Shabbat in Volos

NOVEMBER 5, 2022 : Today was a day when being home was productive, and being out of the house, less so.

Last night, after Shabbat dinner and a cup of wine, I fell asleep as usual. Mark ventured out to the late Friday night services at the Volos synagogue. He arrived early and talked with one of the elderly locals who spoke a very good Hebrew. The man showed Mark some of the things on display in the community room, including an urn with ashes from Dachau that had been brought back by a bishop from Volos who had been imprisoned there and given to the Jewish community. There were about 20 people who had arrived to attend services, most of them older. There was one younger Israeli, who visited Volos last year and liked the place so much, that he moved here with his wife and three children. None of the people were religious and all the women wore pants. I would have felt very comfortable there. After services each week, they eat their Friday night meal together in a large room in the neighboring building.

The community has prayer services only on Friday night and not on Saturday morning, so this morning we were both home in our apartment. Mark said Shabbat morning prayers and I worked on the blogs. All week long I had been writing the blogs but was not able to post. The internet was never good enough to upload photos – it always timed out. Now we were finally in an apartment with very good upload speed. I needed to catch-up, edit and post the last six days. The problem with travel blogs is the moment you are all caught up, another day has gone by and there are new things to write. Never-ending and sometimes overwhelming.

I was very productive and by lunch time, I had published two blogs and was almost finished with a third. We had a nice meal, and then ventured out into the city. Yesterday, at the tourist information bureau, I had requested a map of the Urban Art in Volos. Volos is known for its murals, and the tourist information office provides a map with the mural locations. There are over 60 murals widely scattered throughout the big city. They are sponsored by Urban Art, an organization whose goal is to promote alternative forms of culture such as public mural art, graffiti, street art, etc. They are the same organization that was responsible for the Holocaust mural we saw in Thessaloniki.

First, we strolled along one of the pedestrian malls in the center of the city. Volos has a very large pedestrian zone, stretching all the way along its waterfront. The streets were jammed with people and there was the loud background noise of many conversations occurring at once.

At the other end of the city, we sat down to take out the map of the mural locations. I rummaged through my backpack and did not find any map – I had forgotten it in the apartment. Oy.

Without the map, there was no way to find the murals, so instead we walked back along the waterfront. The long waterfront was one restaurant after another, and mostly full. The air smelled of sea water. Docked along the pier were many large boats available for charter.

After a nice walk, we returned to the apartment to rest. We would go out again later, this time with the map.

After a couple of hours, we left the apartment, this time double checking that we had the Urban Art pamphlet. Although it was only 15:00, the stores were already closed, and the streets had just a just a few people. Very different than this morning.

Our destination was Old Town – an area of narrow streets that has several murals close to each other. We walked through the city to the Old Town, and then sat down to look at the map and get the exact address of our first mural. The pamphlet has a small map with numbers giving the approximate location of each mural. The key along the side gives the exact address for each number.

I looked at the map and the closest mural to where we were was labeled #20. I looked at the key and saw addresses for all the murals numbered greater than 31, but nowhere was there a 20. Looking closer, I saw that this pamphlet is called Vol. 2. Although on the map it shows all the numbers, this pamphlet only gave the addresses of the higher numbers, and you need pamphlet Vol. 1 for the low numbers. We had two pamphlets, but we thought that they were the same and that the worker had given one to me and one to Mark. We had left the other pamphlet in the apartment. Most of the murals in this area had low numbers, so once again, we were without the addresses to find them. Oy.

We gave up looking for street art and decided to just wander around the neighborhood. In doing so, we stumbled across one of the murals. Unfortunately, the pamphlets give only the name of the artist and no indication what this is supposed to represent.

The mural was located across the street from the Volos Museum of the City. The museum was already closed for the day, but from the photos on the building, it looked interesting.

The area we walked through was full of renovated single-family homes lining narrow streets. Other corners of Old Town had many restaurants. Quite nice.

From Old Town we walked along the waterfront further west than we had been in the morning. This area was full of small, colorful fishing boats.

Last Shabbat evening, we went out to a restaurant for a second dinner. We thought that today we might do the same and decided we would find the only vegan restaurant in Volos. It was supposed to be only two short blocks away from our apartment. If we decide to go out at night, at least we would know where it is. We found the restaurant, and serendipitously across the street was one of the murals.

There was still some time left till Shabbat was over when we returned to the apartment. I continued making progress with the blogs and Mark sat outside on our large porch, studying the Talmud.

After Shabbat, we never ventured out of the apartment and just continued being productive at home. Street art will need to wait for some other time.