Well -- here I go ... finally I am getting my summer plan in gear.

I am leaving on Saturday, July 14 and heading to Maine -- My church there - St. Demetrios - is having their annual festival and I will be helping. My friend Eleni is coming with me and will be staying in Maine till the 2oth -- at which point I head out to Constantinople ... my birthplace. I am so so excited to go to Turkey -- to see where I was born, the church in which I was baptised, the neighborhood I played in, the islands ... (Pringiponisa in Greek) Princes islands in English -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes%27_Islands --- were I went on vacation, the orphanage my dad spent his childhood, my mom's house ... where my dad met my mom ... where my mom and dad married -- my brother baptized ... my grandfather's grave in the two Greek cemeteries left in Constantinople ... more than anything else -- I am ready to listen to stories -- to the way my parents lived their everyday very normal lives being Greek Orthodox Christians in Istanbul.

When I left Konstantinoupoli in 1971 -- Istanbul was 1 million strong -- 200,000 Greeks, lets say another 100,000 Armenians and probably another 75,000 Jews (not exactly sure of these facts ... but I am probably close ... a very cosmopolitan city ... where really four distinct populations coexisted for centuries. In the 1900s -- especially after WWI -- politics took over and every decade there were days .. weeks ... there was more more strife against the Greeks ... and every decade after these events the Greek population declined to what is today 1,200 folks of Greek descent in a city of 11 MILLION!

here is what the wikipedia has on this topic ...The population of the Armenian and Greek minorities in Istanbul greatly declined beginning in the late 19th century. The city's Greek Orthodox community were exempted from the population exchange between Greece and Turkey of 1923. However, a series of special restrictions and taxes beginning in the 1930s (see, e.g., Varlık Vergisi), finally culminating in the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, greatly increased emigration, and in 1964, all Greeks without Turkish citizenship residing in Turkey (around 100,000) were deported. Today, most of Turkey's remaining Greek and Armenian minorities live in or near Istanbul.

Enough for today ... More will be coming on this blog ... I will be leaving for Istanbul on the 20th of July and will be coming back on the 23 of August from Athens. I am not sure when I will leave Turkey to go to Greece ... but I am guessing somewhere around August 15th ... Many of you know that my dear dear uncle Iorthanis -- who was also my nouno - my godfather -- passed away this spring. We all took it hard .. but my mom ... is extremely emotional about losing her brother .. so I hope to get to Athens and visit the cemetery and hug my aunt and cousin Elias.

More to come on this blog so stay tuned.... Evie