Ζητείται Ελπίς.....

Last Thursday I started my odyssia to travel from Ireland to Greece...
After 17 hours finally I arrived in Athens at 4.30 am..tired, sick with flu, moody...
First thing Ι faced, the smell of cigarette at the airport, second thing the attitude of the airport officer when I told him I was late for my last flight....his response: Relax,unless they call your name...everything is ok! and a cute joke about my laptop...
I smiled...if the people haven't lost their humor yet, then there is hope, I thought!
Next day I had to drive to Thessaloniki for an appointment..... the main road was blocked by farmers who protested against the policy of the government..I almost missed my appointment but didn't complain....they have their right....
Greece, a country which occupies the frontline of the foreign media for the last 2 weeks.... the country of democracy and civilisation and resistance as some people add... a country I know I will visit only on vacation, where the people I met are disappointed and feel insecure about the future, they constantly discuss the current situation, they exagerrate, become passionate, argue, live!
Greece, where the sun shines even during the winter days and gives you the illusion that things are not that bad...cause everybody has the right to dream.....

Christmas are postponed...at least in Greece

One picture, a symbolic act of protest,a condemnation by the government, one question:

To what extent can the sanctity of a place be claimed when the country of democracy and civilization is exactly the opposite?

Don't throw more tear gus....we cry by ourselves for our friend......

In Greek:

"Μη μας ρίχνετε άλλα δακρυγόνα....κλαίμε και από μόνοι μας για τον Αλέξανδρο"
This is how we feel...a combination of anger, desperation and disappointment...and tears, many tears!

The last week I read a series of articles analyzing what happens in Greece....some superficial, some more elaborated...today 6/8 Greek citizens described the situation as a social uprising....and a call from home, made me smile....my dad read a very conservative analysis and furiously asked me! "so the young people don't face any problem in Greece ?and since when being an anarchist is bad per se"?

He made me anxious to go home, enjoy long conversations both at home and with friends while drinking and arguing...

this is what I miss about Greece... the aesthetics of authentic politicization.....maybe there is still hope....

This morning I heard that the Greek police run out of tear gus and asked more to be sent from Israel and Germany.....

Improper Behavior or Αποκλίνουσα Συμπεριφορά!

That is what the rambo-policeman said in his defence:"Τhe assassinated boy had demonstrated an improper behavior...although coming from a wealthy family he was expelled from his school and used to cause problems.!!!!!!!!! "
σαν να λέμε τα είθελε και τα έπαθε..... and of course he forgot to say I'm sorry!!!!!!!!!!!

Why?

This is the question I receive from several friends world wide....
why all this episodes and riots in Greece?why all this anger from the young people??

This is the response I provide from a BBC web site's analysis:
"Rebellion is deeply embedded in the Greek psyche. The students and school children who are now laying siege to police stations and trying to bring down the government are undergoing a rite of passage.......The centre for this December rebellion is the Athens Polytechnic, where students have been out on the streets with wheelbarrows and shopping trolleys to collect and recycle rocks and pieces of marble used in the previous night's assaults.......The polytechnic is the symbol of modern rebellion.
On 17 November 1973, tanks of the then six-year-old military dictatorship burst through the iron railings to suppress a student uprising against the colonels.
The exact casualty figure is still unknown to this day but it is believed that around 40 people were killed.
The sacrifice of the polytechnic was so significant that the post-junta architects of Greece's new constitution drafted the right of asylum, which bans the authorities from entering the grounds of schools and universities.
That is why places of learning are the springboards for the current wave of violence and it also explains why many of the riots are in university towns.
Students and pupils have effectively been given carte blanche to carry on protesting, because their professors have declared a three-day strike. ..
Although many of today's protestors were not born when thepolytechnic gates were crushed by the tanks, the lesson of the students' martyrdom is a key component of every Greek child's school democracy curriculum.
The latent Greek contempt for the police, which has now erupted so volcanically, has its roots in the dictatorship, when the police were regarded as the colonels' enforcers and traitors to the people.
The death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos at the hands of an experienced 37-year-old policeman has precipitated a wave of nationwide violence unseen since the dictatorship"""""""""

Of Turkish coffee and other names....

This morning I run out of my usual coffee,so I decided to boil a cup of Turkish coffee..while I was stirring the coffee I smiled thinking oh my God, imagine asking for Turkish coffee in Greece!

it simply doesn't exist!it's Greek coffee of course! In Cyprus it's called Cypriot Coffee....

coming from Northern Greece I feel culturally deprived of the history of the place I was born and the place I spent a significant part of my life...like someone stole arbitrarily the history of both places...Kavala and Thessaloniki...Mehmet Ali, the progressive Albanian pasha of Egypt was born in Kavala.Used to play in the beautiful old Turkish neighborhood, the one we call Panagia now.

His Imaret became one of the fanciest hotels in Europe and his house, a luxurious restaurant....the grave of his mother in the middle of the central square of Kavala was demolished during the Junta...the "patriots" wanted a pure ethnic city., nothing to remind the past...still though even nowadays people use Turkish names for some parts of the city.....a city full of refugees from Turkey like my grand grandparents..where still two neighborhoods are called 500 and 1.000...from the 500 and 1.000 houses built for the Greek refugees....

Thessaloniki, my other love....a City of Ghosts as Mazower says in his book....Jewish, Muslims, Christians....all together...in this crossroad of civilisations, between West and East, the bottom of Balkans, a cosmopolitan city full of Anatolian aroma....

where the food and the drink is so important that you spend hours around a table with friends, losing the sense of time....

You think you are over with some places, I always connect situations and people with places...these two cities though are self contained...you go back not because of the situations or the people....you go back for the city itself...........

http://www.imaret.gr/

http://www.cityofkavala.gr/pub/en/