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 …”
“I DEMAND EITHER CITY-STATES OR A UNIVERSAL IMPERIUM OF HUMANITY”
-- Murtaza Muhammad Hussein (quoted above) is a journalist I respect immensely whose work focuses on national security, foreign policy, and human rights. His work has previously been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera English.
(See more of M.M. Hussein @theintercept)
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FROM BOSNIA TO BENGAL -- The purpose of this blog
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.
"What I hope this blog accomplishes is to create even the tiniest amount of common consciousness among readers from the parts of the world in question."
Please contact me with comments, questions, complaints or -- please -- corrections at: nikobakos@gmail.com