GR80s

"Until then, there was just a low class of urban dwellers. In the 80s, the western world middle class culture was created, which is why the 80s were the 'womb' of the post-junta era, even though the dictatorship ended in 1974." http://www.lifo.gr/print/print_feature/130598 

While in Athens last weekend, I visited the highly publicised GR80s exhibition (see: http://www.gr80s.gr) being held until mid-March at the former gasworks of Athens (aka Technopolis, one of the hippest art and music centres in Greece: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopolis_(Gazi)). GR80s is an exhibition about the 80s decade, consisting of 18 thematic units that try to describe the zeitgeist  of the time, through pictures, posters, news clippings, music, videos, various artefacts collected from that time period, as well as a few short texts that briefly summarise the decade, according to the curators. GR80s has been given great prominence in the media, and since it opened a few weeks ago, it has been received with great acclaim.

I lived through the 80s in NZ. In 1978, my parents bought a fish and chip shop in a kind of dormitory suburb outside Wellington, and I started high school, where I wore a school uniform. That's about the time when my mother first started spending money on clothes for her children - she used to make a lot of our clothes before that. Mother would also send parcels (by sea) of our used clothes to her sister in Athens, adding a few household goods in them (the basic potato peeler in particular). Some time in the early 80s, my aunt (who had found a job as a cleaner in a factory in the highly industrialized suburb outside Athens where she lived) told her not to do that any more because she could now buy a lot of material goods in Athens. We kept in touch with most of our relatives in Greece, mainly by letter, but occasionally we would call them. We never expected them to call us because we always thought of them as not being able to afford to do so (even though international phone calls in NZ were also considered expensive). We understood poverty in the same sense that we had seen it during our last trip to Greece in 1974: all our Greek relatives had a roof over their heads, and lots of food, but they didn't have a lot of material goods; some of them worked while others didn't; and they didn't really have much contact with the world beyond their borders.


Meanwhile, my whole family worked in our shop on a daily basis, for almost a decade, with the kids going there after school. One minute I'd be serving a customer, the next I'd be doing my homework. Life wasn't hard in the sense of hardships: in the case of my family, it was all about hard work. Our money visibly went into the accumulation of goods. We renovated our house and bought an apartment in Crete, we wore nice clothes and were given presents of jewelry by our parents, we read teen magazines, listened to vinyl records and cassettes, watched US and UK TV series and rented videos. We (but not our parents) went to discos and ate out occasionally at the 'exotic' restaurants that had recently opened in Wellington's restaurant scene, including Greek ones.

I did six years of free studies at university, finishing with a Master of Arts in 1990. I had gone on to post-graduate research because I had had trouble finding work before that with my arts degree: the NZ public service had stopped taking on employees, office work was getting harder to find, and ESL classes were no longer being subsidised, all due to a change in the political system: from safety net socialism, NZ was moving towards self-sustained capitalism (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics). I was in the situation of being overqualified for most jobs and unqualified for others. But I still had to find something to do even though my studies did not lead to any particularly sought after qualification at the time. With my savings, I decided to do my OE (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_experience). I arrived in London where I started my journeys through Europe which would eventually land me in Greece in 1991.

I was surprised at what I found in Greece: people weren't poor like we remembered them 17 years before that. Many people under 40 had done some kind of tertiary studies, and most people were working, albeit with much lower salaries than what we were used to in NZ. Cafes and tavernas were often busy nearly every night of the week, and full at the weekends. Prices were much lower here than what we were paying in NZ for similar services. So there was still plenty of food to eat, and everyone had a roof over their head, mainly in the form of apartments in Athens, while our relatives in Crete lived mainly in detached houses. They all wore nice clothes and my aunt would joke about the potato peelers my mother used to send her: Athens was full of supermarkets by that time and most people owned a similar potato peeler.

This all made me wonder: what if my parents had stayed in Greece instead? How different would their life be, had they stayed here? Would it have involved just as much hard work as what we were used to in NZ? Would we be just as comfortable, like most of the Greek side of our family? With the benefit of hindsight, our personal lives all seemed to be going down the same path, despite coming from different directions. Both my mother and her sister could rightfully be described as coming from the peasant class in Greece. They had left their villages and entered menial labour in NZ and Greece respectively: ie they had both entered the urban working class. From this rapid rise in societal class emerged the middle class of Greece, which was practically non-existent before the 80s: you were either very well off, or just making ends meet. My aunt remained working class but my parents differentiated when they bought a business which moved them into the SME (small medium enterprises) class, and their income level rose to allow them to afford a more comfortable life: ie closer to the middle class of society. My aunt stayed poor, but living frugally all her life, she was able to help her children (who also remained in the working class) to build modest homes with her savings, while the children from Kiwi side of the family all entered the middle class as university graduates. We had arrived, so to speak.

The Greek 80s were a time of great hops and simultaneously great change in Greece, the decade of out with the old and in with the new. The Greek 80s are often regarded as a highly misunderstood decade because of their emphasis on mass overconsumption and the rise of populism - with the implication that the political decisions taken in the 80s are 'responsible' for the present day crisis that Greece is going through because they surreptitiously paved the way for its arrival, ushering in the great catastrophe that Greece experienced in 2010 when the effects of the crisis became evident as the bubbles began to burst all around us. We are now seen to be living with the consequences of that decade's thinking. Greece was left unguided as she entered the western world, with EU entry in 1981. Had she (or her partners) realised that she needed a bit more help (and a lot more monitoring), perhaps it would not have gone so horribly wrong. EU entry gave Greece - and the Greeks - the chance to renew their identity, and to a certain extent, we did just that: we became very vain. Vanity's consequences led to our eventual economic downfall, which then led us to an identity crisis (a similar one that the UK and the US are in right now).

