HELBI

President Greece Karolos Papoulias will make an official visit on March 13-14 to Croatia, which is on the threshold of accession to the European Union, for talks on bilateral cooperation. The president is presently on a tour of the Balkans and has already visited Bulgaria and Romania. He will be accompanied by Tourism Minister Fanni Palli-Petralia, Deputy Economy Minister Petros Doukas and Deputy Foreign Minister Theodoros Kassimis. Just a week earlier, on March 6, Ministry of State secretary-general Panos Leivadas was in Zagreb to visit the Classical Gymnasium, Croatia’s oldest secondary school which is celebrating its 400th anniversary. The 600 pupils study Ancient and Modern Greek and Greek history and culture, and maintain close connections with Greece. Every year the drama group visits Greece and puts on performances in Ancient Greek at Olympia and Epidaurus. During Leivadas’s visit, the pupils recited verses from the Iliad and another works in Ancient Greek. The theater troupe performed scenes from plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles. And Ela Varosanec, a pupil, gave a moving performance of Medea’s monologue from Euripides’ tragedy of the same name. Leivadas toured the library of more than 30,000 volumes, some of them rare.