Florina is a small town in Northern Greece – almost at the border of Macedonia and Albania.

(These photos go from small scale to big)

Florina is the town that my Baba’s family is from. My Baba was born here and he actually grew up in a small village near Florina called Kato Ydrousa.

The village is fifteen minutes by car from Florina. In The village so far we have seen lots of people. We’ve seen Aunty Seve and Uncle Mihali – Seve is my Giagia’s sister. She’s a good cook.

Filio and Andoni are their kids. Filio is engaged to Chris and lives in Thessaloniki – he’s really nice.

We spent lots of time with Andoni in Melbourne because he came to Australia for my uncle George’s wedding. Filio is Toby’s godmother (nouna) from when we got christened in the village when we were one year old.

My godfather (nouno) is Kosta and Vicky and why have a little girl called Angeliki who is five years old. Kosta is my Baba’s first cousin. Also we’ve seen his sister Evi.

My uncle George and aunty Sally also came to Greece on their way to work in London. It what’s been so nice having them around beacuse we hadn’t seen them for a long time. Sally’s parents – Joy and Bob were also here for five days but they have gone back to Melborune now. It was lovely to spend lots of time with them.

At my Baba’s parents home We have sat around and rested.

It has been nice to sit around after travelling for so long. when dad was born he lived in a very old fashioned house made of stone and mud. They built another house (which is the one we are staying in) in 1980 because the other one was falling apart and they thought they would move back to Greece to live but then they decided to stay in Australia.
We went to a festival on Wednesday and Thursday night this week. The festival was called ‘Panigiri’ or the festival of ‘Panagia’. We got to eat lots of souvlaki and did some Greek dancing in a circle in the village square.

Papou Doni with his great-grand kids and some of his grandkids

Watching the dancing

Cousin Angeliki and cousin Gianni

We liked playing around

Practicing our dancing

Emilio – the king of the world

It’s hard to do Greek dancing on shoulders – but they tried

You just follow the steps

We went out about 10pm because they stay up really late here. We got home about 1am but our uncle Andoni got home at 6am. He’s a party animal. On Thursday we went to church which was actually a little church on the edge of the village. Our village has three churches and we went to the smallest because that one was having its festival day.

For lunch that festival day we ate lots of meat and salads and kalamcru and rice and pasta and potatoes that our aunt Seve and uncle Mihali and Filio made and brought to our house cause there is much more room here and there were 18 people at lunch.

It was really yummy.

By Yas