Christos Papanikolaou - Phantis phantis.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phantis.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Pole vault - Phantis phantis.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phantis.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This is a reverse migration story. While so many Greeks were leaving to settle in Australia in 1967, my father had other ideas. He could see that Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was going to face big political trouble, so he decided to send my brother, Dimitri, then aged 8 and myself, aged 5 to live with my grandparents in Yiannina.
It was a strange, tough decision to make. His idea was that we would have settled into school when he would bring my mother and my three-year-old sister at a later stage.
After I was smothered by the embrace of this old woman who turned out to be my grandmother talking in words I did not understand, I took a good look at the neighbourhood that would be my home over the next three years. The house was set in the Kastro, the old castle built by the old Albanian brigand Ali Pasa and that was interesting.