Click on the banner to read the full series
Opera Mundi spent nine days in Athens, the Greek capital, to verify the effects of the unprecedented crisis that took over the country. According to official figures, one-fourth of the country’s inhabitants are unemployed. Amongst the young population, the number surpasses 50%. On the streets, there is clear evidence that an upheaval is about to happen.
Saturday, November 3rd
Arrival, pessimism, and neo-Nazism
The flight from London to Athens through Aegean Airlines, a Greek company, flies with less than a third of its occupancy, even though there are discount prices and the weather in Greece is good. Athens would be a common destination for retired Europeans in this time of the year, in search for beaches and heat. But it looks like the news of the crisis scared the tourists away.
After three hours, I disembark in the fancy Eleftherios Venizelos airport, built for the 2004 Olympics. It is sparkling and abandoned. I try to buy a subway ticket and there’s only one ticket vendor working — and behind him there’s a strike notice.
Public transport in Athens won´t work on November 6th and 7th, when the parliament votes on another austerity package proposed by the Troika (the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank). At the train stop, there’s an (ironic?) Johnny Walker’s ad: “Keep Walking Greece.”
The ticket to downtown costs 8 euros. I get down off at the Syntagma station, downtown, and take the train to Metaxourgio, in the northeast. The subway stations are pretty wide and remind me of the ones in Sao Paulo. It won´t take me very long to realize that the city’s inhabitants also look like the people from Sao Paulo, in their unconstrained way of living in chaos.
It is already nighttime, and I leave my backpack at the room I rented, in the house of a Romanian woman and a Greek man. He works for the Greek Air Force. Smiling, but displeased, he resumed the crisis with a Greek saying: Κάθε πέρσυ και καλύτερα. (Meaning: “Each year that went by was better than the next”. To make it simple, it is the Greek version of “Nothing is ever so bad that it can’t get worse”).
I leave and walk down the dark streets. There is a lot of graffiti on the walls and heavy traffic.
It’s like Athens screams with its eyes. At quiet places that smell of kebabs, retired men watch the soccer game on TV, an Olympics match.
The Acropolis shines in the heights, imposing, and indicates the way to Plake, the lively touristic center. By the Parthenon, African immigrants sell purses, cigarettes and fluorescent helicopters. The Greeks say no to the Africans offers, as they parade in family, walking past a street dog, white and fat, that is waiting for some leftovers. Downhill, the suburban train invades the landscape, colorful, full of graffiti.
Walking ten minutes in slow steps I get to Syntagma Square, which seems to be weirdly calm for a place where the police have confronted protesters in the past. It takes me another five minutes to get the Panepistimiou (university) station, which leads me to Athens Academy, full of anti-fascist graffiti.
In a smoking tent of Arabian food, Nermeen, a girl from Syria who escaped the civil war and now fears the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn party, gives away free falafels to say that immigrants are good-hearted people. Her friend, Ahmed, with his baby in a stroller, smiles. They offer, enthusiastically, to show me Athens through an immigrant’s point of view. When I’m going back home, for the first time I see a large piece of graffiti of the meander, the symbol of the Golden Dawn.
Sunday, November 4th
Discrimination and inhumanity
Nermeen was already waiting for me, excited, at the door of the Kato Patisia station, in the north of Athens. It’s an immigrant area and the Golden Dawn is all over the place. Ahmed leaves the door of his car open for us to join him. The sun is strong on the windshield, and he takes us in 40 minutes to Piraeus, in the south of Athens, by the sea. A calm place to balance the chaotic life in the city.
Drinking frappé coffees, the cold and mixed Greek coffees, Nermeen and Ahmed blow off steam. He doesn´t understand why people give him scornful looks on the street, he doesn´t get the prejudice against Muslims. He’s sorry that the country’s businesses are so bad, that there are neo-Nazis (“they are barbarians”) and that life is not getting any better. He has only one objective: to scape Greece at any cost. They are both trying to make this happen as soon as possible.
We decide to go to the fair of Piraeus, in the 30ºC degrees heat, which is covered by mats full of second hand products. The Greek are selling their personal goods for peanuts to have some income. Ahmed checks his pockets to look for his wallet and jokes that I should do the same. The street is crowded, and half an hour later, it becomes unbearable with people pushing you around endlessly.
We spend 30 more minutes in the car, and Ahmed leaves us at Monastiraki station, in downtown Athens. Nermeen, who had been talking a lot so far, is very quiet now. She got a message from her boyfriend saying that a friend of theirs was beaten up for not carrying his documents – a symptom of the times of intolerance in Greece. Discouraged, she prefers to say good-bye.
Monday, November 5th
Students and strike
The day before the strike I go visit the National Technical University of Athens, where the country’s student’s rebellions were concentrated in the 1970’s and are concentrated now. The building symbolizes the resistance against the military dictatorship of Coronel Georgios Papadopoulos, which lasted seven years (1967-1974), and now shelters anti-austerity left-wing movements. The area is considered “police free”, an anarchic bubble in the middle of the chaotic city, but nevertheless is always under surveillance.