By the time I arrived to Athens in September 1991, Greece was swinging: no one was really poor, and most Athenians had embraced materialism to the point that the poor and frugal life of the past had been eradicated. No doubt many treasures were lost in that decade, as people threw out their old (read: vintage) home furnishings to replace it with more modern items. The 90s signalled an awareness in modern thinking, but not a rise in webification which was happening throughout the rest of the western world. In the 00s, wealth was out of control which imploded in the 10s with the economic crisis (but those decades are for another discussion). In retrospect, I would say that the main difference with Greece was that she was constantly coming, but never really arriving.  Things have speeded up now, given that Greece finds herself in a similar situation now as NZ was in the 80s (as I describe above) - but we are still not there. We have not quite arrived yet. But GR80s shows us that we actually have come a long way: we did not quite get there, but we are ahead in the game of working out who we are and where we are going.

GR80s is fully bilingual in Greek and English, and uses multimedia audiovisual resources, with some real-life, real-time re-enactments from that decade, in the form of a fully functional home, complete with ringing doorbell, a TV playing shows from the time, a telephone from which you can hear conversations with an 80s ring to them, and real life actors pretending to live in the house, and uttering the punchlines of the era through their unscripted dialogue, which the public are also invited to take part in (once they realise that the couple in the house are actors - my daughter caught onto this before I did). I could tell you a lot about what I learnt from that exhibition, but I would only be regurgitating someone else's words (which you too can read here: http://www.gr80s.gr/index.php/en/exhibition by checking the list of the thematic categories covered), so I've gone one extra step and translated what is being said about GR80s in the Greek press, which is raving about it as nothing short of brilliant. The blue highlights in the texts below are my own.

*** *** ***

"So that's what the 80s were like" by Dimitris Politakis (02/08/17 - click here for the Greek original).
We may find its stereotypes choking, but it was the last decade that was looking forward.

I've thought about popping in to see the exhibition a couple of times to gaze, with the distance of time, at the various totems and fetishes of the era - almost all of them utterly and painfully familiar - but I haven't been able to visit this great exhibition about the Greek '80s. The truth is that it keeps me tripping over and it prevents me from confronting something that inevitably resembles an entertainment mausoleum for the whole family (for the old to remember and the young to wonder), something between a vast theme park and a little train of horrors, from which several skeletons step out along the way, which had experienced the great glories of 30-35 years ago, between the period of the Metapolitefsi [the Political Change that occurred in Greece after the Papadopoulos dictatorship] and the "dirty '89" (I always liked that term, it had a Clint Eastwood vibe to it). I have a personal issue with the '80s. I am not bothered so much by their impression on society but on me personally. I clearly have my origins in them, and since then. There is a world inside of me that never experienced mobile phones and the internet (the fresher generations can't even begin to conceive this, as such a fact cannot be digested in any way).  

It has nothing to do with nostalgia, it's just that one recognizes a place of origin that is more important than that which any surname can imply. I find it quite impossible to imagine that I could have gone through pre-puberty and adolescence (ie years of an endless and agonizing expectation) in another decade, as it seems inconceivable not to have spent my childhood in the '70s, in the alleys, streams and spaciousness of suburbia, and then home for lunch, a bit of school pseudo-homework, and "Little House on the Prairie" on TV. In other words, imagine that I was a teenager in that premature '80s Change and had got into trouble with some ragbags and political youth groups, or in the '90s ... hmm. Now that I think about it, the '90s passed by me like a brutally stretched, prolonged adolescence (like a teenage fixation, if we analyse it pathologically), but that's why they seem - despite looking like they were so much more FUN - less significant, cloudier in relation to the' 80s, where I think I remember everything.

What has however remained with me is not so much the performances of the epoch - the café-disco-tutorial lessons-shoulder pads-gaiters phase, and the like - but a lasting impression: those evenings when I returned home with the trolley bus, that there is a future out there for me, a long and undeclared one full of exciting surprises and twists. It was not just that I was a teenager and I saw before me seven lives and a few more, it was the last futuristic period before the odometer was reset and postmodern relativism swept it all away and the carousel started turning with all kinds of revivals, recycling, remakes, remodelling and rebooting. Who would even think to organize a festive exhibition in the '80s about the Greek '50s? No one! That past was a thankless, gray and dimly lit universe without neon and fluey hues, and only someone who is paralyzed by nostalgia would dare to say that it was better 'then'. In the '80s, despite the permanently unstable political climate and the various premature 'births' that would eventually give birth to the successor of the Change, there was a widespread impression of a path towards prosperity and reconstruction, without any pending bills, misunderstandings and collective illusions.

Perhaps more interesting would be a corresponding exhibition on the taboos and totems of  the '90s, related much more to the current quagmire, not only as a genealogy of the Crisis, or as the first seed to be sown of the suffering that we are now going through, and our absolute inability to finally agree not just on the easy parts, but also on more difficult issues. Poor and arrogant, we triumph, as undignified losers...

My photos of the exhibition

"Why are the '80s an absolute minefield for history?" by Kosta Katsapis, Historian at Panteio University, Curator of the GR80s kiosk "Working class culture and workers' demands" (02/02/17 - click here for the Greek original).
Fragmentary studies for this critical period are strictly necessary.

