greece, again

I have made 2 trips here in 2011. On the first trip, in March, the mood was already one of gloom and doom, but that had turned positively apocalyptic by the time I returned in late June…but still I don’t have the impression of crisis.

I go out to a beachfront café with a bunch of Greek professionals slightly younger than myself. The café it totally full. The 3 people I speak to complain bitterly about their falling living standards and the tax rate that is supposedly increasing whilst their salaries are not. Yet they pay 25% tax (in the UK I pay, 40%, which is not the highest bracket), and in their late 20s they all own their homes (I rent with a friend).

I take a road trip from Athens to a provincial city called Halkida. The roads in Greece are better than in England, and so is the metro. The infrastructure in general is new and well designed. Over the weekend I go to nightclubs and bars, some we have to leave after a few minutes because they were simply too full and it was impossible to move or order anything. Everyone seems to have a drink in their hands, and most are smoking. Everyone is well dressed. At lunchtime the restaurants are full, the food is excellent and the portions are massive. Many families not only own houses, but weekend homes as well. I observed this on my last trip, but it was easy then to think that maybe these conditions only existed in a certain refined and affluent world in a small pocket of Athens. But on this trip I travel to random provincial places, and it is the same everywhere. Greeks seem used to the good life, a better quality of life than most people can afford in Northern Europe. Suffering is always comparative, people see themselves as suffering when they suddenly have a worse deal than they were used to, or they have less than those around them, which is why the young Greeks in the beach bar were complaining so bitterly, despite having a lifestyle that I with a much higher salary can only dream of. When I tried to suggest that maybe their lifestyle was unsustainable and they might have to get used to less (and live like the rest of us) they got very upset and said that their lifestyle was reflective of Greek culture and it was not the place of “northerners” to force them to change their way of life (their civilisation, upon which all the rest of European culture is based!) but this isn’t true, Greeks didnt always live this way, as my friends older parents are at pains to point out. They didn’t always have high wages and big cars, even my friends admit to having been “poorer” growing up. The increased wages started appearing just as my generation started working, so I guess it seemed like it was all the result of hard work, and not endless government borrowing. As I look around at the people lounging in beachside bars at 3 am on a week night, I seriously wish I had spent the last decade in Greece. I am sure it was all fun while it lasted.