The Coffee routes

A Photographic Journey
into the Greek Traditional Coffee Shops

by photographer Miltos Kourmpoglou

This book portraits the photographer's immersion into the unique universe of the Greek tradition and his effort to highlight the role of the traditional coffee shops, that have been, and still are, basic elements of the social life of modern Greece. The photographer travels following the steps of the ancient Greek geographers Strabo and Pausanias, crossing the country, from the neighborhoods of the large metropolitan areas to the little countryside villages, from the isolated mountainous Greece to the remote little islands of the Aegean Sea.

Into this travelogue the reader will find collected and illustrated, in all their glorious simplicity, most of the extant Greek traditional coffee shops. The traditional coffee shops are the epicenter of the social life of the local communities in modern Greece, places where people meet, exchange news and ideas, socialize and have fun