Arriving in Halkidiki by bus arranged by a Serbian agency looks the same for decades: in the early morning hours, the wheels of newly arrived tourists' suitcases roll on the asphalt and wake up locals and tourists from the previous shift who will travel home that day. Usually the previous tenants leave the apartments at nine, leaving their luggage in the yard of the "accommodation unit". For some reason, Greek houses with a series of simple apartments are persistently called "villas" - and that name was originally only used by vacation homes of the ancient Roman upper class. The smallest number of today's Greek "villas" have a luxurious aura.
Newly arrived tourists also place their luggage somewhere within the "villa" and wander around the place in search of the first coffee or the beach. If they are lucky, they will enter the cleaned room in two hours, if they are not - only in four or five hours.
It is an opportunity to establish an information exchange. Tourists traveling home that day have until late afternoon, when the recovered driver is allowed to get behind the wheel again. They, too, wander around the beaches or rush to do their last shopping. They patiently answer the questions of new tourists about the weather, the best gyros and the prices of this or that.
A different year
This time there was no such arrival. The bus dropped us off at the beginning of Sithonia, the middle "finger". There, our group was picked up by a Greek van driver, and most of the passengers in the double-decker bus were already on the move - further, according to Kassandra, the cheapest and most popular "leg".
When we entered Neos Marmaras, we were trying to recognize this street or that cafe - we spent about fifteen days there in 2018. Agent Zoran met us in front of the "villa", a neatly renovated building with a beautiful gate, close to Paradisos beach. To our joy, he said that we can immediately go to room number 8 because - there was no previous shift. And indeed, almost all the blinds on the windows were down. We were alone in a building with ten apartments.
What to say about that first morning? Joy overcame amazement. Finally, in front of us is a sandy beach, the kind that was forbidden to us for a long time due to the global epidemic. On the other hand, we hardly saw people on the entire beach that June morning. And there began the involuntary comparisons with the end of May 2018: then, in the "pre-season", the beach was full. If you're not an early riser, you couldn't find deckchairs in the first row. And now, on a rather long deserted beach, only two or three cafes have brought out umbrellas and sunbeds.
Deserted beaches
We drank bad coffee in a cafe with an Italian name, which offered an umbrella and two deckchairs as a counter service. It cost us six euros. The waiter informed us that the cafe does not have an internet connection. It didn't matter. We lay in the sun, no one to stand between us and the clear, endless water whispering to the waves. Island Kelyphos - Tortoise - the only island in the Gulf of Toron, five kilometers away, rests in our eyes. The coastal street, which is right behind the narrow beach, is rarely driven by cars. There is a transporter parked behind us with a large inscription PAOK, just so you know whose territory this is.
In the afternoon, we decided to go to the center, which is a fifteen to twenty minute walk away from the accommodation. Of course, uphill, then downhill, because Neos Marmaras is made up of streets that, like a slide, plunge towards bays to climb again over the next slope and descend to a new bay.
The first bay is also the first of several centers of this city. There we find the tavern where we spent our last evening at sea three years ago. Her garden is on a small beach, checkered tablecloths, flowers. It's just that back then you had to make a reservation a day in advance, but now the owner would be happy for you to stop by at any time of the day. Then again the ascent along the coast to the beautiful Church of the Archangel Michael, after which there is another descent to another center. And finally uphill and downhill again to the city stadium and the City Beach - the part of the city where we stayed last time. This empty beach looks even more strange to us, because it was much more crowded at the time of mass tourism.
New asphalt, new worries
Walking around the city of barely four thousand souls in mid-June, we realized that the settlements in the hilly part got new asphalt, and the road along the Paradisos beach got a new sidewalk. The local authorities didn't waste any time, so they took advantage of the rare opportunity to spruce up the city's streets without traffic jams.
We note with regret that some restaurateurs and hoteliers did not survive the pandemic economically. Not one of the most beautiful hotel gardens in town is working - Dire Cafe & Bistro - just below the church. And the hotel is closed.
Smaller shops with windows covered with newspapers are not rare either. And those who survived economically seemed to be surprised at the beginning of the season. They slowly woke up from the imposed passivity, as if they themselves did not believe that some people would come to their shores. We found them painting the fences of the apartments, tinkering around the renovated shops that will be opened one day. Many ambitiously conceived buildings remained unfinished. Like skulls with empty eye sockets - windows - they await better times.
In the boutiques, saleswomen were bored, fiddling with their mobile phones. The terraces are dominated by Greek - which was unimaginable in the seasons before the pandemic.
Quality against lethargy
But some things pleased us with their tenacity. Probably the best tavern in town - Dimitris - located behind Paradisos, she worked, if only for us, in the first days of June. The wizard in the kitchen, a Macedonian, every day put out an offer of five or six good dishes that had a Greek character refined by a Macedonian hand. Dimitris also offers magical olive oil from its own olive groves - five euros per liter.
Likewise, a tavern Paradise on the beach itself, she remained true to herself. Both the wine and the fish are superb, and the view from the garden of the sea, into which the sun sinks, surpasses any picture postcard.
When, on the second weekend of June, tourists from the Thessaloniki region began to arrive, and a little later the first Russians, Serbs, and Germans, the terraces of the taverns slowly filled up, and we, as their fans, mostly in vain cheered for a faster crowding.
Across the street from the tavern Dimitris a new one took the throne Lidl and that, of course, contributed to a more pleasant everyday life on vacation. The Greek part of the products is interesting and the prices are certainly more favorable than those of the Greek competitors. On the site of a former Greek supermarket, this two-story building has a unique parking lot in Europe - it is covered with tarpaulin canopies along its entire length on both sides. Favorite members of the human family - cars - are protected from the heat like this. Admittedly, the parking lot is on the other side of a relatively busy street.
