Happy day in Thessaloniki

My entries are a bit higgledy piggledy.  I accidentally published one day from the trip, whereas I had meant to hold back for a bit after my return before putting them up. 

I got Thessaloniki a bit more today, having ummed and ahhed, and tried to second guess whether I was up to walking to the other bus station and then heading out to Pella, I suddenly itched to get up to an exhibition in Thessaloniki at the Contemporary Art Gallery.  About half an hour walk from my hotel, it seemed to be a small oasis of poshness in the midst of run down estates, which is ironic as the subject matter was all about smash the state etc and the short period when Soviet art, subsequently collected by the son of Greek man, who had settled in Russia,    celebrated revolutionary ideas.  George Costakis eventually returned to Greece when he realised that his interest in the Avant Garde put him at risk, he sold much of his collection to the wonderful Tratyakov Gallery in Moscow, but the rest are on show in Thessaloniki, alongside an exhibition of protest material from my youth, which I found quite moving.

There is always someone who speaks English and the staff told me which bus to catch back into town, where I spent more time at the port.  There are three museums here all of which would probably be nice, but I was drawn into a free exhibition about refugees in Thessaloniki. Back in St Paul's time, Thessaloniki was one of the most multiracial parts of Europe and then the Jews were wiped out and several other people pushed back to either Bulgaria or the Middle East or Turkey and so it became a largely Greek town, but not now.    Despite the poverty in Greece and I have seen plenty of evidence of it, from people sleeping rough, to people digging in bins, and the hardest of all the dogs roaming the streets, there is also a more hidden group of people trying to find a life here, refugees largely from Syria and Afghanistan are being housed and helped through projects like the one on show down at the port. 

It was lovely in the sun, and I was almost too late to get to the archaeological museum. Normally I should have been able to satisfy my desire to see something of the wonders of Vergina here, but that bit of the museum is currently closed and a longing to get to this now legendary site is nagging at me, but there is nowway that I seem to be able to get there.   Ironic dead at 33 Alexander the Great ruled over the whole of Macedonia and an area I guess the size of Iran and the rest of Greece, but me, at 63 cannot even find the tourist information service to work out how to get to the site of his dad's burial place!