On a Saturday morning in Katerini, Ana sits with a freddo espresso while the city moves around her.

There is a cat nearby, people talking, music somewhere in the background and the familiar rhythm of a Greek Saturday morning.

For someone who came from Luxembourg, this could have been just another stop during a period abroad.

It wasn’t.

“This somehow became home,” she tells me.

Why Ana Came to Pieria

Ana arrived in Greece for what was expected to be the final months of her European volunteering experience.

She was 30, from Luxembourg, spoke six languages and was slowly beginning to learn Greek.

She had come looking for something more human and more connected to everyday life.

Instead of experiencing Greece only as a visitor, she became part of a community.

For several months, her daily life revolved around work, shared responsibilities, people, small routines and the places surrounding Katerini and Mount Olympus.

Kapnikos Stathmos: Where Volunteering Becomes Everyday Life

Kapnikos Stathmos

was at the centre of Ana’s experience in Pieria.

Her days were not built around sightseeing.
They were built around doing things.

There were medicines to sort, essential goods to organise, spaces to prepare and community activities to support.

The work was practical, repetitive at times and often invisible.
But that was precisely the point.

Solidarity here was not something that happened only during special events.
It was part of the routine.

Inside the Social Pharmacy

Some of Ana’s work involved the Social Pharmacy.

Donated medicines had to be counted, checked, organised and recorded before being made available to people who needed them.

It was careful work.
And it required attention to detail.

For Ana, these small tasks became part of understanding the place.
Not through monuments or guidebooks, but through people and responsibility.

A Typical Day at Kapnikos Stathmos

Her mornings often began around 08:00.
By 09:00, the day’s work was underway.

Depending on the day, that could mean:

• organising medicines for the Social Pharmacy,
• preparing essential goods for families,
• helping with shared spaces and community activities,
• preparing the wooden houses for seasonal events,
• taking part in forest-related activities and observation duties.

There was also the less visible work of living together: cooking, cleaning, sharing space, coordinating schedules and learning when to help — and when to give someone room.

Learning to Live Together

Living with other volunteers taught Ana something that could not be learned from a travel guide.

Community requires constant negotiation.

Who cooks?
Who cleans?
Who needs help?
Who is tired?
Who needs some time alone?

Ana also learned that helping does not mean giving everything of yourself.

Sometimes solidarity means knowing your boundaries too.

That may have been one of the less obvious lessons of her time in Pieria.

The Small Things That Became Home

The remarkable thing about Ana’s story is that when she talks about what she loved in Pieria, she rarely starts with the famous places.

She remembers people.

Coffee.
Cats.
Food.
A bench.
A Saturday market.
A conversation with someone she had never met before.

Her routine included a favourite coffee stop, a freddo espresso and time in Plateia Eleftherias in Katerini.

It sounds ordinary.

That is exactly why it matters.

She also noticed something she associated strongly with Greece: the ease with which everyday conversations could begin.

A compliment to someone’s clothes.
A few words with an older woman.
A chat with someone at the market.

These encounters became part of her understanding of philoxenia — not as a tourism slogan, but as everyday human interaction.

Between Katerini, Litochoro and the Sea

Ana’s experience was not limited to Katerini.

She also spent time around Litochoro and the coastline below Mount Olympus.

One of her volunteer activities included shifts at a fire observation post in Plaka, Litochoro, between the sea and the mountain.

It was a different way of experiencing the landscape.

Not simply looking at the forest, but helping watch over it.

For Ana, the geography of Pieria became part of daily life:
sea and mountain, town and village, work and free time.

“People Ask: Sea or Mountains?”

Pieria makes that question slightly unnecessary.

You can wake up with Mount Olympus in view and spend the afternoon beside the Aegean.
You can walk through a mountain landscape and later sit in a city square with a coffee.

That contrast became part of Ana’s attraction to the region.

She even started looking at apartments in both Katerini and Litochoro.

That is perhaps one of the clearest signs that a place has moved beyond being a destination.

It has started to feel possible as a life.

Agia Kori: A Different Side of Olympus

Then there was the mountain itself.

At Agia Kori, the experience became quieter.

The sky was heavy with clouds.
The water was cold.
The light was limited.

And then, for a brief moment, the clouds opened.

For a few seconds, the landscape seemed to become completely still.

This is one of the reasons personal stories can reveal a destination differently from a conventional guide.

A place is not only what is listed on a map.
It is also what someone remembers when they leave.

What Ana Will Remember About Pieria

When asked what she would miss, Ana did not give a list of famous attractions.

She remembered a chain of small things:

• the cats around Kapnikos Stathmos,
• shared meals with the other volunteers,
• her coffee in Plateia Eleftherias,
• Saturday mornings at the market,
• local food and village festivals,
• the smell of Olympus after rain,
• the sea wind,
• the people she met along the way.

None of these things would normally appear on a “Top 10 Things to Do in Pieria” list.

But together, they tell us something important about how a place becomes meaningful.

A Different Kind of Travel Story

Ana did not come to Pieria simply to see Mount Olympus.

She came to participate.

She worked, cooked, cleaned, volunteered, drank coffee, walked by the sea, visited the mountain and learned the small vocabulary of everyday Greek life.

That is a different kind of travel.

And perhaps a more interesting way to understand a destination.

“To create, share and give experience — to / for yourself and each other.”

— Ana

When a Visitor Becomes Part of the Story

For Experience Pieria, this is what stories about people are really about.

Not presenting an idealised version of Greece.
Not pretending every visitor has the same experience.

But listening to the people who pass through this region and discovering what they noticed.

Ana noticed the warmth of everyday encounters.
The balance between mountain and sea.
The rhythm of a small city.
The work of people who volunteer.
The quiet beauty of places like Agia Kori.

And somewhere along the way, Pieria stopped being simply the place where she was volunteering.

It became a place she could imagine staying.

Pieria Through the Eyes of Someone New

Perhaps that is one of the most valuable ways to discover a place.

Not only through the eyes of someone who has lived there all their life.
Not only through a tourist looking for the next attraction.

But through someone who arrived from somewhere completely different and slowly learned to see the place from the inside.

Ana’s story is one of those perspectives.

A story about volunteering, community and the small details that can turn a temporary stay into a memory that refuses to leave.

Continue Exploring Pieria

There is more to Pieria than Mount Olympus alone.

Discover the places, people, food, traditions and experiences that make the region worth slowing down for.

Explore Pieria at your own pace:

Explore Pieria