From Nea Ionia to Germany and back again

He grew up with his parents, his grandma and two more siblings in a single-room house on refugee block D. When he was still a child, he apprenticed at the woodwork and furniture shop of Sfondylias in Volos to learn the craft and later worked with his father who was a builder.

In 1964, at the age of 29, he decided to migrate to Germany. He stayed in a city in Bavaria for about ten years and worked in the “SchaefflerNadellager” industry which produced ball bearings.

He returned to Nea Ionia in 1975 to get married and was originally planning to return to Germany with his wife, but his father fell ill and Evangelos changed his mind. He stayed in the settlement, in the new house that his father had built south of the Tzamaliotika neighbourhood. Evangelos’ childhood home still survives in refugee block D. Even though it’s been abandoned, it is full of the memories and the stories of his childhood, the neighbourhood and its residents.