Exploring Word Jungles

We finally arrived in Thessaloniki – Greece – after almost 12 hours of no sleep. So, understandably, our arrival was all a bit of a blur for me. I remember lots of screaming children, running from baggage carrousel to baggage carrousel like chickens with our heads cut off and then crashing in my barely made bed after dinner. I may have lost a little bit there.

I do remember something else actually: graffiti. Even in my sleep-deprived state of mind, I remember coming into Thessaloniki and seeing graffiti on almost every available surface. Storefront windows, garage doors, sidewalks – it’s everywhere.

I’m not completely sure why there’s so much – spray paint must be cheap – but I’m sure I’ll find out. Coming into this trip, I planned on writing a story about street art – murals, paintings or anything based in imagery – but graffiti has captured my imagination more than anything else so far.

It’s really shaped my perception of Thessaloniki. Every street corner is alive with some amount of color. Bubblegum pink letters definitely spice up the garage door near our apartments and the familiar “Fuck the police” gives a relatively plain building a tiny bit of anti-authority swag.

But even more than coloring the city, graffiti makes explicit the clash between modernity and antiquity in Thessaloniki. To the disappointment of our tour guide today, graffiti extended to the ancient ruins around the city. You can’t get more literal than that. While the ruins are falling apart – the city sometimes can’t spare the expense to restore them – graffiti has spread like a weed. Every attempt to paint over it or erase it from Thessaloniki’s urban landscape just results in more graffiti.

In the end, it seems like graffiti is making Thessaloniki into one large public message board. Anti-capitalist slogans mingle with personal tags. Anybody with spray paint and a message can make the city their own. That’s true in America too, but the culture around graffiti seems so much different here. Thessaloniki is definitely a city, but it seems like more than just a bunch of buildings. All the graffiti makes it clear that this is a city full of warring ideas and passionate people. It’s less a city and more a jungle of words. I just hope the magic and wonder I felt today  -rounding a corner to see another parade of color – doesn’t fade away.