Greek Crisis - Voices of the People

Definition CRISIS: "crisis (from the Greek κρίσις - krisis; plural: "crises""

That´s what comes up when you google "crisis".  The people that coined the word are now also the people that are immediately associated with crisis when someone says anything about Greece.

Irony of fate?

http://ilianaivanova.eu/en/blog/

Yes, we´ve all heard about how bad the situation was in Greece, about street wars, burning cars, angry people not only in Greece but in Germany as well, tax payers who are not too happy about their money being spent by the government to save another country from collapsing, and haha, no, Germany is not trying to undermine and slowly and partially own Greece (at least not that I know of).

But I don´t want to talk about world politics and I find it hard to wrap my head around stuff like economical happenings, so I won´t talk about that either.
What I can talk about is how people perceive this in the country itself.

Do you know the image of the White Elephant?
It´s a subject that´s somehow in the room, lingering, subtly present but yet unspoken.
That´s what the Crisis is. It´s always there, someone will always refer to it at this or that point in a conversation, it´s just THERE, ALWAYS.
I don´t know how Greece was before the Crisis, but from what I heard and saw, it has changed the nation quite fundamentally.

But that´s how I see it. Tassos (annotation: name changed) for example, a greek 30-something-year-old is living with his girlfriend in his family´s property in smalltown Navplio, disagrees. He says it´s more like in a war zone, you know, some regions are worse off than others. The inner city is in some parts, while the rest remains unchanged.
He is one of those people who is quite well off, having studied law and literature, working a couple of jobs, and when the situation became worse in Athens, he left his job there on free will (a publishing house, and since no bills could be paid anymore since roundabout 2004 the athmosphere wasn´t the best appearently).
For him, it´s the people´s fault, they "got greedy", wanting too much, taking loans they couldn´t pay back anymore after the Crisis hit and wages dropped. Now, he bails people out of jail who piled up debts without being able to pay them back.
According to him, in Athens everything has degraded about 20 % since 2004: 20 % more unemployment,
20 % more crime, 20 % less everything.

There´s the other side as well: Pablos (23) was a photographer for a small business in Athens, you know, before. Then he got kicked out, and he´s one of the guys who threw the stones in banks when young people protested in Athens. He says, it´s the banks fault.
Now he lives in his family property as well, smoking weed, playing the guitar and getting a job sometime, who knows, but right now it´s not worth it - people "work their asses off for minimal wage, 10 hours a day six days a week and all you earn is about 300 €." That´s not really an option, is it?

It seems like the people are quite estranged from the state itself.
I have an old guide book to Greece which my grandparents gave to me before I left, and even back in 1996 it states that "the state is a thing that takes but doesn´t give much back", a thing I´ve heard in 2013 again. Regarding social services and public transport and stuff, nothing much is done.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02383/Greece_2383869b.jpg

Dimitros is now working in an archive, before, he worked for the Railway. But the situation got unbearable, even though he had a secure position as a carriage connecter and changer, working hours increased, holidays became scarse and other people around him were fired.
Living in Thessaloniki, Greece´s second biggest city, he says that "even in the posh centre of the city, you see closed shops." Lots of businesses disappeared, things changed.


This is not a whole overview of the situation, not even a tiny attempt to grasp the whole thing. It is merely my humble attempt to tell you what I´ve heard.
And, no, I didn´t get any German jokes, no resentment, nothing. I had a great time in this still lovely country. But still, I would have liked to get to know the before, not only the after. For the sake of those great people I met, I wish that the after becomes good, better, best.
So the Greek will once again be known for their cultural heritage, not for their problematic economy.