[MGSA-L] Stin Athena : June-July 2015

[June Samaras]

Some quick observations on my recent trip to Greece June 23 - July 13th 2015

I was in Athens for three weeks, mostly on business, renting a small
apartment near Ano Patissia, in a modest working-class neighbourhood. Every
day I commuted downtown to publishers and bookstores by bus or by Metro and
so had at least a passing view of the daily stresses and strains of
ordinary citizens, not just the usual "tourist" panorama of Athens.

Mostly people looked weary, with tired eyes and few spontaneous smiles. On
this line of the Metro there were sometimes people passing from carriage to
carriage, playing music, or selling ball point pens or small packets of
Kleenex to raise a single Euro or even 50 lepta. I took to keeping small
change in my pocket so as not to have to scrabble in my purse for coins.
There were others just begging for help, mostly chanting in a sing-song
voice repetitive tales of woe about hungry children, sick parents or other
problems, with faint echoes of traditional mirologia or tragic choruses
from ancient dramas - but not in a theatre or a basilica but only in a
railway carriage or a crowded bus with an exhausted audience.

The visible signs of the crisis were the empty stores, the abandoned and
neglected buildings, and the ever-present posters and graffiti on every
square inch of the walls. The economic devastation that the has Troika
perpetrated on Greeks was most apparent to me in all those instances where
Greek owned businesses had literally "bitten the dust'" but also the
following examples where EU owned business seemed to be thriving.

For decades some ordinary Greeks have made a modest living operating the
iconic peripteroi. Along Patission there were a dozen or more abandoned and
a rottting kiosks, now apparently only held together with the glue from
multiple layers of political posters. Right next to one of these was a
builder's waste skip where one supermarket - the German Lidl chain - was
being extended into the empty space next door.

Close by was another supermarket, but the Greek "Marinopoulos" store was
mostly filled with goods from the French Carrefour chain. Outside here one
day the bus was blocked in traffic by a huge armoured vehicle, presumably
busy picking up enough 20.00 Euro notes from the store to keep the bank
machines filled for the next daily line up for cash. The most
noticeable point for me was the fact the security company bore a Dutch name
- and the vehicle was a Mercedes.

Omonia Square has not always been the most elegant public space in Athens,
but the decay and neglect of some of the buildings in the area is even more
apparent now, where few landlords can afford paint or even window cleaning.
One day near there I had to dodge around the scaffolding and ladders of
painters who were renovating the H & M store (The Swedish company has 32
stores in Greece)

Evidently companies outside Greece - with healthy cash flow and long credit
lines from the banks -can afford to expand here but Greek companies and
citizens are bankrupted.

Generally a tragic and unhealthy situation all round.


June S
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June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com
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