“Giannis’ Place” (do not add “Mr” in the name, he does not like it) is perhaps the most popular taverna in Samos: a former coffee house tucked away on Lykourgou Logotheti pedestrian street in Vathy (Chora), behind the seafront. The kind of place you would probably walk straight past if it weren’t for the crowds flocking there — a scene we witnessed with our own eyes after being drawn in by Gemini’s enthusiastic recommendation (and ALL the online guides).
Naturally, there was no table available. But after a friendly chat with the owner (a former blacksmith who was forced to change careers at the age of 50 after a health problem and who… casually ended up creating the hottest place on the island), he squeezed in a table for us in the passageway.
We had heard plenty about this particular place and the atmosphere created by its live music, but nothing had prepared us for the most unforgettable Greek-Turkish feast of our lives.
With Kuşadası just a stone’s throw away, Samos is one of the favourite destinations for Turkish visitors, who arrive in their thousands on private boats or ferries and fill every hotel, Airbnb, beach and taverna on the island.
“Giannis’ Place” is a hotspot because the excellent house band performs Greek songs, Turkish songs, Greek versions of Turkish songs and Turkish versions of Greek songs, bringing the mixed crowd to life.
After two hours (and several carafes of the famous Samos white wine), we had all become one big group, dancing to the sounds of Telli Telli Telli and other hits by Haris Alexiou, who, as everyone knows, is beloved by our neighbours.
And this scene is repeated almost every night. The live music, which originally ran on Fridays and Saturdays, has expanded to six nights a week because of demand.
Giannis (just Giannis, without the “Mr”) told me that one night a group of nearly 20 Greek Cypriots arrived, and he feared a diplomatic incident — or something worse.
In the end, Greek Cypriots and Turks did clash… over tsiftetelia.
(As I said, Samos wine works miracles.)
Three hundred and forty-five nautical miles further north, in Alexandroupoli, the same scene is unfolding — without the celebrations (for now), and with tsipouro instead of Samos wine.
My hometown has undergone a rapid tourism and economic transformation in recent years, becoming the ultimate city-break destination for Turkish visitors (mainly from the wider Istanbul area) throughout the year.
The situation of the 1990s, when we used to cross the border in large numbers for cheap shopping in Turkey (supermarkets in Keşan, leather goods in Edirne), has now been completely reversed.
More than 3,000 Turks are estimated to cross the Evros border every weekend, travelling by private car and organised coach tours.
The number rises dramatically during the peak summer season (July-August), when almost 80% of customers in central cafés, bars, tavernas and beaches in the city are Turkish (and, to a lesser extent, Bulgarian) visitors, who fill every available rental property and clear out the cheaper PlayStations and iPhones from shops where queues form outside.
In addition, Turkish companies and private individuals (often through European VAT numbers) are buying flats, plots of land, old buildings and hotels across the wider region and turning them into profitable Airbnbs.
The geography that for decades was considered a serious disadvantage for the area — which was “ten minutes away from Athens by phone”, as the old joke went — has now become an advantage.
And certainly not thanks to the Greek state, which is watching the situation rather awkwardly and with obvious concern when it comes to the neighbours’ mass purchases of property in the area.
Keep in mind that Evros has a long tradition of nationalism, xenophobia and… Turk-bashing. (It does, after all, have an MP from the Greek Solution party, while the party’s 77-year-old MEP Galato Alexandraki — a butcher by profession — is also from the region.)
Until, of course, they saw the Turkish euros and suddenly decided to keep quiet.
As we say in our villages: “When money talks, bull*hit walks.”
And if you don’t believe me, we have both Canada and Chile.
There is no greater satisfaction than watching former Turk-bashers in the region now throwing themselves into hoş geldin celebrations and praying there is no tension between the two countries so that the tourism wave does not dry up.
Priceless.
I write all this while looking at our own “achievements” with… Barça (I can almost picture Karousos digging through a bin looking for the signed scarf he was so quick to throw away).
[Editor’s note: The reference is to Yiannis Karousos, former Transport Minister and current head of the Famagusta District Local Government Organisation, who said he would no longer support Barcelona after the club cancelled a planned training camp in the north of Cyprus following reactions from Greek Cypriots and the Republic of Cyprus government.]
I also think about the cancellation of the music festival in Kyrenia following representations by the Republic of Cyprus, and the reluctant, almost forced, meetings between Christodoulides and Erhürman.
And I wonder: how many more decades will it take before we too see the bigger picture?
In the Aegean and Evros, ordinary people have moved beyond the constraints imposed by governments on both sides and transformed a disadvantaged border region into a rare advantage.
Why spend your life living on the border under a regime of fear and threats from your neighbours — with the Athenian safely tucked away in the centre delivering tearful nationalist speeches from the comfort of the capital — when you can eat, drink and dance with them?
I am not saying this is absolute or guaranteed. It may even be utopian.
But one thing is certain: at least in recent years, it has become a beautiful reality.
And a step in the right direction.
Source: THE OTHER DOCTRINE: THRACE, THE AEGEAN, AND CYPRUS IN THE BACKGROUND
