Thessaloniki? The majority of people speaks of Athens, Santorini and Crete when thinking about Greece - but have you thought about a weekend trip to Thessaloniki? It's the second largest Greek city with a thriving, young and modern city centre with fancy food and drink spots nearby the sea. Thessaloniki vibes cannot be expressed but one thing is for sure: In case you consider spending vacation close to Thessaloniki (e.g hiking on Mount Olympus, going for discovering cultural heritage as e.g. visiting Meteora or going to the beach at one of Chalkidikis three fingers, definitely do consider a weekend trip in Thessaloniki: enjoy the view from the castle wall over the entire city, stroll across the seaside along the White Tower and famous Umbrellas, have food and drinks at 'Ladadika' in the evening, a coffee nearby the water - and last but not least for me personally every time a MUST I am in Thessaloniki: a traditional, handmade bougatsa (greek traditional breakfast pastry filled with either custard, cheese or spinach) at Jianni's place (10/10 recommendation).  Trust me - I've been going to and passing through Thessaloniki a couple times a year since childhood - I've never been to the city without having a bougatsa there - n e v e r! :D

#coworking
Back to work! As well as in the previous visited cities, we took the chance of working, apart from in the AirBnb, also at a co-working space. In Thessaloniki, therefore, we rented desks at coho city. There, we made a really cool experience, the place was rather very new, located within the city centre surrounded by many cafes and bistros - and another great plus: A parking garage was directly located underneath the building, and I'm telling you this was really a good point as Thessaloniki streets are not really made for driving through with a brand new van - to put it in a good way. One thing that made the great difference to the other coworking spaces we had worked before: There were opening hours: 9am-5pm, well one could say this might be core working hours, but for us to be honest it was rather tricky, firstly because of the time difference (although it was only one hour) and secondly because my working hours usually are definitely longer than 5pm.
However, we enjoyed staying there, meeting people on the way to the kitchen grabbing water and exchanging with them. As well as in Bucharest or Budapest, the branches people in Coho City work in differ a lot, so there is no real concentration I could observe.

#whatelse
As already mentioned: Thessaloniki itself but also the surrounding offer a great variety of activities, places to see and visit. Just to mention some examples:

•  Meteora is a rock formation in central Greece hosting one of the largest and most precipitously built complexes of Eastern ortodox mansteries, the views and landscapes are fascinating!
•  Chalkidiki: Only between 1 and 2 hours driving distance (depends on where you go) you can visit one of the 3 'fingers', as they are called, of the peninsula of Chalkidiki and visit the countless beaches and areas, here are some recommendations: Pefkochori, Neos Marmaras.

Elisabeth Bouikidou