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I traveled to Florina in a small train, on my way to what was then Yugoslavia , in particular to Yugoslav Macedonia. I remember that it was a small train, a few wagons. I also remember being struck by the fact that the occupants did not look particularly Greek and thinking that I might have ended up in the Caucuses. It had the feel of a frontier town. There were swarthy looking chaps with heads like Armenians. Some were Roma, others looked Turkish, Slav, Macedonians, Albanian.

As for the little train -“Even though Florina was the site of the first rail line built in the southern Ottoman provinces in the late 19th century, its rail system remains undeveloped. Today, Florina is linked by a single track standard gauge line to Thessaloniki and Bitola, and to Kozani (meter gauge) where it was intended to continue south and link up with the terminal in Kalambaka, in Thessaly but this did not proceed due to the 1930s financial crisis.”Wikipedia

It was only today on Wikipedia that I read the history of the area, which may explain the interesting types I saw on the train. I presume that there must have been some intermarrying during the Ottoman times amongst the many ethnic groups. I must add that the local women I saw on the train were stunning.

"The town is first mentioned in 1334, when the Serbian king Stefan Dušan established a certain Sphrantzes Palaeologus as commander of the fortress of Chlerenon. By 1385, the place had fallen to the Ottomans.An Ottoman defter for the year 1481 records a settlement of 243 households.

Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn visited the city in 1861 and wrote about it in his travel log From Belgrade to Salonica. In it he writes:

"About the houses in Florina, we should indicate that there are at most 3000, with half of the population Albanian and Turkish Muslims and the other half Christian Bulgarians."[6]

The demographic composition of the area the 19th and early 20th centuries is unclear as many factors contributed to the ethnic orientation of the people; out of these religion was particularly important thus giving rise to a proselytism struggle between the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Bulgarian Exarchate (established in 1870). In 1886, 78.4% of the Christian population of the Florina kaza (province) - a part of the Manastır vilayet - was aligned with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and 21.6% with the Bulgarian Exarchate, however by 1900 the Patriarchatists had dropped to 50.9% and Exarchatists had risen to 49.1%. The actual Greek-speaking element in this area was concentrated in urban centres where it participated in the religious, administrative, social, and educational sectors of life, this presenting to the outside world a "Greek-like" picture of the area.
In the late 19th century, it became a centre of Slavic agitation for independence from the Ottoman Empire, but in 1912 it became part of Greece following the First Balkan War. The town was again in the firing line during World War I, during which it was occupied by Bulgaria, and during the Axis Occupation in World War II, when the town became a centre of Slavic separatism.
For part of the Greek Civil War Florina was under communist control. The Slavic-Macedonian National Liberation Front, later simply the National Liberation Front or NOF, had a significant presence in the area:[8] by 1946, seven Slav Macedonian partisan units were operating in the Florina area,[9] and NOF had a regional committee based in Florina. When the NOF merged with the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), many Slav Macedonians in the region enlisted as volunteers in the DSE.[10] When the Communists withdrew from Florina in 1949, thousands of people were evacuated or fled to Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc.


The shot was taken early on a winter's morning. B&W Kodak film. Scanned.