Χαιρετούρες (Hand-shaking)

I want to be a responsible citizen, which means I have to vote in the forthcoming local (mayoral) and European elections, but my heart isn't in it. I know for a fact that whoever I vote for - party or candidate - is not going to do anything for me personally, or even for my family. My only option is to put my hopes on the person/party that I believe may do some good for the common interest. But the way things look now, especially in terms of the mayoral elections, there seems to be little hope of seeing this happen - there are few projects that I can envisage which will be done for the common good. It's clearly a case of personal interests. The mayoral elections convey this sense of a dead cause for me, after what I saw happening in town last weekend.

The main square of Hania is written as "Plateia 1866" (Piazza 1866, after an important historical period) in maps, but to the locals, it's called "Nea Katastimata", meaning 'new shops', because this was one of the first parts of the town to be rebuilt after World War II. Plateia 1866 remains a central part of the town to this day, as it is the main passing point for nearly everyone coming into the town: the central bus station is located only a few metres away, most local buses leave from here, the main taxi rank is also based here, and the road leading to the Venetian harbour starts from the square. Thus, Plateia 1866 is the kind of place that will attract candidates' election campaigns because they can shake a lot of people's hands.

As I was leaving the town on Saturday after doing my street market shopping (despite the nationwide strike action called by the street market unions over new legislation governing them, it was business as usual for Hania's street markets), I passed by the taxi stand looking out for my husband's cab, just to say a 'kalimera' and catch up with the morning's news. He wasn't there, so I decided to cut through the square to get to my car.

Just as I was about to walk through the square, a tall man wearing a suit and tie stopped me in my tracks. I almost felt like he was going to walk over me, as if he could not see me due to his height. Before I could react, he had shoved his arm under my nose and his palm grabbed my hand, or at least, the bit that he could touch, because each of my palms was wrapped around the handles of plastic bags containing mizithra, koulouria and tomatoes.

My initial reaction to a stranger trying to touch me on the road is to hug my handbag which was hanging off my shoulder. Something told me that this man (and his entourage: three smiling men wearing dark sunglasses) was not after my bag. My first thoughts went to the tomatoes - I was hoping that his meaty palms would not squash them. Imagine the mess it would cause. Worse still, those tomatoes were t that moment irreplaceable. I couldn't imagine this man walking all the way back to the laϊki to buy them for me.

The encounter was a brief one. The tall man did not wait for me to put my bags down to shake his hand. He did not even look at me. Perhaps he had already sussed me out ('she's undecided'); maybe he thought I looked like a foreigner ('she's not a registered voter'); most likely, he could detect my ignorance ('she doesn't know me'). Whatever it was that he had on his mind, he continued to charge forth through the small group of people that had congregated on the square, touching everyone's hands in the time it takes you to blink once. It took me a little longer to move away from the crowd to the other side of the square...

... where I spotted the father of a classmate of my son's. He spotted me too, and called out to me: "You won't forget us, will you?" As I smiled back to him in acknowledgment, my mind still on the tomatoes, I wondered what he meant by that. I understood immediately, when I saw another tall man wearing a suit and tie. This time, I was not stopped by the suit-wearer, as it was obvious that his accomplice had done the job on his behalf. I continued on my way to the end of the road, where I was about to cross to the side where the bus station is...

... when an ex-neighbour from my early years of living in Hania nearly crashed into me. "Hey," he called out, "what about us?" He was accompanying, you guessed it, another tall suit-and-tie man, who again did not extend his hand to me, because, once again, his accomplice had done that for him.

As I walked back to my car, I wondered how seriously people took these hand-shakers. That was about their most active moment - walking among the crowds, mustering what little support they could from people whose faith in the political system has been shattered in the past four years.

What can we expect from people who wear suits and ties in a Mediterranean summer resort town like Hania? They don't create jobs - the producers of agricultural products and the owners of hotels create jobs, not mayoral candidates. They don't create community projects - in post-crisis Greece, this has happened from grass roots ventures by the people who suffered a great loss of income during the crisis. European money is allotted strictly, leaving little leeway for it to slip away unnoticed.

And what of the broken footpaths on the roads of the town? The empty plots of land overgrown with dry grasses? The derelict buildings that can no longer take any form of renovation and present both a hazard and an eyesore for the residents? The empty shops whose landlords refuse to lower the rentals so they can be filled? The roads crammed with tables and chairs for smokers to lounge about, making it difficult for the less mobile among us to move around? The suit-and-tie men will not do anything about these things, apart from allow them to remain. They will simply continue to build up their high-profile connections, and perhaps (just perhaps) "help themselves".

We belong to that class of people who have plodded on without expecting the state to care for us. We look out for each other, and remain within the law. We don't even know our rights adequately, which is why we don't expect promises to be kept by politicians. We don't live in a place where just about anyone can become the mayor if they want. It's not just anyone who can become mayor. The suit and tie hide a particular breed of Greek male, which is out of our class.

A general state of confusion and disbelief pervades among voters as the main political parties in Greece show their true colours. Golden Dawn is slowly being outlawed; the former PASOK is trying to be reborn under the new name of ELIA; newcomers to the scene lack an agenda. SYRIZA has promised free electricity to the poor and needy, while the tax department has discovered that people who aren't poor and needy often view themselves in this way through their application for a share of the 'social dividend' that New Democracy is handing out. Notable examples of applications for the social dividend were provided revealed by the centre-right Kathimerini:

- a family of 2 living in Kifissia (a 'posh' Athenian suburb) owning property valued at 3.9 million euro and 65,000 euro annual income;
- a family of 4 in the island of Mitilini with a 200 sq.m home (not including the balconies!), living expenses totalling 20,000 euro and a vehicle worth 35,000 euro;
- a family of 3 in Melissia (another posh Athenian suburb) with an annual income of 155,000 euro and a swimming pool included in the family home;
- a family of 4 in Thessaloniki with property valued at 800,000 euro and annual income of 135,000.

The above applications were all rejected. But some applications warrant further investigation:

- 6 people living in a working class suburb of Athens, who have all stated that they are handicapped by at least 67% (the percentage has to do with the way the Greek state defines mental and physical handicaps);
- a 26-year-old with a low income and low level of property ownership, who supposedly hosts 25 people in his own home, as stated in their tax declarations;
- a 70-year-old with a low income and low level of property ownership, who supposedly hosts 22 people in his own home, as stated in their tax declaration

Greece has always had a poor class, in the same way as any other country. But the meaning of being poor in one country may be quite different from that of another country: while it's true that Greeks have become impoverished, most still have a long way to go before they can truly be regarded as poor, in the meaning that they truly lack money and possessions. To date, 265,000 applications have been approved, with 334,000 rejected, while 210,000 have yet to be decided - and applications continue to be made.

I can't actually single out one party whose policies I fully agree with. But that's what it means to be a unique human being living harmoniously in a society made up of many individuals. We continue to uphold differences that make us unique, but we converge on most points. That's not quite happening yet in Greece. A few too many still think that a hand-shake will do the trick.

