Metsovo - Greece's Vlach Mountain Town

[@austria86]

My great-grandfather was of Aromanian origin, I heard that many Aromanians live in Metsovo. I love Greece and will not forget my origins❤

[@horror11]

yes they are aromanian but less and less ppl speak the language , only the old still speak it. i had many conversations with the ppl about the need to keep the language alive and give it to their children but they seem to not care. the language is very close to italian but is mostly like modern romanian. they said that the romanian tourists can speak fluently with the older ppl.

[@AnastasiaAna-v3b]

@@horror11 Yes, many Aromunians live in Metsovo (GR) and Mavrovo (MK). The mother of the famous Macedonian singer Todor Proevski is Aromanian. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oXvIk2mJiKuhaZY

[@horror11]

metsovo is an amazing place. i was 2 times this year in metsovo and it checks all marks i want to have in a traditional mountain village while having everything u would want from a modern city. its also a great place to use as a base for exploration of the surrounding areas like the vikos gorge and such. i prefer the hot months when its rly empty and the nights are not hot so u dont need ac to sleep.

[@micron1983]

My wife is Vlach, and I don't think that you will ever find any Vlach to tell you that he is not Greek but is Romanian! My grandparents came from Turkey (Trabzon) and spoke only Turkish and Pontus dialect at that time (exchange) no modern Greek at all, but they were and feel 100% Greek! Even the Greek revolution started in Vlach province in Romania due to the huge amount of very rich Greeks living there at that time! And thanks to Averov's contribution to Greece in the Greek-Turkish war, the east Aegean Islands belong to Greece today!

[@rusucristian1847]

Greeks didn´t allow to vlachs to speak their language, so what should they say? Vlachs are from populations that were latinised in the roman empire, so they speak a language similar to romanian, they kept some links with romanian population north of Danube through the history. Some vlachs were relocated to Romania, thus the confusion. Nowadays, in Greece there are very few that speak the language because of some nationalist policy.

[@micron1983]

@@rusucristian1847 I am Greek and first time I have heard about that! I assume that you know better than the Vlach themselves! Why you are not going to Turkey around the Black Sea and start asking there about their heritage as well! It will be very interesting because I assume you like Greek culture very much!

[@σερμπαντινας]

My grandma was 100% vlach but never said anything about not allowing them to speak it...their fault was that they didnt teach thwir kids this language after intermingling with non vlach people ..of course they feel greek....ive been asking her,grandma where are you from why you speak different language and she furiously said iam greek...

[@st-craftbeats8374]

@@rusucristian1847 Greek Vlachs call themselves Arman. They lived in the mountains alongside Greek-speaking peoples. They never had a written language, their church language was Greek and 30% of the words in the Greek Aromanian language is Greek. Yes, they have a similar language with the Romanians but they did not keep any links to the Romanian population north of Danube. Their genetics, music, and customs are nearly identical with their local neighbours, not the Romanians. Besides, we know that they were Arman people were in western Greece during the early time of the Byzantine empire, long before the Romanians started to have a collective identity. When the Greek revolution started, thousands of Armans joined the cause and fought for Greek independence. You should know that before that, the largest Arman settlement in history called Moschopolis was also known as Little Athens, because of the flourishing of Greek education and because it was the center of Greek culture of all the Balkans at that time until it was destroyed by the Albanians in the 18th century. The identified as Arman and when the rise of national identities happened they joined the Greeks and considered themselves Greeks. During the late 19th century, Romania started establishing hundreds of schools in the region in order for the Arman people to go to school while speaking their language because thousands of them were already going to Greek schools. The thing is that the Romanian cause was not so pure, instead of teching them their language they started to teach them Romanian with courses of Romanian national identity. What happened after that is that the Armans got separated into two different ranks. The Greek Vlachs and the Romanian Vlachs. The Greek vlachs identified as Greeks because of Greek high education and because they lived with the Greek-speaking people for thousands of years and did not see themselves as different and they already had a Greek identity by the time Romanian schools were established. The Romanian Vlachs identified as Romanians because they saw the Romanians as more close to them due to their language which the Greek-speaking people could not understand much. It was roughly 65% Vlachs who identified as Greeks and 35% who identified as Romanians. When the Romanians saw that they could not convince the whole population to adopt their ethnic identity and therefore could not establish a 'Romanian minority' in the region they started giving free education and free housing to the Armans who identified as Romanians in Greece, and thus in a few decades, nearly all the Romanian Vlachs moved to Romania and in Greece remained the ones who identified as Greeks. Sometime before the WW2 Greeks established a policy where everyone in Greece should learn the Greek dialect that the elite spoke and not the Demotic one, so the schools everywhere in Greece only taught the 'Katharevousa' and all other languages (Armanian, Arvanite, Slavic) along with the Greek dialects (Pontic, Tsakonian, Thessalian etc.) were frowned upon and were not to be talked by the children in school, only in their homes and their public festivals etc. So the point is that the modern Vlachs of Greece were not forced by anyone to hide their identity because as soon as national identity was a thing they identified as Greeks. Yes they did eventually lose their language due to what I said and due to much intermarrying between Armanian speaking people and Greek-speaking people, but that is a thing in nearly all European countries, from France to Romania to England to Hungary. However, they proudly call themselves Vlachs and Greek and they sing Armanian along with Greek in all their festivals (the bilingual singining was a thing at least from the 16th century) , and there are some who teach the languages in certain towns and online. So please, don't assume to know better from peoples' own identities.

