Tuesday 21st May 2013
Stavros > Vathy
A warm, albeit overcast, day for Unification celebrations this year, with parades in Stavros and Vathy. It's always a rush to get in both parades, and ultimately I always miss out on something rushing between north and south, but some photographs are better than no photographs. The Stavros primary school children also put on a spectacle of Greek dancing, but unfortunately I couldn't stay to photograph it because Vathy was 25 minutes away and the parade there was starting in 15 minutes.
Unification Day, as any remembrance day in Greece is a proud and nationalistic celebration of the past. Unification celebrates when Ionian islands were unified. Speeches that tell the history follow the parade and a church service preceeds the parade.
The kids have alot of fun parading down the main streets of the villages, applauded by their parents, friends and onlookers. Unification Day is band in the middle of exams, thus the high school children do not take part in this parade.