I don’t like to travel — at all — but I do have a longstanding desire to visit Sudan. And now, reading this, if I ever did go, I would definitely stay here.
After a “restful” 3 and a half hours sleep I awoke to a phone bleating in my ear. It was George.
George Pagoulatos is the owner of the Acropole Hotel, the oldest hotel in Khartoum. George runs the hotel along with his 2 brothers, Thanasis and Mike, and now George’s nephew, Pablos. George is Sudanese by birth but of Greek descent and his father, Panaghis, founded the hotel in 1952 after having left his poverty striken homeland of Greece in the last years of World War Two. The hotel started with just 10 rooms and all the furnishings were brought from their own home. Ambitious in the face of adversity, George’s father expanded the hotel and the family businesses while his mother held the family together. In 1970, disaster struck as President Nimieri nationalised Sudanese industry and foreign business abandoned the country and so taking with it, the clientele of…
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Rather Being 