After the positive reader responses to our quirky assortment, we wanted to include more street scenes to give you the flavour of civic life, so this post draws on our walk this morning round Alexandroupoli, a lively modern town near the border with Turkey.
One of the distinctive town features is that, the further east we’ve come, the more cafes we’ve seen – even the smallest towns have dozens of places where people sit about and drink freddo espressos and freddo cappucinos (iced coffees in glasses).
Popular times seem to be all morning, and from about 5.00 until 8.00 in the evenings. Here are just a few of the cafes we saw within a couple of blocks of our hotel in the centre of town – and as far as we can tell, only the last is a chain:
Another consistent feature is queues of resigned, masked people – usually outside banks and Vodafone shops:
There’s always something to draw our attention in terms of shop windows, signs, street furniture (we have no idea what the bottom right hand signs mean so suggestions welcome):
And then there are the animals – I photographed the dog last night, but when we strolled round the corner this morning, he was in exactly the same position so we thought he was dead. We approached gingerly and he gave a big sigh. We have concluded that he is the town equivalent of the Greek village dogs who all lie in the roads and expect you to swerve round them. (We keep thinking ‘India’.)
Our final photo for this post does not come from Alex (as the city is known by its residents) but from the last silk-producing town in Europe, which we also visited today. We couldn’t decide if the cat had just learnt from the dogs – or if there hadn’t been a train in a very long time.
Great to see your photos and read the accounts. The dog strongly reminds me of my dear Sunny – do like her!
The strange flower? I have come across it in Brazil. It feels and looks like velour. I don’t know the name.
Xx
We have seen other Sunnys too – her spirit lives on!
I am enjoying the street scenes enormously. The sign and your invitation to guess what it says, reminded me to ask you how your spoken Greek is going? X
Sadly, spoken Greek is more or less hello, good morning, thank you and everything else in English. The Greek people are so gracious, though, about language and always appreciate M’s attempts to read menu Greek …
Haha true Indian dogs own the roads. I have exactly such a dog on our street who does not move even for cars and you have to drive around him!!
We nearly deleted the picture of the dog because we thought he’d died and it seemed disrespectful. So many road lounging dogs! They don’t even lift their heads when cars swerve by…
A cat and chick chick chick chick chickens?!?! The perfect post.
Ah yes, of course! Am humming along to c c c chickens…
We could have made a joke out of ‘A town like Alex’ but decided it was too cheap, even for Sue. But glad you like the cat – have more if you want!