Greece - Thessaloniki

Nature & Culture

Thessaloniki ... Greece's second largest city that is still relatively unknown to some travelers.
Most of the travelers shuffle directly to the capital; Athens.
I cannot say much about the city of Athens because I've not been there yet.
However, I do hear mixed stories about the capital.
This has been one of the reasons for me not going over there.
But, we're not talking about the capital, we talk about the student city; Thessaloniki.

On this page you will not find anything about the nature of Greece, for this I will make part 2 later.
During my stay I had mostly behaved like a student, so I will mainly write about this.

On May 10 were the student elections, at the bottom of the page you can read more about this.

P.s.I will give you a hint about part 2: I'm writing this article on my camping chair, on the island Lefkada ;-)


How does Thessaloniki look like?

To give you a little impression about life as a student in Thessaloniki,
I should first show you some pictures of what the city looks like.
Unfortunately, since I admired about 80% of the city during the night and early morning, I can show you very little of how it looks like during daytime.


The art of painting on the streets:

This city does not consist only about the nightlife.
After a little walk down the street, you'll see works of painting like this everywhere.


A quick head up to the barber:

Not only on the street with a brush or spray people can be creative, even the hairdresser turned it into a work of art, on my head...


Party at the 'Aristotle University of Thessaloniki' (before the elections):

This evening I was taking a little evening walk after dinner and thinking about what I am going to do this night.
At first I was thinking about finally going to bed on time, but fate had already decided my evening...
In the distance I heard music, it seemed like there was a party somewhere. Then I decided to follow the music to have a quick view what's going on.
Are you coming with me?


Elections at the 'Aristotle University of Thessaloniki':

On May 10, election day, I had a tour in the university.
During this tour, I spoke to several students to get more information about how things are going.
During these conversations it became clear to me why they throw parties with regularity.

This is one of the answers I got from the students:

"We (student groups) organise this festival in order to fight for a better future and also fight against the underfunding and degradation of education. We want a campus full of life and student's events and political freedom. The government puts cops inside the universities in order to prevent the uprise of student's movement."

"We want all the people to have a free access in higher education. We want free and public universities that won't be run by the private companies that only think about profit. We want free speech inside the campus and reclaim the asylum that exists in Greek universities."


If I'm completely honest, I didn't expect it to be that deep.... It shocked me, did you know that?
With this article, I hope to bring more attention to this situation and share the freedom of their opinions in this way as well.


And another party at the "Aristotle University of Thessaloniki" (after the elections):

Translation text on photo: At 10 May, the *panspoudastiki* in mathematics self-reliance again. Them alone and all of us for the studies and the life we need.

Information from Wikipedia:
*Panspoudastiki* Kinisi Synergasias: is the main branch of the Communist Youth of Greece at Greek universities.
The group was founded shortly after the restoration of democracy in 1974 and the fall of the colonels' regime.

During these elections, students had the opportunity to vote between 4 parties:
Pks - Communists
Dap nd-fk - Liberals
Eaak - Left
Pasp - Socialists

This time the communist party "Pks" had won. And that party looked like this:


I would like to have your opinion, can you help me?

Lately, I tried to take some pictures of the moon.
The moon was beautiful in Greece, that's why I put it on this page.

To take pictures of the moon is quite new for me, that's why I would like to have your opinion.
Don't feel obligated, but I would appreciate it so I can improve myself.

Which photo of the moon do you like best?
Under each photo you can give a star rating.
But beware, you can only rate once for each photo!

(P.S. You won't see the quality of the photos pretty well in much daylight, because the photos are quite dark by themselves)

Rating: 4 stars
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