The first postwar ‘travel and migration agency’

Georgios Plymakis was the founder of the first postwar travel agency in Crete. He had been a well-known businessman in Chania ever since the 1920s and was engaged in commerce and the provision of bank services. Soon after the liberation, in 1946, he opened the General Agency for Travel, Tourism and Migration – ‘Crete’. The agency’s goals were both long-term and innovative by contemporary standards: ‘To contribute to the development of tourism in Crete, especially international tourism, and to serve and facilitate the Cretans who wish to travel abroad, so that they don’t have to waste money and effort’. The agency collaborated with large travel agencies off the island and operated many of the ships serving the Crete-Piraeus route. It also worked with the airlines which connected the island with the rest of the country.

For a few years, ‘Crete’ was the only travel agency serving those who decided to migrate. It undertook the processing of all relevant paperwork, which not only spared potential migrants a lot of effort, but mainly protected them against the possibility of an error which could delay their departure. However, the cost of the service was considerable and sometimes the migrants could not pay off the agency before their departure. In such cases, Plymakis would deliver all the necessary migration documents and get paid after the migrant had resettled in their destination country, found work and saved enough money to send back to the agency.

Soon, Georgios’ son, Antonis Plymakis, started helping around the office. In an article he wrote for the newspaper Chaniotika Nea, in 2013, he described his memories growing up in an environment inextricably linked with migration: ‘I will never forget the moving moments I experienced, I think it was 1958, when I found myself at the pier in Piraeus from which the ocean liners carrying migrants were departing. When the crew undid the mooring ropes and the ship was about to sail for the long journey, people of all types and ages on the ship and the pier started frantically waving handkerchiefs and crying uncontrollably. The most moving part was the fact that there was a small band there, probably the municipal band, which was playing the song of the migration era: Fare well and in the foreign lands where you’re going, remember me, I will be waiting for you. Who knows whether the sea winds will ever bring you back again…’.