45 years later, Kryovrysanakis opened his Greek delicatessen Bakaliko in Ramersdorfer Lindenstraße in 2020 and seems to have found what makes him happy and satisfied. He proudly displays and sells his olive oil, thyme honey and wine from Crete, most of which he imports himself, as well as other Greek specialities in just a few, but lovingly designed square metres of space.

The products and his involvement with them are part of his identity as a Cretan, which he is just as much as he describes himself as a "Beueler Jung". "I haven't made it out of Ramersdorf yet," he says with a laugh. After kindergarten and primary school in Küdinghoven, he completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter after his secondary school leaving certificate. He spent ten years working on the roofs of Bonn until he gave up what he described as a beautiful profession for health reasons and retrained as a travel agent. He waves it off. "It was boring and not very lucrative," he says looking back.

Instead of marketing holidays, he decided to set up an agency for website design. In 2015, he converted the garage of his house in Lindenstraße into an office. Then came corona - and his agency clients cancelled their contracts in droves due to a lack of revenue.

Without listening to any sceptical voices, Kryovrysanakis converted his garage office into a bakaliko during the first lockdown in March 2020. "Bakaliko means something like a corner shop," says Kryovrysanakis. There is hardly a village in Greece that doesn't have a bakaliko. You can get everything there: from buttons to detergents and household supplies to food. "But I only have Greek specialities," emphasises the "Bakalikos". He only makes regional exceptions for his fresh eggs from the Eifel and honey from Ramersdorf.

He has registered the name Bakaliko, primarily for his olive oils, which he also sells in his online shop. In the shop, a photomontage of "Team Bakaliko" hangs above the entrance door and next to the patron saint St George embroidered by his grandmother, showing Kryovrysanakis three times side by side: as head of the shop and as head of the finance and sales departments. What is jokingly mounted here corresponds to reality: setting up his shop, which is primarily the basis for his planned catering offers and for the food trucks already in use, means a lot of work for him and his wife, who works full-time as a nursery school teacher.

He met Elena at the age of 13 at the Cretan Club in Cologne. The couple have two children: Eleftherios (18), who has just graduated from the Kardinal-Frings-Gymnasium and Maria, who is one year younger and also wants to graduate from there.

Georgios Kryovrysanakis has named his son after his father, as is customary in Greece. Just as he also bears the name of his grandfather Georgios.

The passing on of names is also an expression of the connection with Crete's own and its history. Despite the bloody traces left behind by German troops on the largest Greek island between 1941 and 1945, Kryovrysanaki's father emigrated to Germany in 1965, where he met his future wife Irini - also from Crete - three years later in Bonn, who was working in a Greek restaurant at the time.

Kryovrysanakis speaks of the deportation of his grandfather Georgios during the Second World War; his father was only two years old at the time. The ship on which his grandfather was travelling with Greek Jews towards the German concentration camps was sunk by British torpedoes in the Mediterranean.

"You can't forget your history, your roots, the country you come from," says Kryovrysanakis. Although he was born and raised in Beuel, he still only has his Greek passport. "When the Greeks were being criticised during the financial crisis", friends recommended that he take German citizenship. But there was no reason to do so, he says. "We are all Europeans." If there was a European passport, he would have had it in his pocket long ago.

Today, he is amused when people pay him the "compliment" that he speaks German so well. The other way round, it would be more appropriate to praise him for his good Greek: Greek was the only language spoken in his parents' home. His children are also familiar with Greek. But for all his ties to Crete, the "Beueler Jung" calls Germany his home.

Giorgios Kryovrysanakis is currently delighted that he can now also bring his food truck with original Greek dishes to the Beta Clinic on Mondays. Until now, he has stood at the Ramersdorf underground station every Tuesday After his first participation in Pützchens Markt, he is dreaming of a "Greek corner" at PüMa. "You'd need a tent in front of the trucks, a DJ and lots of Greek music, dancing and food." That would be promising, he says. "Because the Germans love Greece."

(Original text: Stefan Hermes; Translation: Mareike Graepel)