Braudel once said that "the secret object of history, its deeper motive, is the interpretation of synchronicity." Therefore, each palpation of the historical past can only be related to the questions raised by the present, the doubts and insecurities that are formed in the present time. The '80s are not only an exception but they are the epitome of the above finding. The '80s are indicated in the context of the economic crisis as the matrix of "evil", and at the very same time, the last period that deserve to be remembered as the "years of innocence". This contradiction should not be a cause of worry, since the '80s are, at any rate, synthesized from both the contradictory developments and no other time period that existed before or followed them (the most charismatic political figure of the same period, the cosmopolitan intellectual, yet at the same time an unrefined populist, being Andreas Papandreou: he was the Great Contradictor).

The 80s saw politicization reaching its apogee while party affiliations began to organize the personal life and social relations of the individual, in the most outrageous way by today's standards: take, for example, the case of the "blue" and "green" cafés (see photo inset). This however incubated pluralism and the explosion of individualism that would prevail in the next decade. It vindicates the political struggles of many decades; it therefore constitutes as sovereign, legitimate and legitimized the oppressed left narrative, while at the same time it chops off its foundations, enabling the layers hitherto excluded from prosperity to enter mass consumption and the Western lifestyle. Therefore, the history of the 80s is an absolute minefield, a fact that is due not only to fragmentary studies which up to now have been carried out on this decade and make this previously uncharted territory substantive, but also because of the strange peculiarity of the period, which allows different kinds of - and often diametrically opposed - approaches, evaluations and (unfortunately) certainties.

Therein also lies the major difficulty that has had to be overcome in order to set up the GR80s pavilion about "Working class culture and workers' demands." In the beginning, as is common, a question is posed: what is the difference between 'populist' and 'working class inclusion' in the '80s? The answer might seem easy, but the phenomena are quite deceptive. Already during the '80s the concept of a working class culture became a privileged field of ​​conflict between those who reminisce in or fantasize about a lost purity, and those who see the authenticity of the populace's soul in marginal, heretical and provocative manifestations of daily life, at least among the mainstream intelligentsia, for example in the skiladika [low class cabaret style music joints]. In this context, it was decided that the pavilion should take into account not only the secular synchronous approaches which have their origin in academic environments, artists or generally among the intellectuals (eg the film "Rembetiko" or the TV series "The Minor Note of Dawn"), but also in the debate about working class culture that is now regarded as largely obsolete and has disappeared from the public eye, the one that is regarded as "bothersome". And it is annoying precisely because it reflects the ongoing progress made by the (until then) grass roots layers, in terms of civilization, of prosperity, integrating, sometimes inelegantly in our own eyes, in a clumsy way or with notoriously bad taste, the symbols of a culture which for them composed a charmingly attractive terra incognita.

Therefore, the authenticity of working class culture (if ever it existed) is aimed at being identified not in the intellectuals of the universe, many of whom have (if they do at all) a marginal relationship with working class neighborhoods and their realities, nor in the often excessive and equally constructed obsessions of lovers of marginal cultures. Conversely, if there is some kind of working class culture that is able to be an exemplary model for understanding the 'lay' people and their culture in the '80s, it can probably be traced in the place where, day by day, a hybrid reality is shaped, where the past coexists with the present - that place where the heavily populist identities feel secure enough to move away from the culture of need and its often pre-modern values ​​and to integrate new consumption patterns, survival strategies and behaviors: behaviors which with a fair amount of malice would be accused by "koultouriarides" [a disparaging way to refer to pseudo-intellectuals] as a vehicle of the enforcement of kitsch and the bad taste which (supposedly) is often associated with the 80s.

To solve the puzzle, it was decided albeit informally but very obviously to focus on a suburb whose development largely reflects the progress of the working classes towards prosperity or, in sociological terms, "upward mobility", which characterised the '80s of - in Papandreou's terms - the "disadvantaged": the suburb of Gerakas, which is a kind of unexpressed case study for the pavilion "Working class culture and workers' demands," ​​a suburb where the "honest toiler" - as the hopeless romantics would call them - lived during the period under consideration, namely former internal migrants, public and private employees, workers and the self-employed. Many of them movingly kept records of their everyday life and even more movingly and with abundant kindness responded to the call of GR80s for cooperation. Without them, it would not have been possible to set up the pavilion. (The author publicly thanks Despina Daliani and Athena Manzano, and the members of the association "Gerakas' source" for their trust and valuable assistance on this matter.)

More articles on GR80s in English:
http://www.ekathimerini.com/212863/article/ekathimerini/life/the-1980s-anatomy-of-a-watershed-era
http://www.ekathimerini.com/216042/article/ekathimerini/life/rewinding-to-the-era-of-analog-politics
http://www.ekathimerini.com/215939/article/ekathimerini/life/athens-show-revisits-politics-arts-lifestyle-and-technology-in-80s-greece

And more in Greek and other languages:
- 'I was there' - a photoset of the GR80s opening night:  http://www.lifo.gr/guide/culturenews/i_was_there/130758
- GR80s series of articles on LIFO (most widely read print and web magazine in Greece): http://www.lifo.gr/topics/view/93
and http://www.lifo.gr/tags/%CE%94%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B1+%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85+%2780 (don't miss out on seeing the 80s house: http://www.lifo.gr/articles/urban-life_articles/130450 )
- French interest in GR80s: http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/02/02/la-grece-des-annees-80-une-expo-antidote-a-la-crise-a-athenes_1545785

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Athens 2016: Aigina

An Athens holiday is not compete without a bit of Greek island hopping. The island of Aigina is the closest to the capital, making the island one of the most popular island-hopping destinations on a Greek holiday as well as a favorite weekend outing for Athenians all year round, some of whom own holiday homes here. I did a bit of island hopping in my early Greek days, but living so far away from the mainland - on an island for that matter - has somewhat curtailed such experiences. I decided to try an island experience during my recent trip to Athens to get away from the heat of the concrete.

