Letter from Veria. Farewell to the city (Childhood part 3).

By Pantelis Goularas

Finishing the stories about the childhood today, I'm editing a few pictures of my neighborhood, the way it was in the beginning of the 70s. I've got them from my good friend Christos Tsopelas. It was first published, on a Facebook open group “Palies fotograflies tis Verias (Old pictures of Veria)”.

The street in front of our house. It has the name Patriarhou Ioakim street. Until the 60s it was a cobblestone road. Later, at the end of the 60s, it was covered with cement, as it shows in the picture. Today it is paved with stone tablets.

The downhill of the Gorgi chapel is covered with cement too. This was the place of the winter playground, as I wrote in my first post (Diving in the childhood).

My neighborhood from above. Foreground is the cypress of the Gorgi chapel. Straight on, the Kiriotissa church with it's two cypresses. At the down right corner is the football place. In the picture it is covered with cement, but a few years earlier it was a soil road. At the left we can see the fence and a part of the property, that was also a part of our football place. The picture is snapped a few years after the 1966 fire. It is clear that the houses are very close one to another and the danger of a general conflagration of the neighborhood was very possible. It had been avoided with too much effort and only on the last moment.