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Code Name: HEW/LGAT
The memory of a country is sometimes linked to the reputation of its airports… even abandoned ones. From a childhood shared between Athens and Thessaly, I will always remember the attraction exerted on us by the site of Ellinikó, in other words, the historic airport of Athens, known by the international code: HEW/LGAT.By chance we were living at the time in the Heliopolis district and the rue… of Thessalie, beautiful… location I must say, under Mount Hymettus, exactly opposite the airport, the sea before our eyes.Heliopolis, not from Egypt but from the great Athenian East. Childhood dreams.
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August 1922. The Great Disaster
August is a month heavy with significance for Greek historical memory. In 1922, the country experienced what was, up to that point, its greatest catastrophe: the Greek defeat in Asia Minor and the recapture of Smyrna by the Turkish army under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—an event referred to in Turkish historiography as the “Great Offensive.” The Greek population of Asia Minor, which had been established there for centuries—dating back to antiquity—was first subjected to widespread massacres by the Turks; subsequently, the survivors were expelled to Greece, following a mandatory population exchange and the treaty signed between Greece and Turkey in Lausanne in 1923.
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In Tríkala, Cramped!
The Trikala region of western Thessaly—where I come from—and above all its eponymous capital, are renowned for their composers and virtuosos of Greek popular music. This music is often broadly categorized under the umbrella of songs belonging, directly or indirectly, to the Rebetiko genre—a wide-ranging musical form associated with the cultural expression of the working classes and the largely urban marginalized, emerging in the early 20th century.
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Tríkala, city… not alienated!
We think we know Greece like the back of our hand. Yet the country—an Acropolis of a certain Europe—still holds many secrets from us. Take, for instance, Western Thessaly—the region I come from—and more specifically Trikala, the administrative center of the province of the same name. It lies in the heart of Hellas, serving as a gateway to Northern Greece for those traveling up from Athens, well past Delphi.