[@lyssilvertongue]

I am a romanian philhellene. The greeks are the oldest ethnicity in the balkans so of course that the latins came much later in the region, but not later than the slavs. Romanians are just as vlachs as the armans of Greece, we were once one people, separated by geography, but this doesn’t mean that we were here before greeks so I don’t believe that vlachs should have a separate national identity inside Greece. I love Greece very much and I love that the vlachs are part of it.

[@alicemason8851]

Excellent as ever!

[@johnpappas686]

Glad you went to main Greece. Greece is not the islands only!...Continental Greece has a lot to offer besides the sea. Try Karpenisi, Evrytania in Central Gr next time.

[@AnastasiaAna-v3b]

Vlachs and Macedonians are brother, too!

[@MichaelMichaelidesGA]

Of course they are. Because we are all Greeks.

[@AnastasiaAna-v3b]

@@MichaelMichaelidesGA :)) Of course, the *Lord* Jesus ( *Yeshua* ) and *his True Apostles* are also greeks!

[@xtra8dj]

Wonderful, real food, I'm jealous 😀

[@nickmavro9412]

Eddi the tip of the day. Vlachs in Greece dont say the word Mulțumesc which means thank you in Rumanian but Evxaristo in Greek for thank you. That explains a lot for those who are from there and distinguishes them from Rumanians. Eddi are you a Vlach? But off course I am sure you haven't heard that before. Facts are sacred comments are free.

[@FastEddieDice]

a vlach i know in krusevo says "xaristo multu" for thank you, a blend of greek & romanian

[@nickmavro9412]

It explains a lot....about the Greek vlachs outside the Greek borders in the Balkans and those who want to baptize them Rumanians. Thank you..

[@gerassimos.fourlanos]

The idea that Vlachs are Greeks living in Romania is one of many expressions of Balkan stupidity. You will come across many similar "theories" in Boulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia, Romania. Balkan ultra nationalists claim that the Romans came to Rome from Romania, that Anatolians were Serbs, that Vladivostok is Boulgarian and all that kind of crap, not to mention the official national mythology of North Macedonia. The Greeks, are not exempt from this deplorable phaenomenon, which is a proof that there is a very long distance - and a lot of things that have happened in the meantime - between Plato's rationality and Modern Greece's Balkanism.

[@christo7105]

Lovely Bulgarian Town in Greece. Btw Metsovo means Bear Town in Bulgarian...

[@konstantinosmandalos7596]

Lol random Balkan ultranationalist on KZbin when they see someone posting a travel blog. "Ummhhh aktwually it's Bulgarian! 🤓"

[@horror11]

bulgars came from asia and invaded europe and the balkans, they are not european ppl just like slavs are not european. claiming a region which was for millenia inhabitted mainly by greek as "bulgarian" is just as silly as slavs in south yugoslavia claiming to be the descendends of alexander the great personally. u ppl have an inferiority complex because greek history is so huge and gigantic that u feel small and historically unimportant . its like hating the kid who has the best grades in school, u can never reach it so u try to diminish its importance.

[@mrgreek7221]

Bulgarian town? Haha tatar your ass still pain from Greece?