With the publication of this volume, my goal to document the history of the city of Trikala and the surrounding area from 1881 to 1960 is completed, drawing on information from the newspapers of the time.

I started the indexing about eight years ago with enthusiasm but also complete ignorance of the difficulties I would face, which I have already outlined in the introductions of the two previous volumes. As I finish my work, it is natural to feel satisfaction and joy. At the same time, however, I feel sad because I will never again experience those unique hours of isolation and creation, when I had to compose a coherent text from the thousands of scattered and disparate news stories so that the reader could enjoyably read it and simultaneously form a clear image of how the Trikala society evolved and progressed.

As a writer of novels for children and teenagers, I have always had a problem. When it came time to deliver my manuscripts to the publisher, I struggled to part with my characters. I feel exactly the same way now. It feels like I am losing friends with whom I share common memories. It is strange, but throughout all these years, I had the feeling that I was living simultaneously in two eras. It was as if my life had been extended by a full eighty years. I saw and interpreted the present in relation to the past, and I was surprised to discover that many things were repeating themselves.

[Excerpt from the text of the preface]