Thessaly South
It is Wednesday, June 24. We met our drive Vasilis at the El Greco Hotel early on Wednesday. He arrived in a brand new Mercedes Benz luxury bus, white, shiny and icon-blessed. Vasilis has a word-of-mouth reputation as a safe, knowledgable and third generation bus driver. He is prompt, polite, can squeeze the bus between two lemons and tells John not to bother us about being neat on the bus, he will clean it up afterwards. But the bus is spanking clean and we need to not spill frappes on pristine seat covers.
Passing acres of rice fields the land also that grows churches every few kilometers. We head south along a national highway. From Thessaloniki we were originally bound for the city of Veria (Βέροια). St. Paul and his brother, Silas, preached if Veria, one of the first Christian communities outside of Palestine. and the current economic center of Central Macedonia. Recalling that Paul preached in his travels to many Jewish communities, there are still pockets of ancient Sephardic Jews in Macedonia, though the populations were decimated by Germany during WW II.
Passing acres of rice fields the land also that grows churches every few kilometers. We head south along a national highway. From Thessaloniki we were originally bound for the city of Veria (Βέροια). St. Paul and his brother, Silas, preached if Veria, one of the first Christian communities outside of Palestine. and the current economic center of Central Macedonia. Recalling that Paul preached in his travels to many Jewish communities, there are still pockets of ancient Sephardic Jews in Macedonia, though the populations were decimated by Germany during WW II.
Veria Lost...
Veria is filled with some of the most beautiful Byzantine churches in Greece, plus a museum. Its history is that of invasion after invasion: held by Bulgarians in late 9th c.; captured by Serbs in 14th c; the Turkish conquest in 1430; and a strong resistance movement during WW II. But we skip Byzantine-rich Veria because with the harsh economic crisis in Greece, the government-owned churches cannot pay for them to be open. Sad that we will miss the churches and Byzantine museum of Veria but sadder for unemployed Greeks. We saw this in Thessaloniki, where the paucity of municipal police allows motorbikes (using less gas, so this is good) to drive down sidewalks with impunity (not good); and there is no money to finish a mammoth subway system nor to clean the graffiti on most stoned surfaces.
Veria is filled with some of the most beautiful Byzantine churches in Greece, plus a museum. Its history is that of invasion after invasion: held by Bulgarians in late 9th c.; captured by Serbs in 14th c; the Turkish conquest in 1430; and a strong resistance movement during WW II. But we skip Byzantine-rich Veria because with the harsh economic crisis in Greece, the government-owned churches cannot pay for them to be open. Sad that we will miss the churches and Byzantine museum of Veria but sadder for unemployed Greeks. We saw this in Thessaloniki, where the paucity of municipal police allows motorbikes (using less gas, so this is good) to drive down sidewalks with impunity (not good); and there is no money to finish a mammoth subway system nor to clean the graffiti on most stoned surfaces.