UPDATE: After writing this blog post, I read my morning papers, and found an a few interesting articles stating roughly the same things that I wrote about. Protagon asked 16 mayoral candidates the following questions:

1. Would you pass on the collection of rubbish to a private company?
2. Would you host a gay pride parade;
3. Would you build a mosque in your city?
4. Would you host a cremation unit in your city?
5. Are you for homosexual weddings?
6. Do you believe that Christ was resurrected?
7. Do you believe that state and religion should be separated?
8. If you could choose just one cultural event to host in your city, which would it be?
9. If you know there are gold deposits in the ground, would you allow mining?
10. Which city do you hold up as a role model for your community?

Only 5 replied. That's pretty good, I thought. Pre-crisis, none would have.Some candidates are selling the same policies, eg for the tiny island of Gavdos south of Crete, a candidate is promising 'electricity and water for all houses, and transparency in the council's finances'. Aren't these things αυτονόητα? meaning 'taken for granted'?  Before we move on to reforms, Nikos Dimos writes (in the same newspaper), we need to change our way of thinking.

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Bottleneck

Last Friday, I took the regular route to go home from work, via a bottleneck two-way carriage road where cars are sometimes parked on the footpath, hard against the buildings on the street, which create serious problems for traffic flow. Generally speaking, the locals' driving behaviour has become less aggressive and less arrogant as time goes by - there is even less honking than there used to be. But on this occassion, I was surprised at how arrogant it was.

The Koumbes crossroads - I was waiting for the traffic lights to turn green outside the white apartment buildings (you can see a black car there waiting at the traffic lights).

I approached the traffic lights, which were red, and stopped behind another car. The driver of the car in front of me could not stop directly at the traffic lights because a man had blocked the road by stopping right in front of the traffic lights, half on the footpath (which is practically non-existent, as there is a taverna located right on the corner, which brings out its tables and chairs there), half on the road. The driver of the parked car was, you guessed it, waiting for his BBQ chicken order. And right across the road, virtually next to me, sat another driver in her parked car. She was waiting for her son who was, yes, waiting for his souvlaki order. The lights turn green for the drivers on the intersecting road, and they start driving into the bottleneck. Along comes one car and waits to see when the taverna customers would budge. Nothing. Along comes another car, and he stops too. The son rushes out of the taverna and gets into the parked car mext to me, and the woman drives off. Finally, the road opens, and the cars that waited patiently - not even a single honk - drive off too. The other parked car remained where it was.

Koumbes, 100 years ago. The bottleneck road is on the right hand side of the Ottoman cenotaph in the above picture. The main road in the photo below leads from Hania to the Souda ferry port. 

I felt a bit of relief when the one car left because the traffic lights at the point where I was waiting don't stay green for too long, only just enough for 4-5 cars to pass. But because it is a bottleneck, and it leads onto a main arterial route, it gets busy. It was hot, and I had rolled down the driver's window. Just when I think that it's nearly time for the red light at my end to turn green, I get prepared to leave without too much delay. At this point (the light was still red), a SUV (the kind of car that will have a minimum €800 road tax bill for 2014, as well as a minimum €500 luxury tax added to it) turns into the road... very slowly... and then stops, in the middle of the road. Just like that. The woman driver was looking out of the driver's window which was rolled down, and she was smiling... she had just seen a good friend across the road... in the taverna, one of the waitresses, in fact... and then... the driver of the SUV... reverses... by just a metre or two... and stops again... still in the middle of the road... in order to be able to talk to her friend more directly. She continued to look out the window absentmindedly, smiling, laughing, looking as happy as a clam, and now, with that completely oblivious look on her face, she began... chatting... to the waitress on the other side of the street.

The parked car had stopped on the tiles in front of the open door. The pot plants are there to prevent cars from parkingon the tiles. I recall the building in its former state too as shown below. 

I could sense the lights about to change any minute now... so... I honked... continuously... with my hand firmly down on the horn. The woman in the SUV did not respond to the horn; she simply strained her head out of the window... in order to try to understand what her friend across the street was saying to her. The honking was interpreted as a nuisance, not as a signal to stop blocking the road. She hardly put it in her mind that it was intended for her; she simply carried on trying to have a conversation with her friend in the middle of the tight squeeze. I've been driving for 16 years in Hania. It's the first time I have ever used the horn in this way. I usually drive as if the fact that I do in fact hate driving does not bother me: patiently, defensively and above all, legally.

The driver of the SUV turned the corner (from where you see a white pick-up truck) into this road - she stopped right outside the door you see in the photo. This is located across the road from the taverna, which recently took over this former cafe and converted it for extra seating. The waiting staff walks back and forth with orders. 

And then the light turns green for me... and the SUV is still in the middle of the road... and I am stuck motionless behind the other car, who cannot drive across the junction because now not just one parked car in front of her, but another stopped car beside her had blocked the whole road... and no one seemed ot give a toss. There were now more cars behind me too, making the bottleneck even worse. So I kept honking (incessantly, without a single break), and suddenly... the miracle happens... and the driver of the SUV realises that she is in fact that dipstick on the road. So she looks away from her friend and begins to stare hard at the windscreen in front of her... and slowly... very slowly... gets her car going... at which point she passes my car.

A close up of the bottleneck on a day when the taverna caught fire...

"YOU FUCKING IDIOT!" I screamed out to her as she went by. (Another first for me: it's the first time I have cursed another driver on the road.) She continued staring in front of her. Perhaps she did not understand what I meant because I spoke in English, not Greek. You know what language dominates in a person's psyche when they swear or count (including the language they use to write shopping lists).

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Greek road tax (Τέλη κυκλοφορίας)

Even though I don't own much technology because I can't afford it, I do revere any new invention that makes life easier, and I like to use online systems to make utilities payments, something most Greeks still don't do because they fear that there is some kind of goblin at the invisible end of the system that will gobble up all their money. So you still see many people queueing at banks and post offices, paying bills. I only did that when I absolutely had to, eg road tax, which until last year used to involve a wait for the payment slip to be sent to your address, and then you had to queue up at the bank to pay it and get a sticker as proof of payment (or a trip to your local tax department offices, if you preferred to pay in arrears, like many sods did).

This year, the Greek government decided to do away with the sticker thing, and make road tax payments a mainly online transaction. If a Greek police officer stops you, s/he can check if you've paid your road tax by entering your car's licence plate into the system (presumably, they are equipped to do this). There is no other way to prove that you've paid road tax. Hence, it's up to the state to ensure that people have paid their dues.

Most foreigners will know that Greeks love their cars, not wanting to walk anywhere when they know they can drive (this hasn't changed much). Most people have at least two cars per household. In the past, it was easy to cheat the system: Once a system cheat paid for a road tax sticker, they then went back to the tax department and claimed they'd lost it. The officials would then issue the cheat with a new sticker, which they simply stuck onto their second car, ie, they would only pay road tax on the first car, and the unpaid road tax on the second car remained unchecked, because there was no one bothering to do this.  At least now, the state won't be paying for worthless paper.

You may say that people can still get away with paying road tax like they did before in Greece, because the state and police are both inefficient. True, but at least the state won't be running up the expenses it used to run up in the past. Now that Greece is (finally) uphauling tax payments to a more transparent cross-referenced system, there is less chance of being able to cheat. It's getting harder to be able to cheat, and the cheats are now being caught out.

