The research is interesting to look for the reason why the people of this tribe were found in our city and in the wider area of Macedonia, but also the fact that all of them had the profession of milk seller. The story begins long ago, when almost the entire Balkan peninsula was part of the Ottoman Empire and among its local areas (Vilaetia-Pasalikia) [2] there were no borders. Because all these Serbs were nomadic herders, they spent their summers in the wider area of southern Serbia, that is, in the area of Skopje, Monastir (Bitolia) and the surrounding areas. As soon as October arrived, they started the long journey and brought the herds down to the winters of Thessaly to hibernate. The same thing, of course, was done by our own nomadic population groups of the Sarakatsanians and the Vlach-speaking Greeks of the southern Balkan regions. After the feast of St. Dimitriou (October 26) they came down to Thessaly with their numerous flocks and after Ag. Georgiou were going up to their homelands. As an example we mentioned earlier [3] the family of Petros Gemtos from Nizopolis, a Vlach-speaking Greek community near the Monastery. It was natural during their presence here to promote the livestock products of their herds in the local market and in fact, they also rented shops in the central area of the city for their easier movement. The impressive thing in this case was that the employees of these stores were also Serbian.
In 1881, after the annexation of Thessaly to Greece, the border with the Ottoman Empire was created in the area of Meluna, and the passage of Serbs with their herds into Thessaly was quite difficult to impossible. This fact led some Serbs to become permanent residents of Thessaly with their families and to continue their work here. In addition to the distribution of milk, they also manufactured yogurt, which, with special employees, they promoted and made available to the neighborhoods. In addition, they also manufactured various types of cheese and sometimes they reached as far as Athens.
The Gegdis families who settled permanently in Larissa did not cut ties with their country. In the summers they went to their native places and spent a short time in their native land. The borders and the Greekness that had developed in education, religion and trade among the Vlach-speaking Greeks and the Sarakatsanaians of the region of Skopje and Monastirius forced many of them to remain in their native land.
Next we will try to describe some of the Serbian milk sellers of Larisa that we have located during our research. At this point we must emphasize that their presence in our city lasted until 1940. During the Second World War, with the descent of the Germans in the Balkans, almost all of them returned to their homelands to help their country in the struggle against the invaders.
In Tsugari [4] there was one of the many Serbian-run dairies. Its owner was Dimos Lakevics, who had been working in Larissa for years. His shop was located opposite the “Thraki” hotel, a large building for its time, which was located on the site that today covers the “Acropolis” hotel. Its owners were the Angelakopoulos brothers, but the business had been taken over for many years by Kostas Kikimis. In addition to his wonderful yogurt, Lakevic also made crispy donuts at the beginning. Later his shop took the form of a pastry shop and made rice pudding, kaimaki and syrupy sweets, such as babades, fenikias, curcumbinias, baklavas, rhubarb.
Those who live or study in Thessaloniki still taste the variety of these sweets today. Pantelis Kapsimalis also apprenticed in this shop for a while. He had come from Western Macedonia, learned from Lakevic the secrets of his art and then opened his own shop under the name “Astoria”, where he excelled.
On the ground floor of the “Kedrikon” hotel, which was located on the corner of Alexandra (Cyprus) and M. Alexandrou streets, exactly where in 1938 Andreas Koutsinas built the “Olympion” hotel, there was a dairy on the Cyprus side managed by Savvas Pičević.
On the same street and close to the Municipal Market there was another milk shop, Brankovic’s, which operated until 1940 in collaboration with Dim. Koutzailia, who then worked on it alone.
Another milk shop existed before the war on the north side of the Central square, between Nik’s pharmacy. Zisiadis, the well-known “Santral”, and the hotel “To Stemma”. It was by Kyriakos Kreskovich. After the construction of the Hotel “Olympion” by Andreas Koutsina shortly before the war of 1940, Kreskovich rented one of the shops located on the ground floor of the north side of the hotel and moved his business there. In fact, he called it “Olympion”. In this shop, Kreskovich… converted. As the old journalist Kostas Perraivos writes [5]turned it into a confectionery shop and, in addition to the classic oriental sweets, also offered European [5]. Dimos Gondaroulis studied with him and when Kresković returned to Serbia after three years to fight against the Germans, he handed over his shop to him. Gondaroulis continued its operation during the occupation, under the same name “Olympion”. After the war, Gondaroulis promoted it as the best and most luxurious pastry shop in Larissa. Today, many Larissaians of a certain age remember that they used to visit it regularly, because it was usually a meeting place for young people. In the last years of the operation of the classic dessert, the “brick”, a chocolate ice cream, was the specialty of the store.
There are still others, who did not strongly leave their traces in the professional sector of Larissa. We will end, however, with a Serb, who was perhaps the only one who remained in our city after the war and his shop was preserved for many years, so that many of our fellow citizens remember him. This is Christos Tsagovics. It was also located on Cyprus Street, across from Kylika’s pharmacy, and since its establishment in 1917 it has remained in the same location. The founder of the dairy was Sotiris Tsagovic, who rented it in 1917 from the Dina brothers, who also used it as a dairy from 1912 to 1917. The Tsagovic family came from the village of Galisnik in Skopje and in 1917 they came as a family to Hellas. He had three boys, Christos, Tasos and Vangelis. Their father Sotiris Tsagovics named the dairy he took from the Dina brothers “Athens”. Until 1940 the family lived in Larissa on and off and rarely traveled to their homeland. With the start of the war, they returned to Skopje as a group, but the store remained open, because it was kept in operation by the eldest of his sons, Christos, who stayed in Greece. He started a family, became famous and gained the trust of the city’s public for the quality of the sweets he produced, especially the loukumades.
But, as the town grew, his shop, along with others nearby, were sacrificed to create in their place a multi-storey building that has housed a bank branch for a few decades.
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[1] Today we would talk about the Kosovo region.
[2] The Vilaetia could be compared to the Prefectures we had until recently and the palaces were wider administrative regions, which essentially constituted the continuation of the “Themes” of the Byzantine empire.
[3] Nikolaos Papatheodorou. The Gemtos family, ep. “Freedom”, sheet of February 1, 2017.
[4] Of the same. The area “Tsugari”, ef. “Freedom”, sheet of February 24, 2016 and “Tracing Old Larissa”, vol. B’ (2016), pp. 49-52.
[5] Olympian [Περραιβός Κώστας]. The “last of the … Mohicans”, ef. “Larisa”, sheet of May 5, 1980.
