Author Archives
Alexander Billinis
The Brothers Macedonian
I have written extensively about the Macedonian Issue over the past two decades and, rather than add my own two drachmas on this matter here (I have said plenty elsewhere over the years) I would…
From Brindisi To Patras: August 2000
My newfound friends waved to me from the deck as the ferryboat began its journey into the night. I had just left a week in the heart of the Heel of Italy, a place called…
Greeks in Hungary, a History in Two Acts
The Greek presence in Hungary is one of the oldest in Greece’s modern Diaspora, predating the Greek state by well over a century. It is, further, one of the most interesting because, as a tragic…
Hydra’s Nautical Academy: The Oldest in the World
For millennia Aegean islanders have plied the seas, seeking fortune on the water usually denied to them on land. At no time was this truer than during the era when Greeks groaned under foreign rule,…
My Bulgarian Summer: 1994
“What would your papou say?” my mother said, partly in jest. Her father, my grandfather, like so many Greeks resident in America during the Balkan Wars, rushed back to Greece to fight in the war…
Greek Oranges… The Best In The World!
No oranges compare to Greek oranges. Not Florida, Texas, or Arizona. Honorable mention must be given to Spain, Italy, and Portugal (whence the Greek [and Bulgarian, Turkish, and Romanian] name for orange—Portokalli) derives. Greek oranges,…
Train Station: Sidirokastro, 1994
It is summer 1994, just south of the Greek-Bulgarian border, basically a cease-fire line from several wars dividing this piece of the ex-Ottoman world among the ex-Byzantines. That summer, my perch was in Sofia, Bulgaria,…
Sir Patrick-Kyrios Michalis – Reflections on the Life of Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011)
Over eleven years have passed since one of Greece’s greatest biographers gave up the ghost. I wrote these words at the time to commemorate the departure of a Byronic figure who gave so much to…
Greeks and Ukraine, a Long History
The Greeks’ presence on the northern shore of the Black Sea, what is now Ukraine and Russia, goes back millennia, even before the Classical Greek era. The Mycenaeans, one of history’s first seafaring cultures, knew…
Sister Cities: A Great Way to Honor our Country and our Heritage
This year and the coming year are both years of milestones; a bicentennial to celebrate this year, and next year, one centennial to celebrate and another, tragic, centennial to commemorate. This year, 2021, is the…
Time For The Greek Diaspora To Talk… To Each Other
Okay, my title probably seems obvious, but think about it for a moment. Do Greek Americans coordinate and communicate with Greek Australians? What about with Greeks in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe, the ex-Soviet Union,…
Telling the Byzantine Story
The summer is ending. In some jurisdictions, school has started, and as a university lecturer, I am using a hiatus between summer classes and the fall semester to tune up syllabi. The vacation-centric “August” of…
