Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and other Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, occasional forays into southern Italy, Spain or eastern Europe, minorities, the nation-state and nationalism — and whatever other quirks or obsessions lurk inside my head.
One of the lesser sells people use on me when they try to sell me Salonica, a city I really dislike, is the view one supposedly has of majestic Mt. Olympus across the Thermaico Gulf, especially in the winter when it’s snow-capped. The bigger sells are the city’s buzzing, genteel corniche, (I guess nice, but not nearly as beautiful as any of the promenades of Athens’ southern suburbs, from which you can see the sun set on Aegina, Salamina and the Peloponnese in the distance on most days), the food, it being the great refugee metropolis after all (uniformly mediocre), Salonica’s supposed διάχυτο romance and eroticism (?), and the many Byzantine monuments; the only one I buy is the last.
Salonica, like a lot of central and eastern Macedonia has a generally muggy and humid climate in the summer, and a foggy, misty one in winter, so I have never been in Salonica, in any season, on a day when I could see Olympus across the gulf. But…a few moments ago Nikos Michailidis@NikosMichailid4tweeted a picture of the city from its older, upper town, captioned: “Ηλιοβασίλεμα και στο βάθος Όλυμπος…” — “Sunset and in the background Olympus …”
Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and rest of ME, Iran, South Asia
Me, I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but when I say that in English some five people in the world today understand what I'm talking about, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.