Tourism is usually linked to pleasure and escape; at times it is also linked to memory, and an interest in history. It is undoubted that in Greece the most popular site, in relationship to its history, is the Acropolis. It symbolizes the direct link of the country to the ancient Athenian civilization and its mesmerizing grandeur in the fields of politics, arts, philosophy and sciences. However, one might inquire whether people in Greece are emotionally linked to this past; if it symbolizes more a time forever lost than an active inspiration, and if more gravity should be given to modern and contemporary Greek history. It might come as a surprise but there is certainly much more than the Acropolis to Greece, and this uncharted history could also become good business.

For example, these days, one would imagine the Greeks as remembering the first Allied land victory of the Second World War; which is nothing else but the Greek defeat of the Italian invasion. It might look like a small event, but for a country which at the time was hardly a military power, this was a terrific achievement. One has only to recall that during the first days of April 1941, fifteen of the twenty one Greek divisions were deployed against the Italians; the other six divisions were ready to face a German attack on the Metaxas Line. Greece received help only from British Commonwealth troops, moved from Libya by orders of Churchill.

As a result, the British and the Greeks stood alone against the Axis, and formed the original core of what would then become the Allies. It is also interesting to remember that Greek and British forces were overwhelmed only by the intervention of the Germans, who on the 6th of April came to the aid of Italy and invaded Greece through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

Sadly enough, few tourists are made aware of this fact in Greece; on the contrary, other countries take pride in events of this kind, and they promote the image of their nation through them. This is the case of Belgium, which has played an important role in the European history over the last two-hundred years; and has organized memory sites that cover Wallonia, the setting for Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, and various sites of decisive battles of WWI and WW II – as in the case of the Bastogne Historical Centre that highlights the importance of this battle on the outcome of WW II, and is currently being refurbished until March 2013.

Outside Greece, memorials that commemorate events with a sense of regret are considered profoundly interesting as well. Not only they open the past to the curious tourist, as they often narrate of genocides perpetrated by former regimes and try to recount the historical circumstances that permitted such an event to take place, but they also work as a warning to future generations.

Due to this trend, the category of ‘unemployable’ is no longer linked to the old idea of ‘reserve army of labour’ ala Marx, but to a massive amount of people who are gradually dropping ‘out of history’; they simply can not keep up with the demands of the First World capitalism, which is mostly based on expertise and speed.

This capitalism’s functionality is based on a vast immaterial labour, which play its role on a structural base, and produce results out of communication and co-operation. The immaterial production is at its core bio-political and symbolic; and as biopolitics refer to the application of life sciences’ theories toward the scientific understanding of human political behaviour, one can argue that in the end the whole system is accepted as serving nothing else but its own survival.

Each government following this system works through regulative mechanisms that are able to account for aleatory and ‘unpredictable’ phenomena on a global scale, by determining and keeping events within an acceptable average. Therefore, bio-political decisions regulate on a global scale; they are ‘power to make live.[...] regulate mortality’, as Foucault says.

Serving this logic, the new implemented social mechanisms – sustained by the information revolution – not only have deleted the old model of large scale centralized power, but have also privatized valuable knowledge. Competence is what counts; and in a model in which the old fashion entrepreneur that owns his company is a rarity, since companies get acquired by banks, the interpersonal relationships that once played an important role are now a memory. As the general intellect is in the hands of those people able to have access to knowledge, the large majority of the work-force is in itself highly expendable, and superfluous as an individual.

Commenting on this situation, Slavoj Žižek states that “in this new ideal type of capitalism, the old bourgeoisie, rendered non-functional, is refunctionalised as salaried management” ( in ‘The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie’). This is the most striking quality of the times we live in, “the bourgeoisie in the classic sense […] tends to disappear: capitalists reappear as a subset of salaried workers, as managers who are qualified to earn more by virtue of their competence.” – still Slavoj Žižek. The rest of the middle class workers slide towards the bottom of the working pyramid, at risk of becoming proletariat.

In most cases, the people protesting on the roads today live on the wages offered to the lower levels of the salaried bourgeoisie; and they see in political protest the only way to avoid joining the proletariat. In this arena, old logics of political struggle are put into action, totally missing their aims due to their obsolete nature, lack of vision, and indecision in facing the sad truth: the proletariat has acquired the status of a ‘structurally unemployable’ mass and is the bourgeoisie’s primary source of fear not because of its power, but because no bourgeois clerk wishes to become a proletarian worker.

“It would be unpredictable what such event would provoke in the population’s psychic” told me a professor in economics; I could only answer that the results of such a process are already visible in Greece, and elsewhere: uncertainty, loss of hope, deprivation, disintegration, riots, violence, looting, chaos.

Interesting enough, Žižek admits that Greece is in itself a different case. From his point of view: “in the last decades, a new salaried bourgeoisie (especially in the over-extended state administration) was created thanks to EU financial help, and the protests were motivated in large part by the threat of an end to this.”