Only an hour or so away by ferry from Athens' main port in Pireas, Aigina can also be reached more quickly by hovercraft, small but very fast catamaran-style boats, lessening the travel time considerably. The island is only about 20km wide and 30km long, with a permanent population of 14,000. It overlooks the Peloponnese and Salamina island where the Battle of Salamis took place.

 The marina in the town of Aigina town, the synonymous port on the island, overlooking the Peloponnese    

A view from the town beach of Aigina, overlooking the small island of Agistri with a permanent population of about 1000 people.

Historically, Aigina is known for many things: an important marine power with greater significance than Athens before it went into decline, the first known mint in the western world leading to the hypothesis that Aigina introduced coins to Europe, the ancient ruins of Aphea which consist of a well preserved Parthenon-like temple, and in modern times, the first saint of the Greek Orthodox church - St Nektarios, who founded a monastery on the island - to be photographed. But if you ask today's Greeks what they know about Aigina, they will all unanimously tell you about the thriving pistachio industry on the island: about 10,000 tonnes of pistachio are produced there every year.

Pistachio tree on Aigina, overlooking the island of Salamina in the background

Beach at Ayia Marina, a coastal village in eastern Aigina

The ruins of the Temple of Aphaia, built in the Doric style

The reasons concerning how such a high-end product came to be the main crop on such a small Greek island are a lesson in sustainability. The island was never really self-sufficient, and this is still an issue in modern times. Aegina relies on the mainland for most of her supplies, including her water needs. Towards the end of the 19th century, the pistachio pioneer Nikolaos Peroglou realised that the nut was a low-demand crop, which survived easily on bad soil, meaning that it would yield a high price with few costs. Peroglou gave away pistachio saplings as presents which people planted in their gardens, usually among their grapevines and olive trees, the more traditional crops of Greece.

Looking out towards Salamina island, from the northeast of Aigina

The misery of WWII saw Aigina suffering the greatest percentage of death by starvation in the whole country, surpassing Athens. After the war, the island's grapevines were attacked by the fatal phylloxera blight. Local farmers often replaced each dying vine with a pistachio sapling so that they could continue to trade in a product. This basically led to the rise in pistachio cultivation on the island. Aigina pistachio has enjoyed PDO status for the last two decades.

Pistachio products in sale in a stall near the port of Aigina

Visiting the island from Athens, the visitor will see the importance of the pistachio from the first instance as they stop onto the island's main port, also called Aegina. Pistachio producers set up stalls there, selling a multitude of products which all contain pistachio: salted and unsalted pistachios, with or without the shell, pistachio sweets and savouries, crackers and pastes, ice-cream and liqueurs. Pistachio trees are also seen in the gardens of the local people's homes.

Olive trees in Aigina produce olive oil mainly for personal home - the island imports nearly everything, with production concentrated in the pistachio industry

Aigina is mountainous but it is also very green, with pine forests, olive groves and pistachio orchards.

Approaching Aigina by ferry boat felt like I was visiting a miniature version of Crete. In the north, the island is very green and evenly inhabited. The port area constitutes the main town, which resembles the average small Greek coastal town - a seaport with a marina, faced by cafes and restaurants, and surrounded by narrow alleys full of small shops. The south is mainly mountainous, barren and not inhabited. The main problem Aigina faces is the lack of water sources on the island - all water is transported to the island from the mainland. Without enough water, you cannot sustain life, so most of Aigina's food needs will come from the mainland too. Being the closest island to Athens, the high number of annual visitors adds to the burden. It was only last month that the much discussed pipeline on the seabed for water supply from Athens to Aigina was finally agreed upon, which will be operating in three years' time. So the water supply problem may soon be resolved.

Walking from the Aphaia temple to the beach at Ayia Marina on the northeast, you pass through a road that is lined with tavernas, rooms for rent, and other tourist facilities. They are nearly all closed and from the appearance of the buildings, it is likely that they have not operated for a long time, a sure sign of how the various Greek crises of the last few years have affected Aigina's business sector. It has now become too expensive for the average Athenian to take a short carefree jaunt to the island on a regular basis. Most foreign tourists visit for the day, and they may be on the island for a very short period if they are doing the highly popular one-day cruise (where they also visit other islands near Aigina, notably Poros and Hydra). Aigina is small enough to drive through it in the space of one whole day - cars can be taken on the ferry boats to facilitate visitors to this end. During the summer, ferry boats arrive from and leave for Athens on a regular basis throughout the day, so you can get there very early and leave quite late just before evening sets in.. If it weren't for the uncomfortably hot early July weather we expoerienced this year, we might have stayed longer ourselves. We caught a late afternoon boat back to Athens, and arrived home before evening set in.

