Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki has become something of a second home. A place I return to again and again.

Throughout the day and night the city is alive, in constant movement. People wait, pass and linger. A woman stands still while everything else moves around her. A man sits selling balloons, their colours shimmering against the flow of the street.

Music is played. Work is done. Time is filled.

Historic buildings sit among newer apartment blocks, neither winning out. Some are worn, some patched and some simply holding on. The city looks used.

In places it looks tired. It doesn’t hide this.

The market draws you in not through beauty but curiosity. A functional space that works because it needs to. Boxes stacked, hands busy, light falling where it can. It isn’t beautiful but it is alive.

Nearby, smaller streets feel warmer and more familiar, yet keep their secrets from those who don’t know the city’s voice.

Along the seafront the city stretches out. People line the edge, walking, fishing, sitting and watching the water. Figures spaced against the horizon. A pause that belongs to everyone.

Thessaloniki isn’t polished and it isn’t quick. It’s a city you spend time with rather than look at and over time it begins to feel familiar, not through beauty but through it’s presence.