Our second week was spent in Larisa, Lena’s home, and Platamona, the beach town where her family spent their summers. We also went up to her mom’s reconstructed mountain village of Palaios [Old] Panteleimonas. The latter two are in a geographically stunning location, pretty much on the flank of Mount Olympus. Platamona has much changed since Lena’s youth, from small seaside hamlet to the site of low to mid-rent resort tourism that better fits the moniker Smurf Atlantic City. Junk, beach junk, food junk, trinket junk, even the air is junk, filled with diesel, cheap food and cigarette fumes. Beneath this toxic debris are the fossilized ruins of a once modest village and seaside retreat that emerged after the cataclysm that was WWII. This region, straddling both sides of the border between Thessaly and Pieria prefectures is the subject of the fourth series of photos.
Again, a few outstanding projects are to be found that edify the people and the region, such as an outstandingly well designed shore cafe at the end of an old train tunnel and the beautiful old village that is largely restored. Overall, though, the history, so painful and poignant, is overtaken by rapacious consumption that degrades both the human and natural environment. This time the nightmare is bright coloured plastic by the seaside where large tracts of beach are industrialized into umbrella sized rental lots.
Larisa is dreary overall. Some bright spots are to be found in a few pedestrian streets of the old town near the spectacular ruins of an ancient Greek theatre. Otherwise, it is maze of small streets littered with random detritus, bad, ill maintained architecture, and a military base where jets routinely roar on patrol. It is also the centre for one of the largest agricultural regions in the country where EU subsidized farmers are reputedly rather wealthy, but not particularly interested in the region’s overall development.
Larisa and Platamonas are far from unique. Lamia is at the halfway point between Athens and Larisa on the the A1 highway that goes up to Thessaloniki. Folks from Larisa say if you think their town is ugly, you better not stop in Lamia. A number of towns, behind a mountain range, are on the sea directly east of Larisa, with a beach front that extends almost unbroken for 30 kilometres. It is an unspeakable post-apocalyptic horror that makes Platamonas the destination desired by so many folks from the region, the Balkans, and Russia, as well as a good few from Italy and Britain .
Self-loathing Greeks are not to be found solely in the middle class as with Lena’s professional sister and law. They can be found everywhere. Significantly, many Greeks blame Greeks for the majority of their woes, saying that too many are driven by selfish entitlement that plunges the society deeper into chaos. They will excitedly tell you this, as they look at you with bewilderment fastening your seat belt while they race the car down a tight street with blind corners. Or when they rail against tax evasion as they proudly reveal that a waiter acknowledges them as loyal customers because he gave you, the tourist, a hand-written, single copy receipt.
A while ago, near the start of the financial crisis, according to one of Lena’s friends, a local Larisa news item reported a run on the sale of pressure cookers. It appeared that people were scooping them up as a safe way to bury money. Entitlement? Ingenuity? Spirit? Or just more litter mindlessly strewn across a battered landscape…….