Perhaps some of you were wondering how was our long activity weekend in the city of Thessaloniki a few weeks ago. Apart from this, you might also be thinking of visiting  Thessaloniki for a short trip in the future and share our interest of what is going on with the rave scene there, the local people etc… In order to have a nice visit, with party and definitely a inspiring time in the bars of the city. You may  take advice from our experiences which are written on this article below. This is the aim of this brief summary, giving a clue, a personal overview  to you , also my impression of my last visit in Thessaloniki.

I arrived there from Athens in the morning, directly running to the airport to pick up the techno kids, friends who were coming from Berlin to attend the Shelter 23 events of the weekend. Some of them were also playing at the club: nice fresh techno tunes. We straight away went for a walk in the city after laying down a few hours at a friend’s place.

In Thessaloniki you can find a huge diversity of things to do at night. It’s a city with an excellent night life, probably the best of the country (comparing with the night life of Athens for example). A couple of gorgeous, rather small bars play minimal techno, such as Elvis, as well as clubs that I will try to write a few lines about below.

Shelter 23 is a new club run by some of our friends in Thessaloniki. A new location with a good music line up of guest and resident djs every weekend. The previous weeks some guest djs from Berlin were playing and some more good artists are scheduled for the future. Keep an eye on our blog for updates. Many of the next events will be announced here.

(Shelter23 monday evening, during private AKNE/SI/GEBIRK working session)

Zenit club is another location that we visited on the weekend. Two floors with different style of electronic music. The upper floor with techno and house tunes and the lower one with drum n bass / jungle tunes. My impression from the space is that it’s excellent. It was decorated nicely and the staff  is friendly. he music at the techno floor was also good. (dr0fn0thing disagrees: boring house music with trash effects, only in the morning the music got better)

The drum n bass floor was not so nice (dr0fn0thing disagrees ). It was like being in a drum n bass party in 1997. Old-school beats, rather no concept behind, kinda boring, one of the same stuff as usual. No fresh tunes of drum n bass, neither good breaks from the past as well. The djs seemed really to enjoy but I can’t say the same for the crowd. Most of the people were laying down on the sofa or drinking their cocktail at the bar (dr0fn0thing says: you came to late mate, before it was a madhouse ).

Generally our night was more or less as we expected nothing extraordinary happened. (dr0fn0thing says: you were too wasted mate, the party was nice )

some pics from dr0fn0things trashcam:

An other club you should check it out, unfortunately I didnt attend to any of the events there is Decadence club. According what the people said the entrance fee is rather expensive in comparison with the other locations I already mentioned before. Some people also told me that the atmosphere can be a bit problematic as well. I dunno anything else about this place apart that popular djs are playing almost every weekend.

Dubstep scene in Thessaloniki is active too. Apart from the events  hosted in clubs , students and party collective organise dubstep and free tekno parties in the university area. There is no entrance fee , those parties are often influenced by the free tekno culture and teknivals of North Europe or just by anarchist concepts.

Besides the party life in general and  the clubs  of the city , there is a joyful street life in the city too. A lot of young people hang around on the streets and have meeting points in squares etc when the weather is good. One of this locations in the heart of the city is Rotunda square near Kamara (A big gate made probably during the time of the Greek empire “middle age” today a touristic attraction monument). You can buy your beer for 80 cents to 1.30 or a cheap wine bottle (later not recommended) and warm up before you go party.

Other locations you should check out.

People usually hang out (especially teenagers), skaters etc.. at the area surround the white tower, locals and tourists mix for this strange promenade of people with all their different plans and budgets… You should definitely check out this area. The sea is near and you could have a perfect landscape, especially in the evening. Some bars within boats are there as well, one of those boats is a reggae bar in case you like that crap.

You should not forget to go for a walk in the historical part of the city up to the hils (Palia Poli). It is definitely my favorite part of the city for having a walk. As in most cities of the world, just strolling around between the places that were recommended to you is the most effective way to get an idea of the city, in this case try the coastline-university-historic center-rotunda connected by the little vertical and big horizontal streets.

Regarding the food issue

The food in the city is much better that other places I have visited before but remains not high quality, especially if you dont want to spend a lot of money. The cheapest you can find to eat on the street its guros pita a traditional greek dish. In case you are vegetarian ask for potato pita. Its cheap and tasty.

As an epilogue

Perhaps the electronic music scene in Thessaloniki is not the best of southern Europe , there are many cities with a growing scene especially in Balkans (If you consider Balkans as Southern Europe) . But in the other hand the city is beautiful and many parties take place every weekend. I didn’t probably present all the places because in a week it is not possible to visit everything. And for me it doesn’t make any sense to write about place I never visited before. If you feel that something was excluded from this article, you can write me at our email contact. I would rather prefer  you to comment below the article. I’m kinda of motivated to continue writing articles such as this one, building maybe future term,  a city map (guide) of the shituationist institute blog.

PS: You can read a previous article of me concerning Thessaloniki here