Hold Your Horses...

This is a bit of a rant, OK. Sorry, but I think the following is quite important...

It makes me mad, it really does. Didn't we all learn geography at school? Here we are in a country which has more surface area of sea and islands than it does land and yet still, when a street riot or disturbance takes place in one or two places, like Athens or Thessalonika, we here get communications from the UK from people who seem to have the impression that the whole country is burning, or in melt-down.

Please guys, whoever you are, hold your horses and get your facts straight. Yes, there are serious economic problems here that are causing a degree of social unrest, but I also know of people who either live in or travel to Athens regularly and never see any of it. Normal life goes on, however difficult to make ends meet many may be finding it.

Get out your map of Greece and pay attention to the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of islands here. I live on one of them. Yes, for sure the locals in the kafeneons of a morning are wringing their hands and furrowing their brows about it all, but a country slowly burning to a cinder? I don't think so. I know that there are many people in this country who are making potential visitors nervous because of their behaviour on a few city streets, but that's all it amounts to. Even in the area of downtown Athens these disturbances are very localised, however bad they may look on TV.


So, if you're in two minds about coming to Greece for a holiday, please don't be. Yes, OK, it's not as cheap to eat out here as it used to be, it's not so cheap to fill up you hire car with fuel. But the same old culture, climate, cuisine, clear blue sea, music and dancing is here as it always was. I've had occasion to say all that before, but in view of what I'm hearing, it bears repeating. Greece really needs the tourist right now. These brainless thugs who are getting their fifteen minutes of glory on the TV news aren't worried about what impression they're creating, but I'll tell you what; I'd still rather be amongst that lot than those who rioted in the UK last year.


Here's a way to illustrate why your summer holiday here in Greece will still be as lovely as it ever was (barring the odd strike I'll concede): Driving home in the dark late on Monday night from a friend's home in Kalathos, I was struck by a couple of things that one would never see these days in the UK. 

ONE: On the forecourt of the local filling station in Kalathos, which was be-darkened, as it was closed for the night, was an illuminated canned drink and choccy snack machine. You know the type, a huge glass window in the front with all those coily things stuffed with bars of chocolate and the like, plus a few cans of cola etc. It was so bright that I could see it clearly from the other side of the road as I drove past. Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but would such a machine last five minutes in such an exposed place on any road in the UK after dark without getting its glass smashed and all the fare inside half-inched?


TWO: Just a little further on a junction up the road is the Flevaris supermarket, next to which is (as is common here in Greece, of course) a cafe, called Zucchero. Outside the cafe, which was also closed up for the night, was a nice selection of tables and chairs, those dark raffia-type ones which adorn a lot of cafes these days. They were in fact newly installed only last year, when the cafe experienced a make-over. Now would you take odds on that furniture, were it in the UK, not having walked long since and now be adorning some back garden patio on a scruffy housing estate not too far away?


I rest my case. In fact, with views like this one below to still be enjoyed, whatever the economic woes the country's experiencing, if I were in the UK I'd be paying my deposit even now!

Above: Kiotari, looking toward the Pefkos/Lindos headland, February 17th 2012