Some people will inevitably remain tax evaders and others will simply pay less tax even when they are making a lot of money, but that happens everywhere, as was recently pointed out by some critics in the UK of Starbucks, Amazon and Google, who belong to the case of 'legal tax evasion' - they pay a very low rate of tax because of a loophole in the law when they report greater losses than profits. And there are people who simply 'put off' paying their dues until the law catches up with them, by which time they have declared themselves bankrupt. But these are extreme cases: in general, we are all καλά φακελομένοι these days...

*** *** ***

If you are an ex-pat and live in Greece but don't speak Greek, here is how you pay Greek road tax:

1. To pay without being registered in the online system, go to http://www.gsis.gr/
2. Click on 'χωρίς κωδικούς'.
3. Then click on 'EΙΣΟΔΟΣ' at the bottom right-hand corner.
4. That will get you to a page with two blanks: in the first, enter your personal tax number (ΑΦΜ); in the second, enter your licence plate number (Aριθμός Κυκλοφορίας).
5. Click 'ANAZΗΤΗΣΗ' - if your details are correct, you will see a message at the top of the boxes saying "Επιτυχής αναζήτηση. Πατήστε Εκτύπωση" (Successful search. Press Print).
6. Press 'ΕΚΤΥΠΩΣΗ'. This will create a PDF file with your name, personal tax number, the amount you owe and your car's licence plate number, as well as a payment code. 
7. Print this out and go to a bank to pay it - or simply use the e-banking services of your bank, like most people do in Western countries, using the payment code.

Greece may not have chosen the euro (it is more likely that the euro chose her), but the choice Greece is making now point to her Westernification. It's pretty much final - no more Ottoman excuses.

UPDATE 22/11/2012: Just heard from my cabbie husband that owners of uninsured vehicles will now be penalised through the tax department. One can assume that some digital vehicle registration ownership is now in place and is actually in use. No more excuses...

UPDATE 28/11/2012: Due to the fact that not all Greeks are connected online, it has been decided that you can pay it at a bank using just your personal tax number and car licence plate number (ie no need for an online printout). 

UPDATE 31/12/2012: And of course, there is always an extension granted in Greece for every tax bill you can think of. Every year, an extension is granted to car owners to pay their road tax, and in this case, it is up to one week. This is the reason why Greeks generally don't pay anything on time. Why should they, when they know they will be granted an extension to the expiry date?

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Tax evasion

It was never hard to be a tax evader in Greece - the path was paved quite clearly. In fact, as long as the concept exists, it's not hard to be a tax evader anywhere.

When I left NZ, I made sure I had no outstanding debts, which was quite easy for me, since I didn't have an overdraft on my bank account, I had no credit cards and I did not have any tax debts. My last NZ tax payment was made a few months after I left NZ permanently, after my previous year's revenue was examined. When I began living in Athens, I wanted to ensure that my officially legal tax status would continue. Every year, I'd file my tax forms like all Greeks, declaring what income I made from my job and I'd state my expenses, mainly through rental receipts, which never showed the full amount, because my landlord was a classic Greek property owner, who never declared the full amount that he was receiving from his tenant (he would only declare the amount that I would be taxed for).

At the time, I wasn't a property or vehicle owner. Because I was a full-time paid employee of a firm, I was viewed by the Greek tax department as a salaried employee whose taxes were taken out of her monthly salary; therefore I could not owe anything to the state through my job, because tax was already being paid via my employer (who was highly reputable and paid his employees both well and on time). But there was one area which I couldn't declare, and that was the income I was receiving from ιδιαίτερα, which literally translates to 'particulars', but which every Greek citizen knows to mean 'private lessons', a form of freelance teaching: one-to-one lessons, in a private home (either the teacher's or the student's), paid at a higher rate than other forms of teaching (eg at a frontistirio), with no receipt/invoice issued. This system is as old as the modern Greek education system, seen as a way to acquire the knowledge required to pass school examinations and diploma-based foreign language tests.

I couldn't declare the income generated from ιδιαίτερα, because I was a salaried employee: the law at the time stated that you could either be a salaried employee, or a freelance worker - not both. When I mentioned to my colleagues that this didn't make sense (I was making almost as much money from my freelance teaching as I was from my salaried work), they would always laugh and say: "You're not in NZ now - that's the way things are done here." Athens was too large and messy and impersonal for me to bother with finding out if there was a way to be a legal tax-paying hard-working citizen in Greece, while working in two similar (but in the eyes of state, dissimilar) kinds of jobs. I left that for when I decided to live in Crete.

Hania was (and generally still is) a small town, especially useful for getting bureaucratic business done quickly, especially in my case because I lived in the centre of town at the time. In my first winter here, I decided to visit the tax offices, all centralised for the whole province in one big building near the Agora, to find out if there was a way to declare all my earnings. I must have first gone to some kind of information desk (in mid-1990s Greece, there really was no such thing as an information desk in the state services), and stated my problem to the employee: how to legally declare freelance teaching income if I am also a salaried employee. His initial reaction was that there is no need to do so, if I am already receiving a salary (what everyone else was telling me).

I kept insisting: how would I declare my income as a freelance teacher if I weren't a salaried employee in the first place? He directed me to the office that issues receipt booklets to freelancers (of any kind, not just teaching). I explained what I wanted to do; this tax office employee also said the same thing as the previous employee. He then went on to expalin to me that if I wanted to ask for such a booklet, I'd have to fill in an application form, and pay an upfront tax fee for it, before I even issued a single receipt: something in the range of 30,000-50,000 drachmas if I remember correctly, which was about half an average salary at the time.

I explained that I would probably be making about that much a year from my freelance teaching, so this was not convenient for me. He reiterated that I didn't need to delcare this income (remember, we are in the state tax offices) because I was 'already paying tax' as a salaried employee. I kept insisting that there must be a way to declare this extra income (in retrospect, I think he thought I was completely nuts). He directed me to yet another office, where this time one woman was working alone in it. She said pretty much the same thing to me as did the previous two employees. The year was 1996.

Yes, most people who have heard this story before did tell me I was completely out of my mind, and I should leave well enough alone; they were the same people who told me I should never have declared the full rental incomes I was receiving after I became a property owner. I continued to declare my rent income in full, but I really could not declare my freelance teaching income, no matter what I did. So I just left at that. What else could I do, apart from become a menace to cosy convenience?

PS: I stopped doing ιδιαίτερα since I had children.


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Doing it like the Greeks

No one wants to spoil their holidays to Greece, especially travel agents on behalf of their customers. Now they too are learning good Greek tricks not to let 'national' strikes stuff up their itineraries. Speaking of which, 30,000 people marched in Athens against the austerity measures - hardly a national strike.

The cruise ship that calls every Friday into the port of Souda in Hania came yesterday instead, on the day of the 'national' strike, in order to avoid any possible problems, in a city that has gained a reputation in recent times for temporary outbreaks of chaos. It was supposed to call into Athens yesterday, but it simply changed the order of the destinations, making up for the lost day in Athens by going there today instead.

Kudos to the cruise organisers for thinking like ordinary Greek citizens during these times. Judging by the figures, Greeks are tired of strikes and always find ways to get their work done and to continue their lives without letting a few petty individuals (who believe they are killing themselves to fight for our rights) stuff things up for them. neither, me nor my husband, nor my kids' school teachers went on strike (the latter told the children that they had bills to pay).

The world is catching up with what is really happening in Greece. One only needs to look at the shambolic state of the EU/IMF/ECB troika, Greece's money lenders, who all agreed that Greece should get nothing if she doesn't conform to certain rules, nor will she be given anything until the troika's report comes out concerning her progress (due next month). Now, they are starting to disagree even among themselves as to what to do with Greece. The carrot-and-stick theory works too slowly for the desired veneer to show through quickly enough; they have now agreed under the table that it's best to always have ready a dish full of food beside a bowl of water, to avoid contagion knocking too close to their own quarters.

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Strike (Απεργία)

National strike action has been planned for today - but as usual, it's up to the individual to choose whether s/he strikes or not.

Last Monday, some trade unionists paid a visit to my workplace, disseminating their propaganda as they popped into each office, including mine.

ΠΑ.Μ.Ε - the acronym of this trade union is always a source of derision - you often hear people replying 'Έλα' at its mention.

Kalimera, the bright-eyed smiling young girl of no more than 25 years of age addressed me, we'd like to bring to your attention the forthcoming workers' strike on Wednesday, she explained in that very polite comradey voiceover that Greek αντιεξουσιαστές use when addressing strangers, placing a leaflet on my desk.

"Kalimera," I replied, relishing the thought that I would be giving them an unexpected earful, as I would deliberately disobey all the niceties of polite discussions concerning Greek politics. I had already gathered that they had been indoctrinated to the 'cause' and were completely brainwashed to the point that they cannot see any more of the forest further than the trees before their eyes. 

We hope you will rise to the challenge with us, the (equally young) man said, to beat the system that proposes εξαθλίωση, he continued, stressing the last word in a well-rehearsed manner.

"I don't think I will bother with striking, if that's what you mean," I replied, which I knew was a cue I was giving them to start off their communistic spiel.

But if we accept all these severely constrictive measures that the government is proposing, you do realise that it's like putting a noose round our neck, the girl pleaded.

"If you think I will live better with more money in my pocket, you are wrong," I answered. And before they gave me an answer, I continued: "Throughout my life, I have lived as though I have been in crisis mode; this economic crisis is nothing new to me, and I'm quite satisfied that I can live with less money."

The girl's eyes widened: But what can a young person do with €592 a month as a basic salary? They can't even pay the χαράτσια levied on them!

"If you make €592 a month, it is highly unlikely that you will have any property in your name to pay tax on, unless you inherited something you can't afford to maintain, right?" I smart-alecked back, trying not to make them run away too quickly because I really didn't want my guests to leave my office feeling unwanted and I really did want the conversation to continue a little while longer as I was enjoying it.

But we can't even talk about surviving on €592 a month! she exclaimed. If you take out rent, electricity, food and telephone bills, you won't even be able to afford petrol for your car!

"If you're making €592 a month, you shouldn't even be driving!" I spat back. "What's wrong with walking?" I asked her. "Or riding a bike?" I added, just in case she thought I was talking too exclusively.

Well, I never thought of Greece turning into something like China, the man replied, but this time, he did not have that dopey smile on his face which he had carried with him when he first entered my office.

"What's wrong with China, then?" I challenged him, "The Chinese are doing quite well for themselves, even if they all started off their own lives riding bicycles."

Well, even if you use bikes instead of cars, the girl butted in, if you have a family, €592 a month won't even be able to buy the basic necessities, like shoes and clothes. You need to show the economic terrorists that you will not tolerate impoverishment for much longer. At this point, she was sounding like a guidance counsellor, without realising how misguided she soudned herself.

I got up off my chair, and pointed to the jeans I was wearing (bought in December 2003 from Farmers, during the last time I went to New Zealand). "I can wear old clothes", I told them, "and I'm not embarassed at all to tell you I've had them mended, and you would't even have noticed, right?" I knew this would leave them a bit dumbfounded. "I really don't feel impoverished since I've always learnt to live frugally," I explained, "and this crisis isn't going to kill me, because I won't let it."

You can't really say much more to a person who replies in the way I did, so I realised that this was the cue to say our goodbyes. I could also sense their inexperience - they were probably still wondering which planet I came from. So I gave them a little help to buzz off quietly. "Come to think of it," I said, "if this is a national strike, I suppose it includes school teachers, doesn't it?" I asked them in my politest tone.

Yes, it does, although... their voices trailed off.

"Oh, I know what you mean," I picked up from where they left off. "Only if the teachers want to strike, right?" I maintained control over my voice, because I really did want to farewell these poor naive souls out of the office on friendly terms.

"Tell you what, if my kids' teachers are striking tomorrow, I will probably go on strike too," I lied. "But you probably won't see me carrying placards at the πλατεία," I added, "because I think I'll use the day to catch up on housework, if that's OK with you."

And then we all laughed together. I'm sure I had my fun, I hope they had theirs too. And we all lived happily ever after.

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Skool (Σχολιό)

A bright and early morning start to the day today, as schools in Greece officially open for the first day of the year (why they couldn't start on the first day of this week beats me).

Since June 15 when the spring term ended, until September 10 when the summer holidays end and the new school year begins the next day, I've been carting my children with me to my pleasant work environment. Although there are summer activities organised for children in the area, you have to pay for them. To be honest, I used to arrange for their time to be occupied in previous summers while I was at work, but the children are now older and they have grown out of these activities. Besides, there is little money available now for such extras (and a gross reduction in terms of subsidies available to working parents to enrol their children in such activities).

They really enjoy being among older people who talk to them in an interested way. They also enjoy being able to use the computers in the office, eating tasty snacks and playing with the resident animals - they have even given the cats names! They have also discussed their mother's workplace with other children in the neighbourhood, who are keen to come along too one day. They even bought their cousin in on one occasion. And the best thing of all: they've made new friends - I am not the only one bringing in my kids to work. To add a bit of excitement to their routine, I would sometimes take them in extra early so that they could enjoy breakfast with the exchange students; at any rate, they loved having lunch with the staff.

Finally, school starts and I can get away from child-minding during the week - you don't just dump your kids at your workplace, you keep your wits about you as to what they are doing. This makes school in Greece sound more like a babysitter's joint than anything educational, doesn't it? Well, that's what it seems to have been in the later years of primary school - after they learn the three R's in the first couple of grades, it's pretty much consolidation of what they have already learnt, plus a good load of learning off by heart the mythical history of their culture, απ' έξω as we say in Greek.

Greek school teachers are limited by the state as to what they teach, and how they teach it - the syllabus is set and so are the text books, so even if they wanted to be creative (and I truly believe that they cannot be, because this has to start well before your specialist tertiary studies) in their teaching, they will still have to get through the set work. They are also hindered by one more factor: parents. Most Greek parents have the idea that their children must be raised to learn in the same way that they themselves were educated; naturally, they have not seen any other system in place, hence, their narrow mindedness is based on their limited experiences. I personally believe that school is a waste of time if all you are learning is what is written in a book. But I am up against nearly the whole country. So my opinion doesn't count.

