Mico and Mari Alvo

This is a picture from our engagement.

Here is how I met Mari. Some time after the war, around 1949-1950, I had taken a trip abroad, in Europe. It was the first time that I had gone to Paris.

Coming back from there, I passed from Athens. Aunt Lily had a daughter, Rosa. She tells me one day: "Tonight I am going out with my friends", all her friends were Christians, "you can come too, if you want".

And she had also invited, without a certain reason in her mind, Mari too. That's how we met. I stayed for two or three days, and we went out with her one more time.

Then Mari and her mother, and the daughter of Benroubi, who traded in glassware, came to Thessaloniki for Easter. They had brought their daughters because they knew that there were possible grooms here.

After that, we started writing to each other more often. We went out a few times before we got engaged. Not many though, because we did not think of ourselves as a couple.

Mari got my attention from the moment I saw her. She was a beautiful girl. We started chatting and found out that we agreed on many things. She was a little bit different than the girls that we knew here. She had a more European flair. She was different. We started chatting about books and poems, etc.

We wrote to each other for a few months and I went many times in Athens. Other friends of mine had met girls that interested them, who lived in Athens too. At that time I had a jeep. So, I would take all of them and we would drive to Athens.

I got engaged to Mari soon after I met her. I don't remember if I proposed to her. I remember that we were chatting and we decided it. We got engaged in Athens.

Photos from this interviewee