*** *** ***

Pistachio is harvested in summer when the shell splits open. The nut is then used in its raw state or roasted with lemon juice (and salt, optionally), to preserve it in a chemical-free way. In Greece, pistachio is commonly eaten as a nut, nearly always served in its shell, as a side dish to some fiery alcohol. having to open the shells and remove them from their casing is a way to lengthen the time it takes to eat the pistachio! In cooking, pistachio is used in pastry sweets, giving baklava-style desserts their characteristic green colour. It is often sprinkled as a crumbed topping on cakes and biscuits. Pistachios are also added to honey, chocolate and, notably in the Mediterranean, Turkish delight. Pistachios keep well for a long time in an airtight container. Apart from shelling and crushing, they do not require much more processing to make them ready for consumption.

Pistachio cream on melba toast, pistachio crackers and pistachio nuts

Pistachios keep well for a long time in an airtight container. Apart from shelling and crushing, they do not require much more processing to make them ready for consumption. Pistachio paste, a gluten-free vegan condiment, is easy to make at home with a food processor. It makes a tasty topping on bread and can be used as a creamy filling or topping in cakes and biscuits. Just whizz a cup (or two) of shelled pistachio nuts with a teaspoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of butter, and a teaspoon of honey. Keep whizzing until you get the desired consistency - the more you whizz, the creamier it becomes. For a more interesting texture, add some finely crushed pistachio to the cream, for a mixed consistency. Place the spread in a jar and keep it in the fridge; it will keep for more than a month - if it doesn't get eaten sooner!

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Athens 2016: Lost grandeur (Χαμένα μεγαλεία)

Running through the centre of Athens are two imposing avenues that connect the two major Athenian landmarks of Syntagma and Omonoia Squares. Stadiou and Panepistimiou Streets were where, a quarter of a century ago, I would come to go shopping. Stadiou is where, I was told by my boss, the expensive clothes and shoe shops were, if I wanted to buy something finer in life than what our working class neighbourhood of Egaleo could offer. I remember buying my favorite pair of shoes somewhere here - high heeled wooden sandals, with a peep-toe dark brown matt leather upper and cross-over straps with a firm buckle on the covered heel. They lasted for ages. I even remember the price - something in the range of 25,000 (~73€) drachmas, which the owner of the shop told me would drop to 20,000 (~58€) drachma if I didn't issue a receipt, a discount which I am sure I gladly accepted at the time.

 Panepistimou St, at the Vivliothiki (Library) bus stop

Despite the sweltering July heat, since I was in the area of Syntagma Square, I wanted to walk down those glorious roads again, to experience the grandeur that I recalled in my first few years of residence in Greece. I did not really know myself what I would find on Stadiou and Panepistimiou Steets more than two decades later. But it is only now, when I think very hard as I try to force myself to remember what those days were really like for me, that I recall the dirty buses, the rude bus drivers, the anxious faces among the throngs, the lotto ticket touts, the myriads of kiosks within a few metres of each other all selling the same things, and the cries of the hawkers as they tried to entice you into their businesses to consider their wares. I remember living those days in darkness, despite the bright sunlight that the Acropolis always seemed to be drenched in.*

We sat on the wooden benches of the pedestrianized area of Voukourestiou Street, as I pondered which street we should take first. Wendy's burger restaurant was long gone, the landmark replaced by the pricey and soulless Attika Mall. Stadiou is full of contrasts: some buildings still look imposing, and they still house many branded as well unbranded stores, interspersed with a few trendy (and some not so trendy) looking cafes whose staff all wear uniforms now in the colour of the business's logo. It didn't take long to come across the first of the boarded-up buildings on both sides of the street. Walking by the Bank of Greece's behind (its front is on Panepistimiou), we passed by a homeless couple that was still sleeping. Lying on rags, lined with cardboard boxes, their eyes were closed, as one hugged the other. They were lying in front of what seemed to be a boarded-up hotel with the impressive words 'palace' in its name. It is said that just one homeless person is too many, and in this particular location, the image stuck out like a sore thumb.

Pretending that we didn't see them, we stopped to admire the enticing sleek modern display of the IANOS bookshop. On entering, we realised that we would have to choose between high fashion and food for our thoughts. At least we could still afford to eat; we are confident of that. Apart from the many Greek titles, there were also many Greek translations of English books. A linguistics title by David Crystal caught my eye - didn't I read that while I was studying at VUW? But I was completely gobsmacked when I saw what was sitting prominently right next to it with its cover showing, bearing my VUW sociolinguistics professor's name on it. I'd read that one too in its earliest edition! We bought one of the cheaper Arkas volumes and continued on our way.

Patision St (aka 28th October)

Pausing just a little at Plateia Klafthmonos, I imagined who cried (κλαυθμός - klafth-MOS: cry), and who may still be crying here,** before passing through Korai to get to Panepistimiou, which is also called Eleftherios Venizelos Avenue (a spade is not necessarily a spade in Greece). I remember sitting here with a friend, who had driven me all the way from Egaleo to go out for drinks in this very spot. "It's nice here, isn't it?" she kept saying, implying Egaleo's shabbiness, and I always agreed with her, even though at the time I felt uncomfortable among the stemmed-glass candle-lit atmosphere. Athens' regular destruction by 'activists' had left this building intact; not even the omnipresent Greek graffiti was gracing its exterior. A number of tourists were taking photos on the steps of the main University building. I amused myself with the thought that they might have mistaken it for another of Pericles' works, built not in modern times, but in the Golden Age of Athens.

