With the scent of the Balkans
Stáhnout obrázek
Pavlos Glavinas was born in Javorník on 25 April 1978, the youngest of three children of Dimitrios and Vasiliki who came from northern Greece. His father was of Slavomacedonian origin and his mother‘s family of Pontic Greek origin. The parents had fled from the Greek Civil War. The father‘s family lived in Ptelia, a mountain village where grandmother Eleni sustained a severe injury during World War II. Grandfather Anastasios fought in the Democratic Army of Greece and spent two years in prison. The family fled from persecution to Czechoslovakia via Albania and Yugoslavia, and the children were placed in orphanages until their mother found them in 1952. Mother Vasiliki was born on 9 March 1943 under tragic circumstances as both parents died on her birth day. Her cousin Kostas Lazaridis took her to Albania later on, from where she was taken to Romania and lived in an orphanage until age 18. It was only then that relatives found her through the Red Cross, and she followed them to Jeseník in then Czechoslovakia. She married Dimitri Glavinas in 1962 and they lived in Javorník. They welcomed three children, Pavlos being the youngest. The family lived in a Greek community and Pavlos spoke Macedonian thanks to his parents. Pavlos Glavinas stayed in Czechia, got married, and although his children show little interest in their Greek roots, he is active in the Greek community and enjoys cooking traditional dishes. He took his first trip to Greece with his mother in 2006, feeling a strong connection to his ancestors.
