Santinchalkidikidenexei

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City by the Sea

When I realized it was over, it was all really over for good, I decided to take one last trip to my favorite places before the symptoms got too much.

I could never forgive what they did to Chalkidiki. This incredible, wild, rugged place between mountain and sea, with pine trees all the way down to the water. The colors, the vistas, the sheer overwhelming beauty of it all. And they just built all over it. Hideous hotels sprawling like tumors, obscene beach bars blaring their awful music across the sea - even in Kavourotrypes! It was impossible not to hate humanity a little for it. The idea of all of it returning to Nature, of the hotels gradually sinking back into the reed-fields, was moving and beautiful.

But then I went back to Thessaloniki, and for all the ugliness inflicted upon that city, the idea that people would no longer meet up beneath the Kamara, or go for long, ambling walks on the promenade, or for crepes on Plateia Navarinou, was unbearably sad. The idea of the Rotonda just standing there, empty, after being a sacred place for so many centuries... it made me remember that it's not just beaches and forests that are beautiful, that cities can be more than just streets and noise. Cities can have histories and personalities, and that means something.

Who am I writing this for? Do I believe there will be survivors after all? Do I think that crazy robot project I heard about will actually work out? Do I hope that aliens will come to our planet one day and wonder who we were? The truth is that I don't know, but there is something in the love we feel for the beautiful things that we built, as much as in our revulsion towards unnecessary destruction, that matters.