From here, the road descends into the chaos of Omonoia Square, once considered a central meeting place in Athens, with transients and provincials all being lured to it in the past, whether on purpose or by accident, as it was almost impossible not to end up here when coming into the centre of Athens, no matter which part of the country you came from. All roads led newcomers to Omonoia Square:

"They come, all the oppressed and ruined, from the whole of Greece... Indeed, where the monsters grow... they are small places. They first tyrannize and then ostracise those people with erotic variations, in particular. They force them to leave, to go to the large urban centres, and mainly to Athens. And when they arrive in Athens, very quickly they will come by Omonoia Square too, where a certain percentage will stick around."  http://www.organicallycooked.com/2012/02/way-we-were-greek-provincial.html   http://athensville.blogspot.gr/2010/05/1980.html

My own memories of Omonoia Square are bittersweet. I did not want to be reminded of my days of having to bump into the ruined and oppressed as I went about my business. My nostalgia for the streets of my past ended here. Luckily for my children, they will never need to hang around here any longer than it takes to cross the road - they will be able to avoid it altogether.

First photo ever taken in Greece, 1839

Bonus photos:

Our walk took up north of Omonoia Square, up Patision Street, which is officially named 28th-October Street (Greeks never quite Westernised in their street naming style) where we walked past the (barricaded) Polytechneio (the one that started the fall of the junta in 1973), and visited the National Archaeological Museum. Despite its old-fashioned layout, the NAM contains some of the most fascinating collections of the oldest European civilisation. You won't be disappointed visiting this building. And while you're there, check out the wonderful ground floor cafe in the delightful museum gardens. 

* no wonder I left Athens and moved to Crete. For as long as I lived in Athens, I never felt like an Athenian.
** google it: (click here)

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Athens 2016: Syntagma Square (Σύνταγμα)

On first glance, Syntagma Square may look like an ordinary busy square that's a good place to get photographed in the centre of Athens, just as any large imposing square is in any other European capital city. Sometimes, it feels like the heart of Athens; but there are also times when can feel like Athens' arse. Whatever the case, a visit to Syntagma Square is a must, every time I go to Athens, just to get a feel for the city at that moment when I was visiting.

If you get to Syntagma Square by metro, you may not realise that you are about to exit utopia. The metro (still) looks like it was built last month and opened last week. That's Greece, land of contrast, country of extremes. Walk up the stairs to the viewing gallery where you might catch an exhibition or trade fair. Go and see the ancient graves and water pipes that were sliced through when the metro station was being built. Take in a bird's eye view of the people on the platform as they are going in and out of the trains. There's something here that will please everyone.

Take the escalator to get to the square itself above ground level, where you will see the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, standing next to the mighty tall body-fantastic Evzones dressed up in skirts and stockings. If you thought your wife spent too long getting dressed, think about these guys: they need at least half an hour just to get the uniform on, never mind make-up, and they can't even put it on all by themselves.

Where is that melodic music coming from? It's as if it was being played to welcome you. And those delicious aromas? Surely not from the McDonalds across the road. Walk down to the square to find out, but don't step on the grass. That's the ear-tagged stray dogs' turf. Their lives have been greatly enriched - not terminated - by the kindness of strangers. They are just hanging around, like the man (or two) who you will see resting on one of the benches. Don't spend too long staring at him - it's impolite. You  know he's homeless, but you don't know how or why he ended up like this.

Instead, try to soak up the atmosphere of what is happening in the square. If you are lucky, you will see a protest march passing through the square. What do those placards say? Perhaps it's all Greek to you. What's that stuff being sold at the various stalls? Don't confuse it with the paper paraphernalia of the various politicky grass roots movements which don't actually sell you any stuff - instead, they sell you ideas. Who are all these people on the square? Can you tell the tourists from the locals? And where are those migrants that everyone talks about in the news, whenever Greece is mentioned? Perhaps you can't tell them apart from the rest. Maybe they too are sunning themselves among the crowds; like you, they are soaking up the atmosphere, as they wait for the day they will bid farewell to Greece who gave them their first start of a new life in Europe.

Bonus photo:
Travelling on public transportation in Athens is very cheap - just €9 for five days on buses, trolleys, trams and metro trains, or €1.40 per single-ride ticket with a 90-minute duration. You only pay if you have a conscience - it is very very rare to have your ticket checked by an inspector, since no one wants the job, since an anarchist group began targeting ticket inspectors' home addresses.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

The Sacred Way (Ιερά Οδός)

Out time! declared The Little Laughing Olive Tree. At home, we usually stay in in the evenings, meaning we sit outside on our large airy balcony, enjoying the view and the fresh air, with platters of fruit and cheese and paximathi (when there are no delicious leftovers available from the day's lunch). The Little Laughing Olive Tree's balcony did not offer the same romance (and neither did her pantry), so it was almost a pleasure to leave the confines of the apartment block and venture out into the cooler air at street level.

IERA ODOS - the SACRED WAY

Tonight, we're going to cross the Sacred Way! cried The Little Laughing Olive Tree. Having just returned from the very crowded commercial centre of Αιγάλεω (Egaleo) along the Ιερά Οδός (Iera Odos - Holy Road/Sacred Way), where I had taken my daughter shopping, I was rather disappointed to think we would be entering that mess all over again. Iera Odos links the Acropolis of Athens with the Eleusinian Mysteries in the West Athens suburb of Elefsina, one of the five holiest sites of ancient Greece. Now, it's a quiet residential area in Athens, once famous for its heavy industry, which subsided well before the period known as the Greek economic crisis.