As the divide deepens, and on the opposite end of the unemployable stands an irrationally high remunerated bank manager, one can’t but asks herself which is the way to correct a system, capitalism, that seems to be out of control; and certainly not able to regulate itself so to bring benefit to society as a whole.

Some words come to mind and might be worthy of reflection: ‘For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question.’ (Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality 1: The will to knowledge)

Mr. Novak has spent the last week in the village of Litochoro, on the eastern slopes of Mount Olympus. The guest of a SEO member (Hellenic Mountaineering Club), he lodged for a couple of nights in the “Kakkalos” Refuge, located at the eastern margin of the Plateau of Muses at an altitude of 2650m. The idea was to spend a couple of days where not many would be, and clear their minds on what is happening in Greece.

Going up there, one has to know what to expect and how to deal with it. On Olympus, temperatures can go down to –20C, and avalanche danger is permanent. Fearless, Miha and Nikos didn’t stop in front of possible hypothermia; didn’t stop due to the daunting high they had to climb to. They just didn’t give up; both mountaineers, one grew up in Slovenia, the other under the ‘Gods’ home’, they check the weather conditions and headed for the refuge.

There, in the thin air, above the noise of people’s lives, thinking was easier; and a long term perspective came as a given. In Miha’s words: “One can’t but see that things shall pass, no matter what.”

Back in Athens, Mr. Novak called me up, invited me over. In front of a beaming fire, in his warm and quiet flat, he started to spread photos on a low table. The contrast with the general atmosphere ruling in Greece was tragic: down here the rage and fear of announced hard times, up there the cold distance of Nature looking down on people without to care. In a way, it gave me a new way to look at things.

Mr. Novak felt relief at the news that the Greek government reached an agreement, and seemed to be able to keep Greece in the European union. Now, he is waiting to see the next move; things are vague, again.

“We will make it, remember people survived worse things” he utters, sober. Then he vanishes in the kitchen.

When Miha came back he held in his hands two glasses of handmade Cviček wine. Cviček is one of the most unique wines in Slovenia. It has a light red color with a ruby cast, a fruity aromas, with an emphasis on raspberry, cherry and red currant. It is one of the most enjoyable wines to have in front of a fire, while philosophizing. Janez Vajkard Valvasor, the Slovenian historian who mentioned this wine in his work ‘The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola’ knew it well: “Marwein, the jolly wine of the Dolenjska region”, know stood in front of me.

“We made it in Slovenia, they will make it in Greece; the secret is to learn to export the best you have, and let the world know about it, buy it… like this wine.” He winked, smiled.

It is true. The name Marwein was preserved until the end of the 18th century, but its revival came at the turn of the 19th century, when it acquired a new name, Cviček. Back then the wine was perfected and was exported; but it was not until Slovenia’s independence in 1991, that this wine made it to the wine lists of fine Paris restaurants. Why could the Greeks not do the same with their marvelous local products?

Mr. Novak continues: “The refuge we lodged in, it’s named after Christos Kakkalos. Together with Boissonnas and  Bovy, he made the first recorded ascent to Olympus highest peak Mytikas,  in 1913. Do you know that Fred Boissonnas loved Cviček?”

Only then I realized that Miha, in his peculiar way, was trying to let me see how time shall pass and things will be better.

Showing me his photos; the glacier, the snow, the refuge, and dawn with a view of Mount Athos, Miha continued to remind me that the Greeks are philosophers but most of all merchants, fighter, and spirited entrepreneur; they just need to remember it, and embrace it.

Looking at Mount Olympus, the almost permanent cloud that covers its peaks, my heart filled with awe and admiration. I followed the voice of this architect from Ljubljana, who maintains a flat in Athens, and has not intention to leave the country, and felt grateful to be there.

He went on, narrated how “The history of Mount Olympus is unsteady as the one of Greece. During the invasion in 1941, the Greek army along with Australian and New Zealand units fought on it against the Germans and Italians. Later, the Greek Resistance found a nestling place there…”

Soon enough it was dinnertime, and some of Mr. Novak’s friends came along. We were there, again a mix of Greeks and foreigners, again determined to remain somehow in the country, no matter what, and fight.

Somebody would say that the destiny of a director, as the one of a warrior, is best fulfilled if one dies on a shooting. In this Angelopoulos’ story is closed by a tragedy that takes an involuntary heroic flavour. Nevertheless, there is nothing mythical in this accident and Greece is in shock. Filmmakers in Athens, and all over Europe, have been discussing the event since last night. We are all saddened by the circumstances of this death; by the unfair way this man lost his life.

Passing by, nobody would have imagined it was the set of a shooting. There was not much of a sign of such a happening taking place. Then, two ambulances; then, many people, police, and a sudden immobility of the traffic. One can’t but ponder on this fact: if only such an immobility belonged to the security measures enforced to make the shooting safe, Theo would be still with us.

