He left Thessaloniki and became the only resident in a village (PHOTO)
The traffic in the streets, the daughters, the voices and the fast pace of everyday life in the city, he felt that turned his life into an unequal struggle for survival.
But he did not stay idle. He turned his back on bustling Thessaloniki and decided to move to an abandoned village in Kastoria.
THE Nikos Nikolaidis worked for decades in the center of Thessaloniki, specifically in Aristotelous. However, his love for nature and life in the countryside won him over and pushed him to make a difficult but important decision. He changed the page, requested and received a transfer to the Kastoria law and is now the only permanent resident in the village of Giannohori, which had been inhabited since 1949.
“Life in Thessaloniki in recent years has started to become unbearable for me,” Nikos Nikolaidis emphasizes to APE-MPE and explains: “If we also take into account the burden of the measures of COVID-19 and its variants, you understand how much it has fallen the quality of life. Locking myself in an apartment is not an option for me. For several years, whatever I did every day, my mind was on how to escape from the city to go to the village. After losing my wife two years ago, it was now a matter of time to make the final decision and leave.”
Giannochori has been deserted since 1949
They started building the house next to the river, together with his husband, in 2009, in the village of Giannohori in the municipality of Nestoriou, Kastoria. The village, as he says, was abandoned in 1949 by its inhabitants, as the civil war raged, and since then no one leaves them behind. When they saw the slope that was built to face the sun from east to west and Aliakmonas flows at the foot, “the love was lightning fast” and they decided that only there they could have a house outside the city.
As he says, he has now made a new start in his life. He lives all alone in an entire village! He doesn’t have everything next to him, like he did in the city. He tries, but he doesn’t have a job for basic necessities, as the nearest supply point is Nestorio, which is 21 km away.
“Communication is a basic need and by communication I mean having a good phone signal and the now necessary internet, because there is no infrastructure for a landline phone. The fact that I’m alone in the village doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t worry me yet, because every now and then someone will pass by the neighboring villages and make us drink a tsipouraki. In general, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages are good, they are hospitable, they will not be afraid to put in their house or treat them to a coffee in the cafe”, he notes.
“Not even bears live there”
“When someone goes to live in a village that has seen a permanent resident since 1949, you understand that at first they treat him with disbelief… “Stop it, you live there permanently. Not even the bears live there”, they tell me, and then they ask me: “Well how did you decide?”. Where I laugh is with the public services and DEKO, in Kastoria, when they are told that I live in Giannohori. First they will laugh and then they say: “Now where does he live?” Think of the surprise of the employee at Nestorio’s ELTA, when I said that she should bring me my mail in Giannochori. Like the others, after laughing, he said to me: “Okay, now tell me where you rent so I can bring it to you.”
Thessaloniki, as he confides, is a city he loved very much, as he has lived there since 1980. In this period of his life, however, he could not keep him… “Once he wondered if I had done well to leave and I told myself: “if you think you made a mistake, go to Thessaloniki, take the city bus in the morning to go to work and then again at 3:00 PM to return home.” I immediately lost my wonder!”, he explains and bursts into laughter.
“My life is now simple and beautiful”
Describing his daily life, he says that it has changed radically, as calmness, natural beauty and harmony are the protagonists in his life. “I will go to work in the morning. Back at noon, I’ll feed the cats (I have two), eat and do various chores around the house or out in the yard. Homework outside the city never ends. When I’m not working, I take the backpack and go to the forest in the morning and come back in the late afternoon. When I don’t want to do any of that, a book is my best companion. My life now is simple and beautiful.”
As he underlines, in the service he was in, he had not encountered any problems and the colleagues and also the commanders they had from time to time, were wonderful people. They have always helped him, not only in his official duties, but also in his personal problems and for that he thanks them all. The same climate, however, met with Nestorius, although he is still in the stage of knowledge, everyone is willing to help him, if something happens. The workload, of course, as he points out, cannot be compared, the sizes are completely different.
“The fact that I am not close to nature, but in it, is what fascinates me most of all in my new life”, Nikos Nikolaidis confesses and explains that “the only sound I hear is the one coming from the river and the only voices come from the wild animals. In the morning I will make my coffee and enjoy it with the most beautiful view in front of me. No more honking at traffic lights and the voices of angry people. The work is 21 km from the house, but these are located in the excellent gorge of Aliakmons and all I meet are hares, roe deer, wild boars, well now you also meet them in Aristotelous and very rarely any bears”, he emphasizes with a wide smile.
news today