At the entrance on Patission Avenue, you’re taken aback. It takes just a glance at the walls. The Technical University also screams. There’s not a single corner on the building that is not full of graffiti containing messages glorifying anarchy, anti-fascism and, more recently, against the Troika. The lack of care is seen on the thick bush in front of the university, on the rotten gate.
Three people that sell mobile plans, dressed in orange shirts, try to catch the attention of the students that walk from one place to the other. One of them, very happy to meet a Brazilian, is proud to show me on his cell the picture he took with the center-forward Giovanni, a former Santos player and former Olympiacos player, the team which he is a fan of. “He’s my idol”, he says.
The buildings at the National Technical University only house the famous architecture course. Four people there are making a poster of the PAME (All-Workers Militant Front), a union connected to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). They are so suspicions that I can´t even introduce myself. They only say that the strike starts tomorrow and give me the cold shoulder.
Without me noticing it, Giorgos, an architecture student, is stopped by the mobile sellers, who call me. “This one will talk to you”, they say, smiling.
In one hour, Giorgos talks about his fondness of Greece, tells me what he thinks, in what he believes, the story of his country and his future plans: “I want to leave the country”. He is another person who doesn’t want to stay. Business is bad; for architects it’s even worse.
In Exarchia, the student’s neighborhood, the walls don´t stop talking. There is tons of graffiti of people wearing gas masks, signs that people are tired of crying from tear gas. The atmosphere, nevertheless, is relaxed in the square that has the name of the neighborhood. Dogs come and go. It smells of coffee, kebabs and hot dogs.
It’s much calmer there than on the central office of the Journalists Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers on Akadimias Avenue, next do Syntagma Square. I get there around 6pm, when a tense meeting about the right to strike is happening. They want to go on strike for the next 48 hours to protest against cuts in their health plans.
“Cross our arms or report the crisis?”, asks Seva Kammer, a retired journalist of Mega TV, the largest network in the country. “This is our doubt”. Sotiris Fomatopoulos, who works for state network ERT, has no doubts and defends that the strike must be maintained. “It’s our only way out”, she says.
After discussing for two hours, the Greek journalists decide to empty their editorial rooms. The following day, they would walk alongside the unions of the other categories to protest against the Troika.
Tuesday, November 6th
200 thousand on the streets and the Athens “city of crack”
Today is first day of the general strike. The sun is strong and there’s no one on the street, on a Tuesday. There’s neither public transportation, nor taxis. I walk to Omonia Square, PAME’s meeting point. In a few minutes, without expecting it, I see that the Athens streets that lead to the square are absolutely filled by three groups of protesters that carry the same flag.
Aleka Papariga, general secretary of KKE, gave a quick interview to the local press asking for an “organized disobedience”, to Troika. Next, the protesters walk towards the Syntagma Square, to protest in front of the Greek parliament. There were children, Bangladesh immigrants, and elderly people.
In the front line, Young people holding poles wrapped in red cloths and wearing motorcycle helmets. They are the multitude’s “defenders”, in case there’s a confrontation with the police.
The protest is peaceful. Soon, I’m told that it is (relatively) small. It can’t be compared to the one that’s about to happen tomorrow, when the unions of both the public and private sectors join the march.
At Mitropoleos street, a commercial center of the city, the restaurants work as usual. The Greek are buying their frappés and I also order one.
On the way back home through Athina Avenue is already growing dark and I see beggars with rotten legs sleeping on the sidewalk. A few meters from there, a man takes off his boot and injects heroin in his foot. Men talk in plazas that have no lighting, where the walls have symbols of the Golden Dawn.
The way I walked, I found out later, is Athens’ no man’s land. It´s similar to Sao Paulo’s “cracolândia” or “city of crack”, (an area in Sao Paulo known for its history of intense drug trafficking and prostitution), but where other drugs instead of crack reign. A dark scenario that is eroding the country. The decadence of the health system is explicit.
Wednesday, November 7th
Tear gas and storm
I’m not sure if I’m tense or if tension is in the air. The Greek Parliament votes today on the Troika’s austerity package and it can be learned from the past that the confrontation among protesters and the police is unavoidable. Nevertheless, hesitant, I end up not buying the gas mask.
The gas mask costs between 18 and 150 euros. Only the one that costs 150 euros really protects you against the enormous amount of tear gas that will be thrown, covering the whole city in a fog.
There are obvious expectations for the day. The first is related to the packages vote. It must be approved by midnight, never mind the dissidence of the deputies of the Democratic Left, which is part of the coalition government. The second is related to the weather, which could turn into a problem. A storm is supposed to fall in the middle of the protests and wet the 200 thousand people on the streets.
Nothing is happening in Exarchia, where I walk rapidly by to register the graffiti on the walls, or in the Journalists Union, where a meeting is supposed to happen only at 7pm to start the protest. Meanwhile, the police are strategically taking positions in every corner of the center of Athens. The massive presence shows that any step outside the line, if there is one, will be repressed and, in a domino effect, will demobilize the manifestation.
