If you’ve spent any time in northern Greece, you’ve probably traveled on the Egnatia Motorway. Officially the A2, it traces the route of the ancient Via Egnatia—a road that carried merchants, armies, and pilgrims across the region for centuries, from…

Driving home westbound on the Egnatia freeway from a full day at the beach, near Kavala, I managed to convince my exhausted family to make a small detour. Because a few minutes off the freeway lies a hidden gem of Northern Greece – The Lion of …

If you’ve ever wandered between a Greek taverna and an Italian trattoria, you may have noticed something strange: some of the dishes sound oddly familiar—but are nothing alike. Here are three classic examples of Greek–Italian culinary “false fr…

It wasn’t until a coworker from India mentioned her travel plans that I started thinking of Greece as a “milk nation.”“I want to go to Greece and eat yogurt,” she said.It stopped me in my tracks. I’ve heard all kinds of reasons to visit Greece—histor…

There’s something about bazaars that speaks to a time before supermarkets and shopping malls. A time when going to buy cheese or a pair of shoes might have involved hitching a ride with a neighbor, or taking the bus to the next town over. When “going…

The Cappadocian Greeks were one of several Greek-speaking communities who lived for centuries in what is now central Turkey—part of a broader group known as the Asia Minor Greeks. In essence the Asia Minor Greeks stayed and kept their culture, langua…

The Lake of Giannitsa—historically known as Loudias Lake—was once a vast, shallow marshland in Central Macedonia, fed by the Loudias River. For generations, the area was infamous for its dense wetlands, referred to locally as Borboros(meaning &#…

The village of Agrosykia is where my father was born, and it is my most and best memories of Greece as well as my family’s home base Greece. In Greek the name means Wild Fig Tree. But it wasn’t always named, Agrosykia, in fact, it acquire…

Some landmarks stay with you—not because they’re especially grand or famous, but because they were part of the scenery of your life. The Giannitsa Clock Tower is one of those for me. I remember it clearly from my childhood. It was a distinct landmark…

In july of 2008 my father and I visited the village of Cukuryurt, known as Tchouhouri. See pictures on Flickr. Here is the intro of my written account: Tchouhouri, Cappadocia, Turkey, July 2008 We have been travelling on the windy roads of the Turkis…

In the summer of 2009 my father, Georgios Papastefanou completed ten years of work, aided by his late sister Androniki Karekelidou the world’s only Pharasiot-Modern Greek Dictionary. Pharasiot is a language that was spoken in Greek villages in …