Skariba’s roads 5km

Skariba’s roads

G. Skaribas lived from time to time in the neighborhoods, such as the Castle, the Jewish Cemetery, the Center, in Avanton and in the neighborhood of Karambaba, (initially, in the refugee camps and finally in Gomini 8, today renamed to G. Skarimbas. His customs office was initially located on the seafront ground floor of the PALIRROIA hotel and later on the seafront ground floor of the Kotsika Mansion. St. Nikolaou and definitely next to his customs office on the beach, in the cafe-pastry shop of “Manolis tou cheros” (“the madmen are few and Skaribas is gone”, sings Lidakis). He ate and drank with his friends and guests in taverns near the Mosque, in Ag. Varvara, in Kanapitsa, on Lelas Karagianni street, in Nilos, in the taverns of Ermou and Balalaia, in the cafe, etc. He fished mainly next to the drawbridge in its western part and in other places along the beach in Viotiki and Evoiki side. His usual walks were hosted by the coastal roads on both sides of Evripos, Kotsou Street and its perpendiculars before and after the Mosque to the north and towards Ag. Friday and towards Vailo’s house, El. Venizelou from the Courts to Arethousa, Arethousis, Kriezotou, Avanton and Haina and their perpendiculars from Ermou to Liani Ammos. The main streets of the city with the neoclassical and various other monuments of cultural heritage, the coastal paths in Souvala, Mesa Panagitsa, Kourenti, Kaki Kefali and its Lighthouse (“It was an ash road, serpentine, that snaked – in the middle of the night…

Then, dumb silent monk, he thought of a ship going. A ship with glass sails and rocking beyond the limits of the world”), as well as the streets with folk houses in Karambaba and the districts around the City Center (there are a few more in the Platoma district where the his short story “The Last Brawlers of Chalkida”, in the once glorious Marougleika et al.), were permanent targets of his walks, inspirations and writings. Today, walking along the above-mentioned streets of Skariba, one will at the same time get to know almost all the important historical and modern cultural monuments – points of Chalkida (the drawbridge, the Children’s Street House, the Ottoman Mosque, the Jewish Synagogue, the Municipal Art Gallery (D Mytaras), the church of St. Paraskevi, the house where Skalkotas was born, the Folklore Museum, the monument to 75 executed by the Nazis, the Municipal Market, the Courts, the Archives-Museum G. Scariba, the National Resistance Monument etc.

Chalkida, with its neighborhoods and its people, is omnipresent in his work (especially in Mariamba thallei) and as a real city (he wrote “O Chalkida city (…) your fields tremble”, he also wrote “Chalkida cursed a bunch wounds”), but at the same time as an “ideal” city that becomes the habitat of his art, sometimes as if “built of chalk deeply disappearing beyond”, sometimes “sitting like a gale on its tail”, sometimes as an “unbalanced decor”, sometimes “trembling in the hound” and sometimes “wearing a clown hat” and “crying” talking to him. Especially its sea with its seagulls and its ships (the ship sometimes “among the smokes of the vulture”, sometimes “with glass sails”, to accompany him “out of the storm of this world” etc.) besides literal stage also stood as symbolic elements for his essential ideas, for which perhaps the writer-poet wished to become a reality and perhaps he was worried about his own relative contribution (“Let it be as if I were ready. And let it be as if I had lost the ticket. The cauldrons should foam and the foamers should shake it in the midst of its smoke – vulture – a boat. I’m lost looking here too. And all – all … the … TICKET to say beautiful comrades!”). As everywhere, places are made by their people, so also in Chalkida. The Chalkidian heroes in the works of Skaribas are basically the ordinary everyday people and the subjects discussed are their woes, weaknesses, contradictions, dreams for a better life.