“Work, work! Baptized in kefir! Here you will not eat sweet bread!

“Let’s show humanity! They are also Greek. East! Humble, Conditions, Pontians…”.

– “Why;”

– “Our roots go back 4000 years, from Homer!”.

“They will take our land from us! They will break into our houses!”

– “Thessaloniki is blessed, they can feed many mouths! That’s why they call her poor mother!”

A small taste of bitter reality from a text by Thomas Korovini written specifically for the large interactive event “Thessaloniki, a hospitable city” – the first trilateral project (Reception, Integration, Tastes), which presents an urban experiment on Sunday. to Kellarios Colpo parallax “Otherwise Thessaloniki”dedicated to one of the aspects of the catastrophe in Asia Minor: the arrival of refugees in Kalamaria, Thessaloniki.

Greeks, locals and refugees had a hard time getting along when they first set foot in the city. “Turkospors” and “Turcomerites”, “Ciplacids”, “dirty” and “rotten” were called them in the “strange state”, as the Asia Minor heard, “great Thessaloniki”. “This meeting of two worlds, one language, one religion, one nationality, but different, with different mentality, conflicting in interests and reservations (some were looking for a new homeland, others were afraid to lose their acquisitions) tried to portray with an idea”, says “K” writer Thomas Korovinis.

The demanding and complex action directed by Haris Pehlivanidis combines theatrical, song and visual material with anecdotal photographs that will be shown for the first time (on the wall of a nearby apartment building) from the archive of Christos Nicoleris, whose grandfather was the official photographer of the Asia Minor expedition. “We chose a place that still retains its authentic elements, such as wooden promenades, a sandy beach, so that we can tell touching stories from land and sea,” explains journalist Giorgos Tulas, the “soul” of Thessaloniki Aliyos, who for 12 years engages in public actions in the urban environment of Thessaloniki. Identified with the Byzantine port of Kellarion, the historical bay of the same name in Karaburnaki, declared by the Ministry of Culture (1989) an object of underwater archaeological excavations, a strategic point in World War II, retains intact its 2 km long artificial underwater barrier, which was created to protect moored ships .

Two boats with KTHBE actors enliven the arrival of the refugees and the reception by the locals, while the songs of Smyrna (Voula Savvidis, Andreas Karakotas, Thomas Korovinis) and photographic documents tell of the events that preceded them, namely the desolation of Pontus and Asia Minor by the Greeks, the journey of the refugees, but and what followed (arrival, integration, refugee quarters) after the Holocaust, in the same place. Fire, blood, death, uprooting, deprivation, pain, despair, hope for a new life. “Come on, buckle up! Macedonia has fertile soil, let’s work on it! Let’s show our value! Thessaloniki, welcome, we have found you, I will make you my second home! I swear! We, uprooted, will merge with your deep roots!