GEORGE TOULAS

“In social life we all derive from somewhere. This place is exactly what the hideout project is searching for”.

by Dimitra Dimitriou

George lives in this house with his wife and their two daughters ten years now. Oh! I almost forgot to mention their cat. They chose it because it’s functional in relation to their needs. Located in a quiet neighborhood in Thessaloniki, with good means of transportation and maybe, one day -sooner than they imagine, there’ll be a metro station as well. He spends most of his day working from his computer and so, even through his house keyhole, you’ll see him at his kitchen table, sitting on his favorite chair, working and drinking coffee. His love for journalism emerged from his childhood years, at the elementary school, along with a friend that is no longer in life. “He wanted to become an actor and I wanted to become a journalist. Both of us achieved our goals.” He hates provocative journalism. He chose journalism because he enjoyed searching behind the obvious answers and speak pleasant or unpleasant truths. That’s why he prefers research and opinion journalism. George doesn’t compare today’s journalism with the former, older type. He finds every period of time, uniquely interesting. He finds the country’s political situation unstable. “Extremely unstable. Political places drain away, the right-wing threat starts to show up, average people are distinguished.” He might have gained public recognition through his job, turned right on some long lasting researches and won the respect of other, but there’s still something he lost and even if he could get it back, he wouldn’t keep it.  The innocence in his eyes and his peace.

Among his life lasting loves, the radio is mandatorily included. There hasn’t been a day over the past thirty plus years, without its presence. He dreamt of it since he was a kid and as he mentions “it luckily occurred” and he calls it his own confessional. The color pallete of his house is basically green. This implies the need for relaxation, breath and hope. His favorite habit is traveling. His only true heritage. That’s why he tries not to be thrifty when it comes to traveling. He’s not quite a fetishist, but if he had to choose one favorite item, that would be the vinyls he has been collecting since high school. Some rare disks he protects with the same teenage love as when he first bought them. “I love unwrapping the paper cover of a Nat King Cole disk of the 60s. He works many years now and unstoppably. He maintains his humor by saying that his next professional goal is to find the time to relax.

I wish that through Dimitris Andritsos’ lens, the world will seem greener, the gaze will travel wider, we will relax and breath, hoping for a better future!