They make their presence felt daily through front page statements and pronouncements:
Greece goes bust; Greece will return to the drachma; Greece is bound to resign from the EU till things balance out in the Euro zone; 15 state members in the euro zone secretly agreed to expel Greece; Germany will return to the mark and Italy to the lira. Who are those semi divine creatures who can see so clearly into the future? Do they ever doubt? If not how are they doing with friends and family? I mean it must feel great for one to be infallible; but for the other may be it feels less so. Imagine that your father were an infallible one- my-my you are really in deep trouble. Or a friend with whom you are having lunch. You obviously have no say on the wine you are going to drink. Next to this category of people - whom I would call “bankruptcy clairvoyants” there is another one gracing our mornings and evenings, the “bullies”.Name calling, finger showing snideness:
"You are lazy. You owe us money. Sell your islands. Sell the Parthenon. Beggars cannot be choosers".
To whom such behavior comes easy and natural? I have difficulty in seeing who would treat like that one single person, let alone a nation, 3,5 million households. What else is he capable of doing with so much hatred and resentment? Thank God we Greeks are resilient to self blame. If I know anything about us this is how I interpret the average Greek’s feelings:
"Regret that we allowed debt to rise so high. Regret that we personally share such responsibility. Helplessness, which is an unusual feeling for a Greek, but justifiable, now that several things are out of our control".
Still for all Greeks one thing is certain, the effort needs to continue, we need to fight on. The country is enormously rich. If one were to recreate Greece from scratch one would need trillions and trillions. So our book value is enormous. We, like so many others, mismanaged. We have to pay for that. But our prospects are excellent. Between now and those prospects people will suffer a lot. But very few of us will suffer half as much as our parents. So we know we can endure. We know we shall manage to bring our house in order. There are three thousand years of Greek history telling us:
“do not give in. Get going. You will make it”.
A New York ceremonial courtroom was graciously provided for an ancient Athens court session to take place with a 2.410 years’ time lap. On the 12th of May 2011 the ancient philosopher Socrates was retried and this time acquitted.
Greek film director and producer Nicos Koundouros gives us the chronologically first account of Thanassis Vengos: they both were exiled on the island of Makronissos after the end of the Greek civil war in 1949.
In January of this year Harris Ikonomopoulos, President of the British Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and Faye Leoussi, of Leoussis Advertising had a meeting with a double agenda
People from abroad who really mean well for Greece and the Greeks use the paradigm of “illness and cure” to symbolize our situation.
Greeks are notorious for laying great emphasis on family ties. “My big Greek fat wedding” gives a humorous first impression of what we are talking about
Zagori is an area of great natural beauty and unique architecture in the Pindus Mountains in Epirus in Northwestern Greece. The area is of about 1.000 square kilometers and contains 46 villages. Zagoria villages is called by Greeks “Zagorochoria” meaning the villages behind the mountain.
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In 1989, Professor of Byzantine Studies, Helen Ahrweiler is appointed Chairman of the Cultural Centre Pompidou in Paris