Greece: After the Junta Page 4

The following month another EU related matter manifested the growing erosion of another old cornerstone of Greek national identity when the Orthodox Church failed in its attack on the new national identity cards that did not state the religion of the bearer. Under EU regulations, the old cards were illegal, and though the ND sponsored a bill allowing for optional statement of religion on the cards, it was defeated in parliament.

The scales tipped again in 2004, when ND overturned the socialist cart, and ND’s Konstandinos Karamanlis was elected as prime minister.

Responsibility for readiness for the upcoming Olympic Games in August was taken over by ND, the preparations marked by a stereotypically Greek type of chaos, with noone sure that all necessary preparations would be pulled off in time.

Things went well in the end, though the cost was daunting. The euro, quite predictably, brought a rising cost of living, with food costs steadily rising, the price of bread double that of 2001, and milk now typically selling at 1.40 euros per liter; rents and utility can also seen to be quite visibly increasing.

An interesting letter to the editor sent to the Odyssey magazine (an English language glossy that deals with Greek issues, both inside and outside of Greece) a couple of years ago, gives a good picture of some of the tensions between the old and new Greece of the early 21st century.

The author of the letter, an expatriate Greek who was paying a visit every seven years or so to his native country, complained quite bitterly in the letter that Greece was no longer as it had been. Civil marriages had replaced the old Orthodox Church weddings, cappuccinos were being drunk by everyone instead of the old ‘Greek’ coffee (which was known widely in Greece as ‘Turkish coffee’ until the 1970’s, when tensions over Cyprus gave it a new name), and so forth.

The editor of the magazine (and Englishman), responded by verbally raking the embittered man over the coals, basically telling him to wake up to modern reality. But Greece is still a mixed bag. On the one hand many of these ‘modern ways’ seen everywhere, since every villager has relatives in Athens or Thessaloniki, or grew up there and then came back to the village, and television is everywhere, with female newscasters dressed like models, soap operas watched by villagers, pornography easy to find on some stations anywhere, automobile and mobile phone commercials mirroring the everpresent obsession with these items. In many places, perhaps most, everyone has a mobile phone, including teenagers, who are seen sending text messages or talking on them whether at the bus stop, on the bus or metro, or on the beach.

On the other hand, there are still those who grow fodder for their animals and slaughter them themselves, villagers who make their own cheese, wine, raki (also called tsipouro), and who grow most of their own vegetables, tend and harvest their own olives, cook on wood fires, mend their clothes rather than throwing them away, and who stay at home most of the time.

Some of the people who still do these things also rent out a room or hotel built for the tourist trade, or serve the food they produce in their own tavernas, earning the extra money needed to live in an upwardly mobile world, but also enabling them to stay in the villages and out in the countryside or hinterland.

After Junta Page One | Two | Three | Four