Embassy of the United States

Generations of travelers, myself included, have arrived in Thessaloniki with romantic expectations of life there, only to discover that some of our preconceptions are simply anachronous, even unfair, images for modern Greek life and society. What is it, though, about Greece that gives birth to philhellenes and then enigmatically draws them to its soil? Nobel poet George Seferis expresses the allure of Hellenism through the beauty of the Greek landscape when he writes of his homeland,

Wherever I go Greece wounds me,
curtains of mountains, archipelagos, naked granite.

Before him, Lord Byron, one of Greece’s most celebrated philhellenes, entered Greece with tremendous passion and a longing for the independence of the Greek people. And still before him, intellectuals of the European Renaissance embraced Greece’s Classical past and began to teach about its history and literature to the students of the day. As a result, the legacies of Hellenism became culturally embedded in Europe and all parts of the world.

As idyllic as these images are, they are somewhat removed from the sustainable manners of everyday life in northern Greece today. Beyond the romantic myths, I find myself rooted in the small, but profoundly significant genuineness of daily life as a foreigner living in Thessaloniki, Greece. However, both images, the romantic and the modern, are simply constructions of history and personal experience. Thus, for me there is not so much a distinction between “ideal” and “real” Greece as there is between different notions of what it means to live in a modern city so often characterized by its historic and mythic traditions.

In reality, perhaps Thessaloniki is best described as a place of varietal contradictions. Here, I find a society brimming with φιλοξενία (hospitality), unsettling traffic, a magnificent variety of newspapers, spectacular views of the sun, sky and sea, a disconcerting pollution index, fifth century Byzantine churches tucked between twentieth century apartment buildings, three and sometimes four generations of women from one family strolling in the center, vast amounts of noise, ancient structures absorbed with the serenity of the past, and an unprecedented liveliness, especially after midnight. In short, I find myself living in a place filled with the passion for life amidst the mundane problems of a modern European city.

Although I live quite contently in the Thessaloniki that I describe, drinking liberally from the social offerings, I still remain an individual sojourner who somehow resides at an imagined margin of Hellenic society. As a foreigner, my gestures are not quite congruent with others’, my dress is just slightly inassimilable, and when I speak Greek, my accent surely provokes a host of thoughts about my non-Greek origin. Imagining oneself as living in the margin of a society is, I suppose, a side effect of expatriates not only in Greece, like myself, but all those people who live beyond their place of birth. Indeed, individuals often identify themselves and are identified by others according to the situations in which they find themselves; as when one goes abroad, one’s identity may be slightly different from that at home, both in one’s own perception and as classified by others.

For me, however, this need not be regarded as an adverse effect of living abroad. Quite the contrary, being a non-native in Greece offers me the uncommon luxury of acquiring a second home; one for which, like my original home in America, I feel nostalgia, pride and ardor. Homer helps us understand these feelings of homeland as he described Odysseus’s longing to return to his home in Ithaka so many years after the Trojan War. There is, however, one drawback to this dual homeland luxury that Homer neglects to address. His Odyssey provides no guidance to those of us who are fortunate in acquiring two beloved homelands, yet unfortunate in our constant state of longing for one place when we find ourselves in the other. Thus, is it ever possible to overcome the romantic expectations we acquire for our homes, whether we are born there or gain them by way of living there? I don’t think so.

Wherever I go, Greece will always wound me.

Dr. Robin Roxanne Giampapa has been living in Thessaloniki, Greece for 1½ years and is currently teaching at Pinewood International School