, I had to pick up the phone and call them one by one to ask which one had availability for that period.
At the end I had to struggle a bit but I managed to find certain spots that made my solitary journey there very enjoyable. Between the limited choice I had at my disposal, I decided to pick up two places in particular, Kalamitsi and Metamorfosi. While enjoying the sunset in Metamorfosi drinking beers and reading a book I also had the pleasure to come across a young lady from the UK named Ally that was there for an internship in a center of rescue of animals of various kind and had the chance to drink Mojitos at the local chringuito (one of the few business still open during the pandemic) and enjoy the full moon half drunk on the beach in nice companionship.
Except from Lanthimos (The Lobster, Killing of Sacred Deer) who is very popular in Greece and all around the world at the moment, I had the chance to discover and finally watch a big classic Zorbas and the Greek, a very direct and to a certain extend brutal masterpiece, with the majestic Anthony Quinn playing Zorbas. Zorba's Dance was part of the soundtrack written for the music and became a classic in the Greek popular culture also in the form of Sirtaki dance.