Coupled with the usual shit we hear (not enough teachers have been assigned, textbooks are not always printed on time, etc), there is no reason to hold out hope for much change this year, in the midst of a crisis. And let's not forget that strike action is a regular part of the teaching year. (If you work out how many holidays teachers in Greece have, you will be shocked to hear that they work only 7 months of the year.) According to the New Greek Order, teaching hours for permanent teaching staff will be increased this year as a cost-cutting measure to decrease the supplementary teaching staff - and we all know that in Greece, changes that make you do more than what you are used to doing while being paid less entail the well known consequences:

Strike action by primary school teachers is scheduled to take place tomorrow. As the first say of school will simply be a show of Greek bullshitooka (welcome, hallelujah and holy water during the αγιασμό), I wonder how those teachers can seriously consider themselves as carrying out a profession and not just a job. They are in it for the ease with which permanent jobs used to be obtainable in Greece's recent past, and they got the chance to study towards this profession simply by gaining an adequate number of points, and not necessarily because they chose the profession. If they were really professional about their work, they would not hold the children and their parents at ransom while they try to sort out their quibbles as soon as school term starts. What stopped them from striking during the last 12-13 weeks while they were being paid without working? Holidays, presumably.

Even if the schools never opened at all, I don't think it would matter much to most working parents in Greece. We went through a whole summer - nearly three months - of wondering what to do with our kids, that I don't think it will be difficult to work out what to do with them for a longer period of time. For those lucky people like myself who still have a job, I'm sure I will be able to work out another solution to the same problem in the winter.

For more education and children posts, click on the relevant links.

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Rewriting the history of the world (Ξαναράφοντας την ιστορία του κόσμου)

Just some food for thought today...

Have you tried googling Jacques Rogge's name recently? The second item in the list of search strings that use his name according to Google is 'jacques rogge olympics coming home'*; from his speech at the 2012 Olympics, we all know where that is, don't we? It's London, or more broadly put, Britain. Other popular search strings people use concerning Jacques Rogge (in the order given) are:

• jacques rogge speech (1st)
• jacques rogge olympics games home (3rd)
• jacques rogge olympics games (4th)
• jacques rogge olympics return home (5th)
• jacques rogge olympics opening speech (6th)
• jacques rogge greece (7th)
• jacques rogge olympics home (8th)
• jacques roggespeech london (9th)...

... before we finally get to any interest in the man himself: 'jacques rogge wiki' (10th). Clever rogue, eh?

Tayip Erdogan recently rewrote history in a similar way, about a month ago when he was speaking with the above-mentioned (clever) rogue: Turkish Minister Suat Kilic stated during a press release, in a bid to convince officials of the International Olympic Committee that Turkey should host Olympics in the future, that “Turkey is the birthplace of the Olympic flame and as a result, Mr Erdogan explained to Jacques Rogge that we want the Games back in our country. The IOC has the right to bring the Olympic flame back to its origin.”

And you thought it was in Greece, right? Well, it looks like you are wrong; you can try googling 'erdogan', and see what comes up...

By the way, the English language originated in Turkey, not Russia as was previously thought. That's how the BBC reports it, possibly because they think their readers are too ignorant to understand what Anatolia or the Pontic steppes might mean, which are usually immediately understood by Greeks because they were inhabited by Hellenes and Greek speakers in older times. The word-count of the article possibly did not allow for the addition of extra words like 'modern-day' in collocation with Turkey and Russia, so 'Turkey', not 'Russia' it is.

As we enter the second millenium, we realise how little we know and just how much there is to learn yet... 

*from my computers in Greece, which will of course yield different options from other countries.

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Cheating (Απάτη)

Happy Easter holidays to those who aren't Greek. 

We Greeks will have to wait for only one more week.

Today instead of roast, we're having fish to eat.

And not just any fish - bakaliaro forms the feast.

And for the next six days, it's lenten food, no meat.

But come the seventh day, and we'll be roasting sheep.

It's customary to break the fast of the Christian Orthodox church on Palm Sunday (Κυριακή των Βαΐων) with bakaliaro (salt cod). Theoretically, according to strict religious practice, you are not allowed to break the fast twice, so if you broke the fast with salt cod on the 25th of March, it's considered cheating to break it again today. Then again, cheating seems to be so normal a part of modern Greek life, so much so that it could be considered business as usual to do so anyway. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.



I was brought face to face with this conundrum last year, during the strikes, when Greek cab drivers were blocking the streets, preventing/delaying tourists from boarding their flights or ferries, and, generally speaking, causing a melee. During that time, someone had run up desperately to my husband when they saw him in his cab in the middle of the town, asking him to take them to the airport. My husband was driving his cab as a private vehicle. He explained to them that he couldn't take them anywhere because there was a strike on, and anyway, there were some other cabbies in the area, who would have seen him picking up passengers (they had luggage). He would have been labelled a strike breaker, which isn't really a big deal in Greece, as fewer and fewer people seem to be going on strike by choice, even though the global press makes Greek strikes (and protests, demonstrations, unrest, and all manner of disruption) sound like a nationwide event.  But in his colleagues' eyes, my busband would have been a strike-breaker, and in a profession that is often viewed as running according to underworld rules, this will have caused outrage.

Then someone contacted me through my blog, asking about taxi hire to take them from one side of the island to the other. They were Northern Europeans here on holiday, presumably warming up their bones, enjoying the warm Mediterranean sea, and eating good food for a couple of weeks, before they went back to their colder homeland. They had contacted me during the strikes, so I had to explain to them that my husband was striking. But the person complained that they had no one else to turn to and they didn't want to hire a car to drive themselves. 

Later with my husband, we discussed the whole issue from both sides. Business-wise, it felt wrong,  immoral, illegal, this, that and the other to work the cab on a paid basis when the cab is not supposed to be working. But at the end of the day, we decided that it would be wrong to say no, because someone genuinely needed a taxi, and while we were playing the morality police, other taxi drivers were using their private cars to drive tourists (and locals) to their destinations, while on the other hand, non-cabbies (unlicensed Greek, Albanian and Bulgarian individuals) were being caught red-handed doing the same thing. If we weren't going to be the ones to make money from these people, then someone else would have come along to take our place, and at our recommendation, as we would have suggested someone to them that we knew was actually breaking the strike secretly. Not all of us can afford to stay away from work on unpaid leave - one person I know actually bought a second-hand car just for this purpose, as he had no other vehicle than his cab, and he had a personal agreement with a hotel to handle their customers.

 

My husband felt quite inferior when the tourists who had been insisting on using his services mocked his private car - our at the time 11-year-old Hyundai Accent. One even asked if the car would make it as far as the southern side of the island (it has already made it three times round the country). But he also told me that they were amazed by his English skills, and astounded by the running commentary he gave them, like a private tourist guide, while driving them down to the south coast. He had reduced the price because the cab wasn't being used, and because we both felt it was wrong tax-wise since the money wasn't going to be declared. If these tourists had been in someone else's cab, it is unlikely that they would have got such service - most cabbies in Hania don't have such good English skills, and I doubt that they know their homeland so well. I think the tourists got much more than they bargained for in the end.

Our cheating the state of a few cents couldn't be helped. Worse still, if we hadn't cheated the state of a few cents, then someone else would have, and if we had been adamant that we would not help strangers in their hour of need, we would have been branded by them as inhospitable, small-minded, mean-spirited, professionally unethical. Damned if we did, damned if we didn't.

