Thessaloniki

Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling to Thessaloniki, Greece to present a paper, discuss another one, and help with the PhD Student Consortium at the bi-annual European Audit Research Network conference. I don't usually travel much during fall because that is when I teach, but I've attended this conference before (and had a good time) and I'd never been to Greece ... so ... I handed off my Tuesday PhD seminar to a couple of junior faculty and gave the MAcc students Wednesday off. Paige wasn't able to come along because there is no way she could spare 5-6 days in September, but I managed to have a good time anyway.

Travel through Chicago and Frankfurt was relatively uneventful, and I landed late Tuesday afternoon about 16 hours after leaving KC. Walked around a bit with my friend Anna from Vrije University (Amsterdam) down by the seaside and had dinner at a terrific rooftop restaurant overlooking Aristotelous Square.

On Wednesday, a buddy of Anna's who works at a university in Sweden but is a Thessaloniki native (because that is how Europe works) drove us 2 1/2 hours to Meteora, a collection of Eastern Orthodox monasteries built hundreds of years ago on top of a series of rocky outcroppings up in the mountains. It is an extremely cool place, but the dozens upon dozens of gigantic buses toting tourists around did manage to take the edge off a little bit. I definitely recommend going if you are nearby because it is a one-of-a-kind experience regardless. But if you can manage to hit it during the off-season, that would be even better.

The next morning, I spent a few hours walking a big loop from the hotel (the Mediterranean Palace, highly recommended) around some of the more interesting / historic parts of town. The first half of the loop ran up through the old Ano Poli neighborhoods past several orthodox churches, the 1st century Roman Forum, a monastery, and various sections of late Roman era walls and towers. 

As usual, though, some of the more appealing bits were just random glimpses of life in the area's many labyrinthine streets and alleys. Some of this part of town reminds me of the Albaicin neighborhoods in Granada, although Thessaloniki in general isn't as appealing to me as Granada (which was the high point of our trip to Spain in 2019).

After spending some time poking around in the neighborhoods near the old walls, I meandered back downhill toward the bay and checked out the Rotunda (sort of a poor man's Pantheon), the Arch of Galerius (Caesar), and some of the ruins of his 4th century palace. All of these things are right in the middle of town, and many of the office and apartment buildings that were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s apparently were built on ground that covers similar (perhaps less expansive???) ruins. They've been trying to build a subway system in Thessaloniki since the 1980s, but there are so many Roman era ruins underground that they've encountered almost continual delays. Some of the system is supposed to be finished in 2024 and I guess we'll see how things go from there.

The rest of my time in town was spent doing stuff with the conference, but we had a productive time there, did a lot of useful mixing and mingling, ate really good food (apparently it is impossible NOT to do that in Greece), and even had an interesting folk music and dance exhibition at the conference dinner event Saturday night. As for specific restaurants, the Elektra Palace Hotel is home to the rooftop restaurant (which was excellent), and we also really enjoyed Charoupi (Greek / Cretan fusion stuff) and Rodi Kai Meli (aka Ρόδι & Μέλι,). Our 20-ish waitress at the latter place moved (errrr ... fled) to Greece from Ukraine shortly after the war began and was one of the happiest, most endearing people I've ever met.

Overall, I wouldn't push Thessaloniki as a must-go destination, but it is an interesting city with a vibe that is very different from most of the places I've been ... probably more similar to Istanbul (minus the minarets and calls to prayer) than anywhere else. I'd very much like to go to Athens and some of the islands, and I certainly can see that happening one of these days. But only when I can get The Boss to come along.

Cheers,

Mike