It’s 5pm and Syntagma Square if full. The mass is composed by members of Syriza, an anti-austerity left-wing coalition, by members of Antarsya, a group on the left of Syriza, and also by anarchist and anti-fascist groups, PAME blocks, and unions representing public and private sectors. There are at least two hundred thousand people. At least.
Little before 6pm, rain falls heavily on Syntagma Square and some explosions are heard on the right side of the Greek parliament. The glare caused by Molotov cocktails give a yellow tint to the five-star building of the Hotel Grand Bretagne. The tear gas covers the plaza. More than that, it covers the whole city. It’s necessary to beat a retreat to avoid being trampled.
I’m five hundred meters away from Syntagma Square in a cafeteria, waiting for the storm to stop. The journalists and activists inform on Twitter that there’s no one in front of the Parliament anymore. There’s only a line of police officers, which cleared the whole area. Entire families are hiding their faces from the gas, that even from far away attacks the eyes and the nose.
There’s nothing to do but to go back home and watch the end of the poll. On TV, the leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, makes a speech. At the cafeteria, nobody pays attention. Soon, they change the channel and start watching the Barcelona match. On Sunday, the country’s budget for 2013 will be voted and they will confirm the cuts.
Thursday, November 8th
Packaged approved
My clothes still smell like tear gas. The strike is over, melancholic, and the stores reopen quietly. I use the day to study the approval of the Troika’s package and to hear repercussions. I schedule an interview for the following day with Hala, who works at the reception center for immigrants of the Athens city hall.
Friday, November 9th
Going away is the only way
I meet Hala in the square in front of Keramikos subway station, close the trendy (and empty) bars of Gazi. Smiling at first, she begins to tell me everything she saw and heard in her last 22 years in Athens. The narrative describes a happy population that fell on pessimism and ended up in distemper.
She comes from Syria, speaks Greek, Arabic, and English fluently. Hala only thinks about leaving Greece. But first she is making sure to leave clear her revolt against the rise of neo-Nazism and the recent cases of violence against immigrants.
When I’m still in Gazi I meet B, a street artist who will explain to me the graffiti scene on the city. We go around Metaxourgio and I see gigantic works of osgemeos, Brazilian artists from Sao Paulo. There are only few spots on Athens that have no graffiti. The tour was worth every second.
Saturday, November 10th
Anarchy and resistance
The Greek parliament votes tomorrow the country’s budget for 2013. The majority of members, who are pro-austerity, will probably call the shots and include on the budget the cuts imposed by the Troika.
Some manifestations occur through the day. Employees that work for Athens city hall make a demonstration on Mataxourgio Square. Public transport works, but it’s unpredictable. The city walks bouncing off.
The thing that catches my attention now is the number of apartments and offices to rent in downtown Athens, with dozens of red and yellow signs that say ενοικιαζεται (“for rent”). It’s a sign that the commercial building are, all in all, empty.
Another importer symptom: the huge amount of pledge houses (ενεχυρα). It’s one of the only businesses that are moving forward in Athens – maybe along with the gas masks sales.
I walk towards Exarchia. The Nosotros Bar, on Temistocleos Street, is an occupation and an anarchist bunker. I talk for a while with Olsa, a Thessaloniki student, while her friends take care of anti-fascist campaigns. Some of them were already beaten up a lot by the police, but they’ve also thrown a lot of Molotov cocktails.
Sunday, November 11th
Farewell
I watch Ormina arriving early to work, happy because she still has a job. An immigrant from Armenia, she works at the Kassinas a cafeteria in Mexourgio, with a smile that contrasts with the sadness of the clients. I sit and talk to her for an hour, and her telling of her life details made my day better.
A few blocks from there, close to Larissa station, the travel agencies were already noticing the rise on demand. Albanese and Armenian are leaving the country, hopeless and afraid of the Golden Dawn. One of the party’s offices, by the way, is right in front of the station, covered with Greek flags and symbols of the country’s purity.
When I get to the Acropolis for a last-minute visit, I find out that it’s about to close. And it’s only 3pm on a sunny Sunday. “Lack of staff” says an employee. Discouraged tourists go down the stairs. I ask him why and he changes de subject.
At the beautiful Acropolis Museum, which is still open, the opening video of the expo tells that the friezes of the Parthenon were “violently” withdrawn by the English Lord Elgin, on the beginning of the 19th century. They treat the subject as a theft of the Greek patrimony.
At night, the new budget is approved. In front of the Parliament, a small group of protesters knock down the grid that separates the street and the government building. The police make a barricade and stay still. At 8pm the protestors begin to leave. I say goodbye to Syntagma Square, look behind and see disappointment in the protesters’ face. On the little streets of downtown life goes on as usual. The boy plays his accordion and a few families dine on restaurants that serve simple food.
But the worse is yet to come. That’s what the Greek always say.
NULL
NULL