The only pity is that the workers in this German supermarket with a European voice have a somewhat rustic understanding of work - they are loud, sloppy with the boxes between the racks and not overly friendly.
Trace of the "Asia Minor Catastrophe"
On the beach I read about the history of the place. It is a product of the Greek national disaster of 99 years ago.
At the beginning of the Greco-Turkish war - which flared up after the First World War - the Greeks first reached Istanbul and entered Izmir, and then they got stuck militarily in Anatolia and suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of Ataturk's army. In 1923, the Agreement on the Exchange of Population was signed in Lausanne, Switzerland. The agreed "ethnic cleansing" followed a series of mutual war atrocities against members of religious minorities. Thus, 1,25 million Orthodox Christians were expelled from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea coast, and 500.000 Muslims from the territory under Greek control. It didn't matter what language you spoke, but what god you prayed to. At the end of that process, every fourth person in the new Greece was a refugee.
The Macedonian region and the Aegean islands were left without a Muslim population - let's remember that Kemal Ataturk himself was born in Thessaloniki - and a large number of Greek Asia Minor refugees settled in that area, including Sithonia. Neos Marmaras did not exist as a Greek town until the "Asia Minor Catastrophe" as the defeat in the Greek-Turkish war was called by the Greeks. Therefore, the absence of older layers of architecture should not be surprising - the last settlement in the area died out in ancient times when Athens and Sparta fought for this area.
The people of Marmara Island
The old homeland of the founders of Neos Marmaras was famous throughout the ancient world - the island of Marmara in the Sea of Marmara, which stretches between the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, produced the best marble. The altar of the Temple of Zeus from Pergamon, which can be seen reconstructed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum, was built from marble from this island. By the way, even in early Byzantine times, the island of Marmara was known as a resort for the Constantinople aristocracy - Emperor Justinian I himself had a palace on that island.
The Greeks, expelled from Marmara Island almost a century ago, found their new homeland at the western, coastal foothills of the 800-meter high Itamos hill. There, in Sithonia, they founded Neos Marmaras - New Marmara. I think of the fact that the ancestors of the people who make me coffee while yelling loudly or even louder on the phone used their hands two millennia ago to process marble blocks for the most famous ancient Greek sanctuaries.
Sithonian melancholy
In Greek history, the creation of colonies is not a new phenomenon. The whole of Halkidiki got its name from the ancient settlement of colonists from the city of Halkidiki, on the island of Euboea, north of Athens. But rarely was that colonization the fruit of a historical drama of this scale.
Rebetiko musical style, which is a synthesis of Greek and Ottoman heritage - Greek fado - permeated the old homeland. That music, once an expression of the pain of the poor from the suburbs of Thessaloniki, a song of maladjusted bohemians, prisoners and refugees, eventually became a national treasure. In it, there are traces of the feeling of the world of a tragic Greek backwater, which after almost three thousand years in Asia Minor was reduced to the remains of the remains. It's a pity that no tavern knows how to include such a concert in its program, although outdoor music is allowed in Greece since June 12.
Perhaps the reason for the by far the best pies that can be eaten in Greece should be found in the Asia Minor origin of the local Greeks. The bakeries that have survived confirm this - the combination of cheese and spinach, or meat and onion, are in serious competition with the best products from Sarajevo and Niš in terms of quality.
Post-pandemic fatigue of Greek tourism
When you walk two kilometers south from the City Beach near the stadium, you will come across Porto Karas, a famous exclusive summer resort, which consists of a five-star concrete complex. According to the locals, the hotel has a new owner who will transform it into an even more elite place. Tradition also supports him. It was here at the 2003 European Union summit that the first draft of the European Constitution was presented. Thus Neos Marmaras connects two distant points in its past - an island beyond the Dardanelles and Brussels. Despite such a past, the pandemic has slowed this place down again to the rhythm of a seaside palanquin.
What is already certain - Greece is slowly waking up from pandemic hibernation. The increase in prices has not been accompanied by an improvement in services. In the club Brothers on the city beach, a cappuccino will cost you four euros, although it is three and a half in the price list. It is similar with a fast food restaurant Alkane, where they sold the best gyros in town. This time their gyros were mediocre at best. And the restaurant near the stadium, whose garden was full in 2018, this time in an empty place offers a "menu for Serbs" that promises rocket salad and an exclusive type of fish. A salad of stale greens and another type of fish arrived on the table, which seemed to have been grilled with a schnitzel. In a tavern along the coast in the center, an elderly waiter does not hide his displeasure when we order "only" kettlebells, olives and wine. These are just random examples.
"Factory settings”
On weekends, people from the Thessaloniki region come with a pack of children and everyone talks in unison, in a cafe, on the beach, on the street. We used to think that the Greeks were on average more polite than us, the rest of the Balkans, who are often loud, arrogant and pushy. Maybe because of the number of Serbian tourists and their decibels, we didn't get to notice the Greeks who are scowling and unfriendly earlier. But now, in a half-empty town, it's easy to spot anyone urinating in the middle of the day in front of tourist guesthouses by the beach or yelling over your head with a neighbor. You can hear everyone who is partying until the wee hours and howling on the way home. The pandemic in Neos Marmaras has apparently returned many to "factory settings".
This shows how difficult it is to raise the level of tourist culture, and how easy it is to lower it. Happiness is the taverns Dimitris i Paradisos or Hotel Areti, with the most honest cappuccino on the beach, have retained that charming mix of professional service and cordiality that makes us remember better days on the Greek coast.
Bonus video:
