“We grew up together, we fell in love, we cried.” A few words from someone who had come to Nikaia to say goodbye to Giorgos Mazonakis seem to capture everything that unfolded over these past days outside the Holy Church of Agia Triada.
People of all ages gathered there. Some holding a single flower, others waiting patiently for just a few minutes to pass by his coffin. Some had known him personally. Most had never met him. And yet they spoke about him as though they were saying farewell to someone who had been, in some way, a part of their own lives.
In the streets surrounding Agia Triada, cars drove past with his songs playing at full volume. On social media, old performances, photographs, songs and personal memories filled screens everywhere. And in Nikaia — where it all began for Giorgos Mazonakis — the final chapter of a decades-long journey was written.
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Giorgos Mazonakis: “We spent our childhood years here”
Among those who had gathered was one of his childhood friends — a man who never knew the famous Giorgos Mazonakis, but knew Giorgos before the fame. “We spent our childhood years here. Giorgos and I were just a year apart in age. I was in the same class as Vaso, his sister. But all three of us went to school at Heraclitus, just a little further down the road,” he recalled, speaking to parapolitika.gr.
The first memory he holds of him has nothing to do with stages or hit records. “Giorgos was a special kid from a very young age,” he says.
Looking out at the crowd that had gathered to say farewell, he felt the scene spoke for itself. “What you’re seeing here — this moving, incredible thing that’s happening right now — that was Giorgos. Most of the people here only ever knew him from television, and yet they felt the need to come and say goodbye.”