The Greece of the past?

Theopi Skarlatos is 'mourning the vanishing Greece of her childhood', as she writes about it on the BBC website.

"There is high unemployment, an increase in drug use, depression and prostitution. People have been filmed foraging for food in bins after dark, and schoolchildren are reported to have collapsed from malnutrition. It seems a long way from the pretty pictures on dusty postcards at stalls beneath the Acropolis."

As usual, the burden rests on 'Athens' (and no less than the notorious district of Agios Panteleimonas, in Theopi's eyes) to tell the world what is happening in 'Greece', even though Athens never represented what was happening in the rest of the country. In the similar way that the Greek public and private sectors work, Athens and the rest of the country run parallel to each other, rarely converging.

 "Drool", "Nothing like good old traditional Cretan snacks!", "Heaven musta sentcha from above. OPA!!" (comments on my facebook page)

Toasted bread slices with feta cheese and fresh tomato, drizzled with olive oil (no added salt). 

Theopi goes on to say:

"And so it has fallen to the international media to portray as true a picture as possible of what is happening in the country that once gave birth to democracy, but which is now struggling to show it is still in possession of it."

Poor Theopi, I think to myself. She wasn't born to Cretans. At any rate, the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

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