Tourism in the tunnels of war on Greece’s northern border

"In a straight line, Bulgaria is less than 500 meters from here," says Panagiotis Savvidis, moving his finger to make me see an imaginary line that reaches the neighboring country. The border region where we find ourselves, a few kilometers outside the village of Petritsi, in Central Macedonia, hides under the raging vegetation the signs of its long and rich military history. Outposts, anti-tank lines and machine gun bunkers are scattered around us. One can hardly imagine what was going on in these narrow backroads, where the only noise we hear is the roar of traffic from the nearby Egnatia Highway and the sound of the Strymonas River flowing through the forested area.

This is exactly what Savvidis, journalist and founder of the social cooperative enterprise Angistro Drasi wants to reverse. In recent years, Savvidis has been highlighting parts of the military past of the...