This article has been powered by We are Europe*.
Author: Are We Europe
Florian Schmitz is a hard drinker. Thessaloniki is the city that taught him how to slow down. To sip little glasses of tsiporo (like ouzo, but made from just the peel of the grape) the same way he sips coffee while looking out at Mount Olympus, mythic home of the Greek gods.
"I'm German, so I drink a lot of beer, and we drink to get drunk" he said, admitting that he had probably looked like a "hopeless and desperate alcoholic" the first few times he went out in the northern Greek industrial town.
Florian was one of the first German journalists to move to Thessaloniki as the financial crisis wreaked havoc across the Mediterranean nation in 2011.
Even as the German government took hardline positions on the strings of austerity it attached to internationally-backed loans for Greece, Florian found himself an object of curiosity in Thessaloniki. As a German who had moved in the opposite direction of hundreds of thousands of Greeks, he was often received graciously, from bars, to the market, to the local choir that he joined.
"People would line up at the choir to meet me, I always got free shots, I even got free app...
This content is restricted to subscribers. If you have already subscribed, please log in. New users may freely register below.