The Chalyps concrete factory

Ιera Odos feels rather stifling on a hot summer's day from the roars and fumes of car engines forming an endless stream of traffic. But Athens by night is a different picture to Athens by day, so we piled into the car and off we went, with our starting point at Iera Odos in Elefsina. We rolled down the windows to catch the cool air of the late afternoon and tried to take in the sights which were anything but sights for sore eyes. Initially, the bus stop signs we passed which showed the place names of the areas did not seem to match the industrial scenery that shapes Δυτική Αττική (Ditiki Attiki = West Athens). For instance, there were no phoenixes at Φοίνιξ (Phoenix) and the industrial scenery of Παράδεισο (Paradise) did not look tempting. Our concept of Hades suited it better. Χάλυψ (Chalyps) was a steel structure resembling a disused adventure playground while Πετρογκάζ (Petrogaz) was located close to a string of gas stations. Λουζιτανία (Lusitania) was not even near the sea, as its name suggests, but when the sea did come into view, the relation between its murkiness and the fear of its depths became more apparent from the frightening structures that bobbed on its surface. The unknown depths of the Mediterranean have a knack of enveloping all aspects of Greek life: "Listen to that bitch, the sea," Zorba once said, "that maker of widows."

Skaramangas - the area resembles a ghost town in some respects. Some places had their heyday and are now forgotten. Others are coping well with the crisis as they keep morphing into new businesses. Hotel signs may be misleading here - they are usually used by lovers. 

What a daredevil! The Little Laughing Olive Tree chuckled. He must be desperate! She pointed to a man who had just come out of the water and was stepping carefully over the rocky coastline in his bare feet. The bus stop sign told us we were at Σκαραμαγκά (Skaramanga), which hosts a shipyard. What James Bond's ScaramAngas has to do with the Greek SkaramangAs is probably all Greek to most people, suffice it to say that few would dare to go swimming anywhere near a place called Skaramanga, without James Bond around to protect them. Both S(c)karamangas take their name from the same family. The James Bond writer named a nasty character Scaramangas after a spat with a half-Greek Eton schoolmate, whose Greek roots hailed from the island of Chios, well known in Greece for its illustrious maritime history. The Skaramanga family did well in England, and their name lives on in Greece in the same way that all prominent wealthy people's names are remembered, as placenames lost in time. However unattractive the Skaramanga area may now look, it hides many secrets. Driving past the bus stop Αφαία (Aphea) close to Skaramanga, all you will see is a quiet idyllic neighbourhood cluster bordered by hills. Hiding in Mt Egaleo is the original road of the Sacred Way, together with a rocky temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite. The archaeological treasures of this area are all due to the route of the Sacred Way. Shrines of various deities were located along the route to keep the pilgrims' minds on the job.

Aphaia - a shrine to Aphodite

Nearly there! chirped The Little Laughing Olive Tree, as she veered right off the highway leaving behind a jumble of road signs pointing to a Ψυχιατρείο (Psychiatric Hospital) and a Μοναστήρι (Monastery), both named Δαφνί (Dafni), not to be confused with the area of Δάφνη (Daphne) which is an eastern suburb of Athens (we were in the west). One lone stress mark changes the whole meaning of a word in the Greek language. The road here had a tidy and above all pleasant appearance at this point after the shabby wasteland appearance of Λεωφόρος Αθηνών (Leoforos Athinon - Athens Avenue), which lies in the path of the original Iera Odos. At the Dafni Junction, Leoforos Athinon continues into Athens, while the road to the right that runs parallel to reappears as Iera Odos. The original Sacred Way of ancient times is the practically the same road in modern times. At the bus stop Αιγάλεω (Egaleo), during construction work for the Athens underground train network, the original Iera Odos was discovered, and is now open for viewing to the public via a raised platform.

It was sales time when we went shopping in Egaleo - there is no Zara in the area, just a heap of stores selling a lot of made-in-Greece clothing, sewn in the working class locality, providing local jobs. There were virtually no boarded shops here - the area is quite widespread, with businesses tucked in the side streets off the main road. 

The industrial nightmare of Leoforos Athinon did not suggest the picturesque green neighbourhoods that suddenly emerged into view on Iera Odos, all clustered around a steep hill. No one would even guess that the bus stop Διομήδειος (Diomedios) actually refers to a botanical garden (a gift to the state by someone named Diomidios) containing over 3000 species of flora, including plants appearing in ancient Greek texts, connected with Greek mythology, and mentioned in the Bible. In modern times, Ditiki Attiki is generally known in Greece (and abroad) for its working class industrial neighbourhoods, and not for its immense significance in ancient times, linking the Acropolis of Athens to the Eleusinian Mysteries via Iera Odos. And yet the sacred nature of this industrial road has not been lost. It is still there, constantly being uncovered, and the residents of the area are not immune to a sense of pride developing among them that they live amidst an unbroken historical connection spanning many centuries.

Hi Vicky! The Little Laughing Olive Tree shouted out, waving her right arm, as we passed a set of forbidding gates leading to yet another psychiatric hospital, the Δρομοκαΐτειο (DromokaIteio). There do seem to be quite a few of them here; we wondered. But who was Vicky? We all knew her very well^Test. As mothers, we both felt sorry for Vicky Stamati: she had not seen her young child for so many years since she was charged with her husband, former Minister of Defence Akis Tzohatzopoulos, for corruption and bribery involving the embezzlement of state money. But as Greek citizens, we felt vindicated for the damage she and her husband had done to the country and if we were asked to vote in a referendum with the question of whether she should remain imprisoned (she ended up at the Dromokaiteio due to mental health problems, we would probably vote NAI (YES). We imagined her cooped up in her cell with a view of the dark foreboding forest where the hospital was located. As the Greek saying goes, όλα πληρώνονται στη γη (everything is paid for on earth).

