Jo, Rachel, Michail, Vicki, Lynne, and others, these were my colleagues in Thessaloniki and they were a great bunch of people. Often after work we would go off to an ouzeri in the upper town, near the old wall, and have a light dinner, usually mezedakia -the titbits of octopus, squid, dips, cheesy things, spinach, pastries etc. that Greeks usually have as a kind of hors d'oeuvre. If you order enough of them, they make a meal in themselves, especially if accompanied by a Greek salad and washed down with copious quanitites of wine, restina, or beer. Sometimes, we went to a taverna close to the wall in the old town, which stayed open until the small hours on a weekday if the customers wanted it. This taverna had a fantastic view of the city, both during the day, and at night.

We met other customers there. One was a ear, throat and nose specialist who had trained in London; another was an uxorious debt-collector and his wife; a third, a German backpacker who spoke astonishing Greek. There were some students at Thessaloniki University, anarchists hanging out in a squat and yet somehow managing to scrape together enough for a simple taverna meal, a retired sea-captain, families manged out on too many Greek discussions, and so on and so forth.
The most colourful of these people was the self-styled Crown Prince of Macedonia. In fact he was a restaurateur, who often ate outside his own establishment. He hastened to assure us, this was not because his restaurant was bad ( it was a very good one), but because he liked to vary his routine. He was a character straight out of Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential", not without charm, piratical, with a macho swagger, a love of the ladies, and outrageous conspiracy theories. He assured us all that North of Kilkis there had been several UFO sightings, and he knew someone who had made contact with the aliens. Amazingly, he had not been abducted, but instead had tried to do business with them.
A typical conversation with the Crown Prince of Macedonia would run thus:
"There's a village near Kilkis, where people have seen UFO's" (Crown Prince)
"Really?" (any one of us, or all)
"Yes- ha! The aliens came out of the spacecraft and communicated with the farmer - a poniro (cunning) friend of mine - using telepathy and hand signals."
"I hope the hand signals weren't rude" I said.
"No, not intentionally, cultural misunderstandings notwithstanding, but I believe the telepathy was. They communicated things that would make your mother blanch. Dirty jokes by aliens, can you imagine such a thing!" He stroked his head thoughtfully. "Ah well, let's not speculate and thank Him up there that we don't have to share dirty jokes with Outer Spacers."
"Not yet," said Vicki.
"I wonder how they translate alien-ish into comprehensible Greek," I said.
"Apparently telepathy doesn't work like that. Anyway, he communicated with them for a while, and discovered they had a liking for coffee. So he started his usual sales patter, my friend that is, sort of 'five of your precious volkrjobitok time-switch beads and I'll give you enough Greek coffee to send your hearts soaring to Alpha Centauri A and beyond'"
This was usually when The Crown Prince had had a few glasses of wine. When relatively sober, he was a mine of useless, but true information, especially about things like mosquitoes. I can remember a conversation which centred around who had had the most horrific mosquito experience, and we were each trying to outdo the other. After the Crown Prince of Macedonia had capped all our stories by throwing in cockroaches, rats, and fleas into the story, he proceeded to tell us about the mating rituals of the mosquito. Apparently much less is known about this than people imagine. Another example: he didn't just know the name of all the capitals of the world, but also of the second cities of the world. "I make it a point of pride, since we people in Thessaloniki always play second fiddle to Athens," he told us. Thus, Birmingham, Marseilles, Timbuktu (I think) and Surabaya immediately came to mind. But though some people know that the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou, what the ... is its second city? The Crown Prince always knew. He was the world's first second city anorak.
And finally, to round off the C.P's effect on many of our lives, he provided me with the recipe for Melitzana salata which graces Bootsnall pages. If I'm trying to seduce a girl with food, the starters always include this.