Looking at the wider picture, we are mere pawns in a system where the state has been cheating people for at least the last three decades, handing out fake disability pensions (the island of Zakinthos, for example, had 700 'blind' people where only 60 of them turned out to actually be blind), accepting bribes (by global companies like the German Siemens, to buy expensive machinery which could have been bought more cheaply from another company), filing fake health claims (a group of public health employees were paying out handsome sums to themselves for pregnancy leave - the unmarried childless daughter of one of them had received five maternity salary payments in successive years), buying diesel fuel for heating public buildings (instead of buying the cheaper heating fuel, so that it can be siphoned off as private vehicle fuel for the non-paying privileged), leaving electricity and telephone bills unpaid in ministries (while the public is threatened with disconnection if they don't pay their home bills with the property tax stamped on it), and, generally speaking, misusing public funds at every level (a classic case is in the medical sector where storage rooms full of medicine and surgical equipment had been left unused past its expiry dates, while hospitals around the country suffered from a severe shortage of basic items). Worse still, no one to date - absolutely no one - has ever been to prison for the crimes committed against the state, nor have they had to repay everything in full.

It feels good to know that all this cheating is now being discussed in the open, which means that the attitude towards it is changing. It gives greater hope that the cheating mentality that seems so inherent to the Greek identity - even to Greeks who believe that they have never cheated the state - can and will be changed. I believe it will - but not among my generation. Maybe they will not be able to cheat in the same way as they did before. According to a rhyming Greek proverb: Για να φας, δουλεύεις, για να έχεις, κλέβεις.  

Anyone can turn on you at any moment in spite of their admiration of you. We are all quick to profess our admiration for something, but the tables can be turned on us quite easily. It's a fitting tale for Palm Sunday - one minute they like you, the next minute they don't - until they need you.

*** *** ***

 

We're definitely cheating with our bakaliaro meal this year, but we cheat on most days, because we don't practice the fasting rules to the letter: "Obviously, many Orthodox do not keep the traditional rule. If you adopt it, beware of pride, and pay no attention to anyone's fast but your own. As one monastic put it, we must 'keep our eyes on our own plates.'"

I initially bought a large piece of bakaliaro (over 2 kilos) for the 25 March Sunday meal because it was being sold very cheaply, unfilleted at the supermarket, for €5.90/kg, at a time when the mass media was reporting that it was selling at the price of at least €7/kg (I saw filleted pieces of bakaliaro selling at €13/kg at a top-end supermarket). After removing the skin and every single bone in it (I must have lost no more than about 150-200g of the weight in the process), I cut it into small pieces, fried half in a light beer batter (no egg) and froze the remaining pieces so that they would be ready to cook today - all I need to do is to defrost it, make a batter and fry it. The beetroot was boiled the night before, and the skorthalia (garlic bread dip) was also prepared the day before to let the flavours blend.

Cooking can sometimes be mundane, but with a bit of preparedness we can still enjoy our traditions with less fuss.

The photos were taken on 25 March, where we visited a friend and ate a meal at his house by Kalamaki Beach.

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€170,000

I don't like helping my children with their homework because I don't find anything challenging about it. Perhaps that's why they sometimes ask for help: so that they can get a very mundane rote-learning task done more quickly. Besides, I think many of the exercises that they are asked to do as homework are not worth the paper they have been photocopied on. But I've discussed this before already, and I know that creativity is lacking in the classroom, but it's not me that's going to change the education system - as we say in Greek: "ένας κούκος δεν φέρνει την άνοιξη".

My main reason for not helping them with their homework is because I am often shocked to see the shallow mentality exhibited in the level of the exercises. Only a Greek could have written them.



The following exercise from my 10-year-old daughter's recent homework worksheet took up a quarter of an A4 page:

"Mr Nikos wants to divide his property equally among his three daughters. Ioanna got an apartment worth €170,000, Katerina got a bedsit (γκαρσονιέρα) and €40,000 while Zoe got a shop and €35,000. What is the value of the bedsit and the shop?"

We understand that Ioanna is probably the oldest daughter, so she gets the best house - once she gets married, of course. Until then, Mr Nikos will continue to rent it out, probably without declaring the extra income to the state. As each successive daughter came along, she got the next best cut (another house, but not quite as big as her older sister's). But when the houses ran out, the youngest daughter had to be happy with a shop, which isn't a residential property, but she can rent it out (again, once she marries, because she won't need it before then) and use the money to pay her own rent (nothing needs to be declared - one rent cancels out the other one).

Actually, there's no reason why she can't live in the shop: if she rents it out to gypsies, they will do just that. During the day, they will use it to sell rugs, deck furniture, and pots for plants, most of which will be laid out on the road, cluttering the footpath, while in the evening, they will sleep in it (presumably on one of the rugs they were selling, using the furniture to store their belongings, and the upturned pots to set a gas element on for cooking).

It's not actually stated whether Mr Nikos has any sons. Maybe he does, but he isn't leaving property to them. Girls get their προίκα meted out before boys. It's highly unlikely that they would be left out of the division of family's assets. Mr Nikos may not give them buildings, but he has probably written land in their name, maybe an olive grove. Traditionally, they get the πατρικό, but only with γονική παροχή, so that Mr Nikos doesn't have to contemplate homelessness and the kids can't throw their old man out of the house before he dies. Of course, if he hasn't any sons but he does have olive groves, then he'll be thinking about how to divide those between the daughters too, but he probably can't value them monetarily because they're as old as the hills they occupy, and they've never been valued. Most likely they have been registered, because Mr Nikos wouldn't want to have missed out on the former CAP subsidies, but they have never been considered as being for sale, since ancestral land is often treated like a family heirloom among Greeks.

Location is also an important consideration: this plays a significant role in how much property tax each house will be charged with annually. This has probably not been considered in the equation, because, so far, no one who has not paid their property tax has had their electricity cut off from the building, nor have they had their assets confiscated or frozen.

Property tax - half the country has paid it, the other refuse to pay it.

Mr Nikos is probably a sly Greek, like the majority of his compatriots. He knows that his children will be just as sly. This is why Mr Nikos won't immediately pass over the apartment to Ioanna, even when she gets married. If Ioanna's husband already owns a property where the couple can continue to multiply and prosper, or the happy couple decides that they don;t want to have children (seeing what their parents had to put up with), then Nr Nikos might just hang on to the property, just in case Ioanna (or her husband) decides to sell the apartment that he had worked so hard to earn. The sale of one house doesn't usually bring on the purchase of another house: it is usually used to fund expensive cars, exotic holidays and designer accessories (Greek women tend to overdo the Burberry label).

This would not necessarily be a problem if Mr Nikos had only one daughter, but how do you think Katerina, who inherits the bedsit, might feel if she was pregnant with twins when she got married, and her future husband was an απένταρο? Wouldn't it have been better if the apartment had been written in Katerina's name instead? Don't think Katerina is a do-gooder and would show willingness to swap the deal with her sister. She would probably remind her younger sibling: "Αυτό σου έγραψε η μοίρα σου."
  