It's worth taking the metro just to see the archaeological excavations. This one is in Monastiraki.

No more driving! The Little Laughing Olive Tree announced, parking the car close to a station on the Αττικό μετρό (Attiko Metro), a dream come true for Athenians. The Athens underground is the swankiest in the whole of Europe. Construction began in the 1990s and by 2000, the first stations opened, linking the mainly overground 'electric' train line that ran through the city from north to south. It has been embraced by Athenians of all ages, and the addition of many more stations has meant no more mid-town parking worries and no more bumper-to-bumper drives into the town. The Attiko Metro is a unifying force in Athens, bringing together the different worlds of the wealthy Βόρεια Προάστια (Voreia Proastia = Northern Suburbs) and the poorer Δυτική Αττική (Ditiki Attiki = Western Athens). Before its existence, never the twain would meet. We bought our tickets at the automatic ticket dispenser and made our way to the high-speed trains in the super-clean platforms of one of the most archaeologically-rich undergrounds in the world. The crisis is said to have taken Greece backwards, but the Attiko Metro has forced people to move forward, and life will never be the same again because of its existence. We watched the old blind man tap his stick to find a free seat, the middle-aged ladies holding their patent leather bags with one hand and a standing passenger's bus strap with the other, and the young girls holding tightly onto their baby strollers, as we all headed towards the centre of Athens.

It wasn't quite dark when we came out of the Monastiraki train stop.
We were greeted by this sight.

One more stop! The Little Laughing Olive Tree reminded us, as the train pulled into Κεραμεικός (Keramikos), the point where the pilgrims of ancient times began their journey in Athens on their way to the Eleusinian Mysteries. We had covered almost the whole of the Sacred Way now, and were very close to Μοναστηράκι (Monastiraki) just below the Acropolis. Travelling underground, we missed out on seeing the stop where Plato's Ιερή Ελιά (Holy Olive Tree) once stood, but we were reminded of the significance of the olive in Athens by the metro stop Ελαιώνας (Eleonas), once the site of the largest olive grove in Greece, and the area which grew all the crops needed to feed Athens. It began to disappear relatively recently, after the population exchange in 1922; alas, not a branch of it remains in modern times.

Ermou Street, beside Monastiraki Square. The busiest area for the Athens yellow cab is here. With the arrival of Attiko Metro, the taxi business has slowed down. Before the Attiko Metro's appearance, taking a cab in Athens was as common as taking a bus. 

Eureka! The Little Laughing Olive Tree looked elated. We had arrived at Monastiraki. The passengers of our carriage spilled out onto the platform, leaving the the carriage quite empty. Everyone had the same idea as us: it was a perfect night for a walkabout. And there, The Little Laughing Olive Tree did something I did not expect. As we exited the station, she suddenly stopped in her tracks, completely oblivious to hordes of people coming in and out of the station. In the meantime, I was clutching my bag furtively, looking out for my brood.

Athens by night: Monastiraki Square.

Smell! The Little Laughing Olive Tree ordered us. Smell! she repeated on seeing our bewildered looks, waving her hands in front of her face, as if fanning towards her some invisible force that only she was aware of. Monastiraki stink! she laughed. What is Athens without it! And yet, Monastiraki did stink in a way. It stank of too many cheap souvenirs, too much grilled meat and too many people, all right below the Acropolis hill crowned by the Parthenon. Whatever day it is, whatever the weather, it always feels like a formidable moment to be standing at Monastriraki Square and to be looking up at the Parthenon. Right at this moment, the Monastiraki stink smelt like the sweetest perfume, one that could not be bought or bottled.

*** *** ***

Like Cavafy's Ithaca, we had come to the end of our journey, enjoying the Sacred Way even more than the destination. We grabbed a table at one of the tavernas located on the square and sipped in the atmosphere. We had it all: the coveted view of the marble structures of the Acropolis, the worldwide revered Greek cuisine on our plates, a bongo beat band entertaining us on the square, and a world of tourists clamouring to grab the chance to be a part of our country's lifestyle.

Pittaki St - ιf the overhead lampshades were lit up, they'd look like they do in this link.

After dinner, we walked about in the general area, through the urine-scented Pittaki St with its overhead collection of lanterns and graffiti-stenciled boarded up shopfronts, which led us into the hipster Psiri neighbourhood, with its own lively Square at Plateia Iroon, where there wasn't a seat free. The worst moment came when the realisation hit us that we would miss the last train back to the Agia Marina stop where we had left the car. We almost felt like Londoners, dashing to the underground so as not to be left stranded.

The hipster neighbourhood of Psiri, a short stroll from Monastiraki Square

The global media focuses on a crisis in Greece, centred only a few metres away from Monastiraki, on the other end of Ermou St at Syntagma Square outside the Parliament Buildings, misleading the world about the true nature of the Greek crisis, which is a crisis of values, a re-evaluation of identity. Like Alexis Tsipras who acknowledged that he made mistakes in his handling of the crisis in the five months that Syriza has been in power, the global media should apologise for the way that they have reported the situation in Greece. A step in the right direction would be to start asking the Greek people not why they are leaving, but why they refuse to leave their country.

For more photos (which I haven't had time to label yet), click here.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.