The White Tower
Greece’s second-largest city is surrounded by agricultural heartland. Farm vehicles rumbled by the log house where we stayed in the countryside. Some rural roads had no names, just letters of the Greek alphabet. It was strange to see green fields and forested mountains after weeks in the desert climate of the Dodecanese.
Few visitors (beyond regulars from the Balkans) visit Thessoliniki, but this is regrettable. We enjoyed incredible meals with freebie desserts, watched stunning sunsets, splashed around one of Europe’s largest waterparks and visited our favourite Greek museum to date – the Museum of Byzantine Culture.
I had the best haircut of my life downtown. The barber swaddled me in white linen sheets and tucked cotton inside my collar to keep the trimmings out. He eschewed the electric razor in favour of blazing fast scissor snips interspersed with fragrant oil rubs.
Orthodoxy is strong here, as elsewhere in Greece. I met Father Nicolaus, a priest and pediatric dentist in Lakkia, the village where we stayed. He opens the church first thing in the morning, sees dental patients at the church compound all day, then rings the bells and chants the evening service before heading home. As a full-time dentist, he never planned to become a priest as well but a serious motorcycle accident awakened this parallel vocation. He welcomed me to their evening prayer service filled with haunting chants and fragrant anointing.
We spotted saw a couple pre-fab Orthodox chapel manufacturers along the highway – just like you might see a shed manufacturer in the Canadian countryside.
Even the local mega-mall, Mediterranean Cosmos, has a glittering church built squarely in the centre of their outdoor food court. Perhaps we too easily separate the sacred and the secular.
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