Even if Mr Nikos kept a hold over the property until he was damn sure that his good intentions would not be abused by his privileged daughters, it is difficult to predict what the property values of each building would be in the future. The extra money that he had given to Katerina and Zoe may not have been necessary. For example: if Ioanna's apartment was somewhere close to Plateia Koumoundourou, not only will she not be able to sell it easily, or for a large price, but it is most likely that she won't even want to live in it. She will be enviably eyeing Katerina's desirable γκαρσονιέρα in mid-town Hania.

Whether Mr Nikos has paid the due taxes on the properties is completely unknown. Presumably, the extra cash can help out his daughters in the case where the taxman comes knocking at their door after they bury their dad. But

A non-financial issue that might cause a bit of a stir is if Mr Nikos finds out that one of his daughters is a lesbian. That's not really part of the maths problem, I guess, unless he was dishing out his property and money according to what he expected each daughter to provide for each grandchild that it was hoped by Mr Nikos that he would accrue. In this case, if Ioanna is the lesbian, Mr Nikos has a problem on his hands. On the other hand, adoption is always available these days. The child most likely won't be Greek-born, but if his other daughters are barren, uninterested in begetting children or lesbians like their older daughter, no doubt that adopted child will be a cherished one.

No doubt, the mathematics exercise was written (in drachmas) sometime in the 1970s, when there were more jobs available, and Greeks were saving very hard to ensure that their children did not have the same fate as them. When the euro came along, the appropriate currency conversion was made, but not the mental conversion: the issue of what Greeks have and how they divide it among their children (and never with the state) is still of paramount importance to them.

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The fish ran away with the spoon (Τρα λα λα)

The children recently told me that their English teacher taught them some English nursery rhymes.

"We learnt Yankee Doodle," my son said.

"We learnt Hey Diddle Diddle," my daughter said.

My children have the same English teacher at school, but they are in different class groups, so the teacher is obviously presenting different material to maintain the distinction in the levels. 

"Great!" I said, full of glee, on hearing that my kids had learnt something I was taught at school, albeit at a younger age. "So who's going to tell me their nursery rhyme first?" My daughter started:

"Hey diddle, diddle,the cat and the fiddle, the girl jumped over the moon..."

Beg your pardon, I thought.

"... the little boy laughed to see such fun, and the fish ran away with the spoon."

"Are you sure it was fish, dear?" I asked, hesitantly, not wanting to offend either her (for not paying attention) or her teacher (for the obvious mistakes). I felt a little like an internet search engine: "Did you mean: the dish ran away with the spoon?"

"No, it's definitely fish, mum," she said confidently. "Dishes don't have legs."

When things don't make so much sense to you, you can give up trying to understand them, or you can try to make some sense out of them: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. At least Yankee Doodle went to town in the same way I knew him: riding on a pony with a feather in his hat; he called it Macaroni.

I cannot help but feel endeared to this new version of 'Hey diddle diddle'; it is just another classic case of Greeks trying to make sense of the chaos that surrounds them, which they seem to have plenty of.

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There is money (Λεφτά υπάρχουν)

I am the epitome of Mrs Frugal. I believe that I have always been frugal, but now, it is of crucial importance to be even more frugal, even if that sounds like a misnomer. Only three months ago, I never needed a top-up. My purse always managed to fill up with money the day after it emptied. I've always been quite proud of this: it means that I know how to live within my means.

But for the past three months, this wasn't possible in the technical sense. Many times, I have had not much more than a 10-euro note in my purse, which I have kept there for ages - at least three weeks, not breaking it unless it was absolutely necessary. I've had to ask my husband to pay for expenses that I normally took care of. For example, I stopped buying bread, and reminded him to pick up a loaf (always a cash purchase) while he was on the road in the cab. I had to ask him for money for the children's after-school activities. I only spent money at the supermarket because they always accept credit cards. I could have taken cash out of an ATM, but that money is actually used to pay (automatically, without having to queue at cashiers) two landlines, two mobile phone accounts, two electricity bills, all the supermarket shopping, all my car petrol (€1.80/litre from the cheapest garage in Hania) and all the newly introduced taxes. If I took money out of that account, I would run a real risk of emptying it and not have enough to pay my regular bills.

 We haven't turned this on for over two months.

You must be wondering what my husband's been doing with all his money while his wife is paying all the bills. I noticed some fresh pork in the fridge, which he recently bought from a small-scale farmer. I recently helped him order a few spare parts for the taxi from eBay. When his mother ran out of heating fuel for her house (as an 88-year-old pensioner, she can't be expected to use a wood fire), he filled the fuel deposit tank for her, which cost him a mere nine-hundred-and-fifty-four euro (€954 in digits). It is clear that neither of us needs to keep a tab on each other's spending. We were made for each other.

We were not surprised by the very recent news that caused a furore last week, until yesterday's climax with the publication of the name: a Greek member of Parliament (with Cretan origins) had apparently taken a million euro out of the country (a completely legal transaction) last March, at a time when Greeks were being urged to keep their money in the country (which had been downgraded by S&P et alia to junk status). The issue that arose with this kind of transaction was not its legality (it was legal), not even its origin (which still remains at doubt), of the use it was made (now being disputed), but its morality: who was that VIP in Greek society that had so much money to spare? did that person support the safety of the Greek banking system? did that person vote for the austerity measures that will make the Greek people suffer for the next decade (only a projection: most people believe it will take two decades for the Greek economy to pick up in any way), including the lowering of the minimum wage by 22%? (And the answer to the last question is: YES.)

Dora Dora the explorer, had a million bucks leftover

She don't need no fish and chips, husband just bought one whole ship

She was waiting just like us, the millionaire to be announced

And when she heard her name be said, she must have felt like dropping dead

"Oh no, you know, it can't be mine, it's in another person's name"

He bought it back from the US, to his homeland, μητέρα Grèce

But it was useless over here, so it became an Englander

"Whatever you may say of me, it's legal tender," so said she

Dora Dora the explorer, had a million bucks leftover...

Greeks believe that politicians are wealthy lying cheats; whether this is true or not, this is how Greeks have come to view their politicians nowadays. It is no coincidence that a PASOK MP was booed on Clean Monday at a taverna by opposers of the austerity measures, while some others took away the dishes from his table, or that another politician, while being interviewed by the local press (he was smiling while saying something to the likes of 'it's a happy day for all of us, we Greeks love our traditions, χρόνια πολλά με υγεία' etc) was being beaten at the same time with a walking stick by an old-age pensioner. Politicians in Greece are now a hated breed; compare this to just two years ago, when they were revered for favoritising citizens who promised them their ballot.

Dora Bakoyianis is the leader of the political party of her own creation, after splitting from the party that her father, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, once led (Nea Dimokratia), because she was not voted in as its leader after Konstantinos Karamanlis (nephew of another leader of Nea Dimokratia, also named Konstantinos Karamanlis) stepped down. She didn't like the new leader Antonis Samaras, who turned voters against her father, and hence cost the party in a previous election. She has a brother who is a member of Parliament (with Nea Dimokratia - he didn't join her in her new party, and neither did her father) who was implicated in the Siemens bribes-for-toys scandals, and a son (he didn't follow his mother either) , the present mayor of a Greek town close to the hometown of her late first husband, Pavlos Bakoyianis. Nepotism all the way...

