It is a rather exclusive Greek "patent" that fascinates me. And I call it Greek, because I have not managed to achieve it anywhere else so far. But maybe that's not just me.
It usually does not catch our eye. With the mind permanently at the final destination, it focuses on the road as long as you hold the steering wheel. If you are in the passenger seat, the eye usually wanders in its absence the endless green landscapes and the landscaped with barley and cotton. And yet it is there, on the road, next to us.
They remind me of an older time, when the most accessible street advertising was on walls and yards that you hit on the old highways, and those that are now called provincial, along with various slogans. Far from the most modern main roads and tolls.
Leaving the national road, as you enter the road to Agia, for example, you are overwhelmed by this retro aesthetic, the intense cobalt and carmine blues that were simply painted, with thick brushes and without many ornaments on the painted white concrete blocks. Usually all these ads go unnoticed. Probably because they have nothing to do with big brands, modern marketing and multinational department stores.
But they have a special interest. Not necessarily aesthetic, although their letters are strongly reminiscent of calligraphy exercises of previous decades. And maybe that's to blame for the lack of an image of the real, final product.
It's a bit historical if you think about it.
It is at the stops of the old buses, where you understand that once there was a strong element of life, while today you have the feeling of abandonment. Where images of people waiting for the only means of transportation in a white, closed stop, which has nothing of the modern airy and sunny design, easily come to mind.
They are in the old, almost demolished by the rage of nature herds, where you no longer see animals.
It is on the old machine guns, that the need to fight to protect your own and to drive away evil has taken deep root.
And it is almost always a name, since it in itself was synonymous with quality, a guarantee of what you pay and proof of old, good, local production.
They are Greek names, and more rarely Europeanized, that remind you that someone has always had their eyes turned outwards.
It is this touch that awakens you from the lethargy of the big city and welcomes you to the countryside.
It's these retro ads that write their story on the street. Like an indelible lipstick that has been painted white.
* Photos: Stelios Matsangos