Work

I've been thinking a lot the moralistic edge to the rhetoric outside of Greece about the Greek economic crisis that suggests that Greeks are lazy and therefore the punishing austerity measures are deserved.  While obviously there are problems that needed solving within Greece, the charge of laziness makes no sense to me.  Life here seems extraordinarily hard, and seems to have always been so.  I'm always struck when we travel in Greece whether it is to the islands or the mainland by how mountainous this country is -- 80% mountains.  That means there is little arable land and people have always made the best use of whatever fertile land there is, and even most marginal land with rows of olive trees on the mountainside, or man-made terraces, or grazing flocks of sheep and goats that they use for most of their dairy. 

The yellowish/brown lines behind the town are the terraced fields cut into the hillside.

I'm also struck when I live here (you don't often see it as a tourist) how hard life is even now on these mountains.  The roads are not built for cars so unless you have a garage, driving and parking is harder work than walking, and walking is hard work, too.  I don't drive in Athens, but there is a garage under our building, so if we had a car, we would not have to fight for a street spot.  But we would have to get it in the garage.  This isn't our garage driveway, but it is VERY typical.

Steeply sloped AND curved.

I walk a mile to the grocery store and back and it is uphill both ways... in all seriousness as there is a small peak between us and the grocery store.  We carry our groceries the half mile back.  Same for the fruit market... one day I had a small watermelon and two canteloupes and I felt no need to go to the gym that day! The trip up to the college is over a mile and is a serious uphill climb at the end.  I average 15,000 steps which is about 7 miles a day.  The least I walk is about 6000 steps, and the most has been 24,000.  I see the old women who do the shopping (and then the all day cooking that most famous Greek dishes require) and while they have granny carts that they pull instead of carrying, they are surely in better shape than most of our senior citizens.

Granny cart.  I wish I had one.  I carry all mine with my arms.

Two ladies parked them near me and went to say hello to a neighbor.

The shopkeepers in the Plaka and other touristy areas are all small business owners who work the long hours that small business owners work worldwide.  There is a wonderful coffee delivery service that demonstrates the difficulties of a small shop -- you can't close to get your coffee.  So there is a deliveryman who comes with a (china!) cup to you, and you return the cup later.

Coffee delivery service ... not to-go cups, either, but real china!

And on Hydra, another touristy place, the work is hard.  We go there because it is a traditional island that has three motorized vehicles:  fire truck/ambulance and garbage trucks.  But how many tourists think about what life was like in all of Greece only a couple of generations ago, and what it is like now in these places we love to visit?

We love to see them carry our bags to the hotels

But they also do some of the work of the island.

And so do the men.  He's carrying some kind of rocks up the mountainside, looks like some kind of building material.

How old is this guy?  These guys are carrying things from ships in the port to wherever they need to go in the town, which is arrayed up the mountainside.

Everything seems harder here.  The houses are squeezed in however they can.  How were they built?  I remember working with a construction firm in Jacksonville that was complaining about doing renovations on old houses because it is so much easier for them to build on a fresh site than to have to fit things to whatever is existing.  But here?  The ones built on the good land have layers of archaeological ruins and red tape to get through and they are levered into spaces between other existing buildings of various periods.  Those on the less good land are perched on mountainsides - if no one has built there yet, it is for a reason.  The bureaucracy is more Byzantine than in the US, even our public sector.  Whatever frustrations we feel about post offices or tax systems are multiplied exponentially here. The educational system is less student-centered even than our high-stakes testing system.  Greek kids have to learn at least a second language, and well enough to speak it.  Even low-education jobs like taxi drivers and waiters have to know at least English if not a smattering of other languages.  There is much less emphasis on prepared foods, so it seems like people have to cook more (but of course it all tastes wonderful, so at least there is a reward).  And small businesses are hard to run.  Many are run by families for decades (not so much choice about what you want to be when you grow up for some), and others don't survive a few years.

Our favorite ice cream shop is closed, as is the souvlaki place next door.  These are right on the plateia and should get good business.

Enoikiazetai means "for rent." Many of these places have been for rent since we started coming in 2011.

Another closed souvlaki place (Gazi)

I've walked by this sign several times a week for three summers, but only this time did I realize what it was saying: about the Metro:  a difficult deed completed.  Indeed.

Life in Greece has never been easy for anyone but tourists, and though with more cars and more bubble-affluence, it may have seemed easier here for awhile, even without the crisis, life in an American suburb is much easier and more comfortable.  I've spent very little times enjoying vacation on the islands, and very little time being a pure tourist, so my experience of Greece has always been that of struggle, not of hedonism.  That is actually why I love Greece, I think, because it has been hard work figuring out how to live here, and then living here.  The amount of effort I have put in to understanding this very different culture has created a sense of intimacy and a very strong sense of value.