E-VITA

Yes, I was an emigrant, even if the reason of this was anything but financial. I had a very good degree and my position was quite good in Italy, but the idea of doing something different, something outside the daily routine was appealing to me, most of all the idea of living in a sea town, a different place in a country I really loved and which was about to become a member of the CEE.

It cost me a lot. Greece rejected me, as if I were a tramp, suspecting mafia links or in any case considering me someone who was escaping from his native country.

For two years my residence permit, at that time compulsory, was delayed and so every few months I had to leave Greece  in order to have my paper stamped at the border again and again.

Let’s say that I went through what nowadays the Albanians and the Tunisians are experiencing. This is the reason why when I met some of them living honestly in Italy, I tried to help them as much as I could, lawfully or not.

The little commercial firm of which I was  CEO had a Greek name, while my Italian  partner and myself were …&Co.

Even later when I bought a tumbledown building in Imerovigli, everything was in the name of a former Greek employee of mine who fortunately was honest enough not to create any problems when it was finally registered in my name a couple of years later.

Success finally arrived. It was not thanks to the Greeks, but to the Americans (even if I had never liked them much) and their NewsWeek International magazine that had listed Franco’s Bar of Firà (the one and only pub in Greece) in its list of the “World Best Bars”.

The effect was devastating because the entire Greek press, from the most serious daily papers (Kathemerinì e Ta Nea) to the tabloids, and magazines, picked up the story and spread it all over the country together with photos of my bar. In the meantime even the international press had become curious and published articles about it: La Stampa, the Herald Tribune, the N.Y. Times, the National Geographic, the Condé Nast and so on (I still have copies of them).

The following summer I had to put two guys at the entrance of the bar to keep the crowds at bay as well as the curious tourists. I sometimes had the strange feeling of being a statue in a museum. Even nowadays I am quite embarrassed when someone (fortunately less and less people) asks to take a photo of himself with the “famous” Franco.

Credits from high authorities came by: Honorary Italian Consul, honorary Greek citizenship, a title of commendatory from the Italian President and a medal from the Hoteliers Assembly of Santorini for “greatly contributing to the tourist development of the island”.

But as always together with success come great problems.

Even if this incredible success had not gone to my head, it led me to feeling I was “untouchable” and I ended up trusting the wrong people.

I was victim of the most cruel disloyalty and illegality, up to the final crafty deal that convinced me, sorrowfully, to close my bar.

I lost everything I had achieved: the bar, my job, my house. I came back to Italy for one year looking for an opportunity in my dear Valle di Susa where I was born. I was wary though because the people there are not open to international tourism and are very narrow-minded ( see the NO-TAV issue) so the people that I call “my mountain friends”,  prevented me from doing anything there.

I came back here to Greece and some time after I decided to open the Caffè in Pyrgos but this is now and not yet history.

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