It is estimated that of the 17 million people living in Syria, 1,200,000 are Christians and 800,000 of those are Greek Orthodox. Among the latter, 1,300 are Greeks, 900 living in Aleppo and 400 in Damascus, who are well-accepted, and greatly appreciated.

A vast city of rare beauty and great social problems. At the bazaars, you get overwhelmed with colours and smells, while streets are overflowing with countless people and traffic chaos prevails. An awe-inspiring capital with enormous size and historical monuments of global value. A society of pious people, living a level-headed and dignified life.

Wherever one may stand in the Egyptian Desert, there is always this overwhelming feeling that every movement leads to the Nile River. Coaches carrying barrels and laundry, caravans exhausted by the heat and fatigue, children half-asleep riding on elderly horses; everyone is heading towards the blue artery of water flowing through the burning sand.

By the end of August, the parks and the sidewalks in London look like a yellow sea of fallen leaves. Autumn abruptly invades England. In a flash, the shinning sun is hidden by clouds and it starts raining. The clouds disappear and the sun comes out again, and images go from grey and black to colorful in a blink of an eye.

On a hill in Richmond, a luxurious suburb of southwest London, many newlyweds gather every Sunday morning to get photographed. Their pictures aren’t only taken by professional photographers, but also by countless tourists passing by, who find the scenes rather picturesque. Richmond is a tourist magnet. Thousands of visitors flock there to see the famous park where deer run free.

At nighttime in Venice, you get the metaphysical sense that time has stopped. It feels like being emerged in the scenery of an immense noble theatre, where a never ending and everlasting play is being performed.

Every night people gather on the banks of the Nile for a walk. The place is especially crowded under the bridge, which is in front of the Hilton hotel and the archaeological museum. On the shores of the river there are many boats decorated with colorful lights, used as floating discotheques. Their owners call to the passers-by with loudspeakers, enticing them to take a musical boat ride. The boatmen’s voices mix with the Arabic music, creating an atmosphere of total cheerful chaos.

They built parks, painted houses, demolished unauthorised structures and turned the city into a field of architectural and chromatic innovation. Colourful skyscrapers are constantly being built, as if there is an unofficial, open architectural competition in play. Τhe modern buildings are surrounded by popular neighbourhoods, with their local bazaars and old apartment buildings. Even those, however, have been spruced up in good taste.

A small percentage of the Muslims of Albania belong to the Bektashi community, which used to be based in Constantinople (Istanbul), until Kemal Ataturk drove them away because they denied removing their cassocks. After their persecution in 1929 they were transferred to Tirana, where they built their tekke, a place for spiritual retreat and character reformation, something like a monastery.