Yesterday, I received a telephone call from the tenant of a property that I own: an old house in Hania. It was bought 90% with inheritance money, where a caretaker had been appointed in case both my parents had died. This was to ensure that when I finally got it into my hands, the money would be spent the way my parents wanted. Every Greek person's dream is to own their own house, and this is what my parents wanted for their children too. They planned things that way.

Chinese proverb: 富不過三代(富不过三代) (fu bu guo san dai)

• Literally: Wealth does not pass three generations.
• Meaning: It's rare that the wealth of a family can last for three generations (the 2nd may see the value of hard work, but the 3rd forgets it). 
• Explanation: In business, the first generation works extremely hard, so that the second generation reaps the benefits. By the time the third generation arrives, the wealth is squandered.

Dangghit had not paid me any rent (€250 a month) for the last three months, hence my empty purse. Dangghit had a job as a cleaner at a small supermarket, but lost it during the crisis. Her husband paints houses, but there is little call for this work now. She called me one day, crying that she did not have the money to pay me the rent. I told her not to worry, we are all in the same boat, and I would rather that she lived in my house (where the family of four - five if you include aging parents that come from Albania to stay with them from time to time) and looked after it (like they had been doing for the last five years while they have been living there), than for my house to look empty, and be prone to vandals or squatters.

When I bought the house, my widowed father was still alive. I had searched for and chosen it myself, but he wanted to approve it first. When he saw it, he fell in love with it. He did not notice the peeling paint on the walls, or the tiny bathroom with just an ancient toilet (pull-the-chain type) and shower tap in it, or the brick-built storage areas, under the chipped marble sink, with no doors on them. neither did he notice the rotting fence sectioning off the property from the others on the street.

"Buy it," he said, "and I'll come and live in it." He didn't end up doing this because he had become involved with the local village slut, who preferred a cosy apartment in the town centre, with all the modern comforts. He may have come from a poor Greek village, but the thirty years he had spent living in New Zealand obviously bestowed on him a certain amount of common sense (despite his transgressions with a divorcee 22 years his junior, a mother of two adult and one primary-school daughters), much more than his never-travelled, never-been-abroad compatriots, who were curious to see who had just bought the dumpster.

The 'dumpster' was a small but compact detached house, with patches of garden flanking it, and a yard behind it. Apart from the two bedrooms, medium living room, large separate kitchen and tiny toilet, it also had a basement and a shed suitable as a storage area. It had been built in 1960, by an urban Hanioti who married a village Haniotissa many years his junior. He left her a childless widow early in life; she returned to the village. The house was rented out to an old couple whose children had grown up. Eventually, they were too old to live on their own and they moved into their children's home. The owner decided that she was too old to start looking for new tenants; she decided to sell the house.

The classic 60s urban house design in Greece look very much like my house. The house had been built on what was then the outskirts of the town of Hania. It was built very hurriedly because the area was at the time not within the town planning area, so the construction work was done without a permission. The builders would work at night, not during the day (out of fear of being caught). The signs of their hurried work are still apparent in the brickwork. I had the outdoor stucco taken down as it was cracked, allowing moisture to seep into the walls and damp to build up during the winter. The bricks had been laid side by side with no cement in between them (this is visible in the top photo). This was done to speed up the work. The only cement was layer on top of each row of bricks in order to make the next layer stick on the top.

An interested buyer came along, a priest, looking to buy a house for his daughter who was getting married. The house was being sold for 18 million drachma*. Over a six-month period, the priest managed to bargain it down to 16 million drachma, which the aged owner agreed to. Then the priest decided to offer an even more reduced price (500,000 drachma less than the agreed one). The woman was fed up; she revoked the sale. That's when I came along. Neither my father nor I bargained the price. When we agreed on the 16 million drachma price tag, the woman put up the price to 16,400,000. We showed our annoyance - but we still agreed to pay the difference as long as she made up her mind about the price. In the end, we bought the property**.

"Oh, my God, Mary (hinting at my at-the-time unmarriedness)," the neighbours exclaimed in horror when they walked in uninvited after seeing the door open one day when we were checking out our new purchase. "Could you actually live here?" they said, raising their palms to their cheeks, as their eyes popped out of their sockets when they saw the condition of the house. After spending 1.5 million drachma legalising the property (it had never been registered at the council), I also spent 3.5 million drachma doing it up, and indeed, I did end up living in it for two years, until my wedding day, when I was whisked away to my husband's (bigger, more modern and more recently built) house.

I was most surprised to hear from Dangghit. I had specifically asked her not to call me if it concerned the rent. There was nothing we could do about it, and we are all in the same boat. She thanked me for my patience and told me that she had recently found a job (looking after a yiayia, 6 hours a day, for €350 a month), and would I please come round to collect the rent (€200 - she had decreased it herself).

It felt good to have some spare cash in my purse, after a quarter of a year living off a virtually empty one. But what strikes me now, as I look at this money in amazement every time I open my purse, is how easily I got used to not having money. This 'extra' money is clearly not absolutely necessary for me or my family. I feel guilty for having it in my possession. After learning to live off the smell of an oily rag for so long, I don't know what to do with it. My bills have been paid and I already have what I need: but in times of austerity, it's difficult to think about having money for things I want instead. I always thought I was an average Greek; the Greek information media has made me believe that I'm a very privileged person, some kind of exception to the rule.


When I think of that noble Greek politician, and her husband's extra cash, and what he did with it, and how few people will benefit from it, I can't help feeling that this Greek politician has set an example for the rest of the country. Instead of showing some kind of solidarity towards the plight of her stricken nation by keeping money in the Greek banking system (and what is €1 million when €64 billion took flight within the last two years, mainly to UK banks, not Swiss accounts, as was previously thought), her money (for what is his is hers too, or at least that's what I've been taught to believe) was used to buy a new toy. In a sense, she is saying: The country may be on its way to getting fucked, but I don't need get fucked along with it. I must remember that when the next new tax is introduced.

It was Apollo who said Γνώθι Σ' αυτόν. Greeks live up to their ancient ancestors' expectations: they know themselves well. They don't need to listen to others make jokes about them; they do it quite well themselves. To non-Greeks, the jokes sound racist, but this is because non-Greeks don;t realise that they are actually jokes created within Greece. let me bring you into the conversation:
Greece - the only African nation with white people. No, that's not the one in this case.
Greece - the last Soviet communist country. Not exactly, but I'm getting warmer.
Greece - a poor country full of rich people. Greek dirty laundry - it fits the bill exactly. 

The €1 million transaction is not the only one made by members of the Greek Parliament (or their family members); apparently it is one of many such cases. What is disappointing about the accusation is that it wasn't a case of any brave or noble person trying to restore public confidence in the broken political system: as a friend of mine explained, it's a matter of settling old scores between crooks. The accuser is no better than the accused. Λεφτά υπάρχουν; Ναι, λεφτά υπάρχουν.

*In 2001, €1 = 340.75 drachma. If/When (depending on your point of view) Greece goes back to the drachma, €1 may cost up to 1000 drachma.
** The poor priest, I was told by the neighbours, would pass by the house every now and then before I moved into it, lamenting his decision.

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