Our Condo in Thessaloniki

Here is a little sketch I've done of our tiny condo in Thessaloniki. I did it without measureng anything, so the proportions may not be correct. Everything is small; the master bedroom, for example, is entirely filled by a large wardrobe and a nearly king-sized bed. There's just room left to walk around the bed. Maybe you can judge the sizes of the other rooms from that.

The fat black lines are solid doors; the fat blue lines are glass doors. They’re all sliding doors except the ones off the hall. The kitchen door also slides. The fat gray lines are windows. I missed one solid door; it's between the hallway and the sitting room.

The two bedrooms and the living room have wood parquet flooring, while the kitchen and bath are both tiled. The entry hall is done in red, polished concrete aggregate trimmed with marble.

As the flat occupies one end of the building, every room (except the bathroom and foyer) opens onto a narrow balcony that wraps around two sides. Hence, almost all the windows are actually sliding glass doors. This makes for plenty of light. Actually, you can have as much or as little as you like, as every window and door is equipped with a modern version of shutters. Each shutter slides open or closed on a track and is made of painted aluminum, corrugated to resemble slats, and perforated to let in the breeze. When our Greek friends heard that houses in America seldom have real, working shutters, they were amazed. «Americans must feel very safe, then,» they said, «not to need shutters.»

The only curtains are sheers, per the Greek tradition. As we have high ceilings, one cannot reach the curtain rods if the sheers need washing or replacing. Christos showed me, however, how each one can be lowered and raised by a pulley, the same way one works a venetian blind. That makes it easy.

The furniture in our flat is mostly old and cheap and nondescript, except for some special pieces. One is the doulapa in the master bedroom. That’s a combination of cupboard and linen closet and chest of drawers; it takes up all of the shortest wall. It was custom made for the spot and is very pretty. In the living room is a set of French Provincial furniture (sofa, love seat and two chairs) that Demetrios once bought his mother. It is upholstered in royal blue velvet. There are brown accent pillows on them, embroidered in shiny, gold thread. There is also a matching brown velvet easy chair.

The second «bedroom» or more properly, a sitting room, has a futon upholstered in brown tweed, with two matching chairs and two matching ottomans. The chairs and ottomans, I’ve discovered, each conceal storage spaces beneath the seats. So does the futon.

The rest of the furniture is mostly crummy coffee tables, end tables, occasional tables. Each piece, while quite humble in itself, is topped with a lovely piece of embroidery or crochet lace, handmade, some by Demetrios’ mother or grandmother.

There’s an old but good television, which gets some 20 channels and has a good picture.

There are three «treasures» from the old country, Constantinople, where Demetrios’ mother was born. The first of these is a pitcher made of bronze or something, with the name «Anna» engraved upon it, short for Anastasia, Demetrios’ grandmother or great-grandmother, and the date, 1898. It may have been a wedding present for her. The second treasure is a mirror. It isn’t fancy, and Demetrios’ mother painted the frame a crummy color of dark gold, but it’s still from the homeland (Constantinople), so it’s still to be cherished. The third treasure is a Singer sewing machine, the kind you work with a treadle, not electric. Demetrios says on this machine his grandmother made all his clothes and all the clothes for the whole family, even coats, and once, even shoes, every stitch he wore until he graduated from high school. One day, I shall try to learn to use it. I managed quite well on one in home economics class in Germany when I was 14.

Storage space is severely limited, so I shall have to exercise some creativity in that regard.

The balcony is a pleasant, sunny, breezy place for meals. It faces a small triangle of a park on the corner of the block, so, unlike so many, we don’t have to stare out our windows straight into somebody else’s.