I was born in 1953 in Thessaloniki. I grew up between Charilaou and Voulgari, next to the neighborhood where Zoe Samara, Tsitsanis' wife, also grew up, and where the composer lived for a time. I still walk on the same grounds.

On a cloudy Sunday in 1993, I became obsessed with entering, for a few pages, the soul of Tsitsanis' brother-in-law, Andreas Samaras, with whom the composer opened a ouzeri in 1942, at 22 Pavlou Mela Street, in the center of Thessaloniki - I wasn't alive then to be in their company: days of German occupation, resistance, civil war, extermination of the Jews, hunger, and amidst all this, Tsitsanis wrote his best songs.

The Tsitsanis Ouzeri works precisely in the eye of the storm, against and simultaneously outside of it, and continues, after the composer’s departure to Athens in '46, to live legendary in my mind, in various variations. Therefore, the story that follows is as real and as fictional as Sidiri's tekes and the shores of Tsitsani's Paraguay - his own Paraguay...

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]