But of course, only afterwards nothing moved on that road; people were forced to wait, unaware of whose accident that was. And so, in this, the famous director became just a man on the asphalt; no popularity, no fame. His accident was not different to those of many another men who found themselves in the same circumstances. Reached the hospital, he died.

The news was spread by a short interruption of the broadcasts minutes before midnight. Then, disbelief started to grow inside many of us, sadness inhabited our movements, the impossibility to rationalize the happening became a deep rage. Finally, we simply hated the way things were done on that road, on that job. The King of Greek cinema is dead. It happened to him and it could have been each of us on any shootings, in any nights on the job. This is what is left once the grief makes room to thoughts; hopefully such a loss will guide us in preventing others, in stopping them from happening out of the same mistakes.

As for the director, let me spend a few words on his life and work.

Angelopoulos studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, but after his military service went to Paris, attended the Sorbonne and soon dropped out to study film at the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies. Film critic for left-wing journal Dimokratiki Allaghi (Democratic Change) until its suppression in 1967, he worked as lawyer until 1969 and began his association with cinematographer Giorgios Arvanitis on the film Reconstruction, in 1970. He also taught at Stavrakou Film School in the 1970s.

Angelopoulos began making films after the 1967 coup that began the Greek military dictatorship known as the Regime of the Colonels. In the 1970s he began making a series of political feature films about modern Greece, and quickly established a characteristic style marked by slow, episodic narrative, as well as very long takes. Angelopoulos has fourteen feature films to his name, and one might argue that his most famous work is The Travelling Players completed in 1975.

For a more complete overview of his work and life, visit his official website: http://www.theoangelopoulos.com/

It had been a night of music at the Cultural Centre of the University of Indianapolis. The proficiency of the Bios Chamber Orchestra of Athens had bent my imagination at its will, and ran it throughout the bodies of the instruments vibrating in front of me.

Watching the musicians moving from Handel to Vivaldi and Corelli, as well as Biber and Tchaikovsky, I could not but follow each movement of those agile hands in awe. They took my sore soul away with them, far from the crowd that scared me in the morning; when, in front of the National Museum of Greece, I perceived the sharp cacophony between the classical beauty of the building and the drug dealers, addicted, and sellers of stolen items that dwell in front of it. And as I had to zigzag among them in a hurry, they seemed a pond, a sea. I could not reach the end of them; I could not find any empathy in me, afraid and surprised at their number, their relaxed attitude, their being in control of the area.

In recalling the moment, I caught myself thinking that a musical instrument built from wood is a much more alive thing. Affected by humidity and use, as well as temperature, musical instruments are unique as no piece of wood is exactly the same as another, and every type of wood has different properties. As a result, each instrument has its own voice, colour and mood. Ashamed at my strong belief, I secretly admitted that this was so much more than what those people had in them a few hours before.

Lulled by the music, what I had seen rested at a distance in my mind. And so I recalled more of my day; my moving by bus, by taxi and on foot among millions. At one point, I walked towards the metro. There was no metro. I headed for the bus. Once on it, I found the part of the population that strives the most but with dignity, who can not move by taxi, or car, or stay home in a day like this. I listened to their determination, as to the low persistent note of the tough city, until we stopped. Cars jammed the roads: we were stuck in the traffic.

I turned my face to the right and I saw a swarm of women and children in front of a garden’s gate. During the time we stood there, only a window glass in between us, they did not notice me. They were agitated, their bellow filled the air. Looking at them, so rooted in the moment and vibrant, I asked to a lady next to me what they were waiting for.

“Come 18.00 the city distributes food. It is good.” She whispered to me in a sweet islander Greek, and as we moved away, more people gathered in front of the garden’s gate.

Dire is the thought that many children are hungry as well. Only a few hours before, a friend revealed to me that many are those who faint at school due to lack of a proper nutrition. Athens has not seen such a phenomenon from the time it was occupied, more than half a century ago. Fortunately, the Greek State is considering the implementation of a program of basic meals for children of the most deprived districts.

The music took my mind away from all of this again, but the knowledge that Greece is not the only country with such problems is ineradicable. Europe is wiped by an increasing level of unemployment; 23 per cent in Spain, 18 in Greece and 17 in Britain, to mention only a few. This offers little choice and consolation to millions of people: hunger, depression, and misery rule many lives during this winter. Some turn to crime, others to alternative and painful sources of income; those who can not face reality, and have no one close enough to help, contemplates suicide.

Carried away by the notes of Piazzola, and the violin of maestro Halapsis, I also forgot that outside the night was bright and warm, and on the roads of Athens students turn to prostitution to support themselves. They are not alone, it is happening in Britain and in Italy as well.

The concert ended. We all shared the same moment in time, the same intermission. I hardly believe it suggested the same speculations to my peers; we all know that hardship comes in many forms, and each of us shares of it in an original style. Nevertheless, immobile, grabbed by the music someone composed centuries ago, it felt as if we were under a spell long after the music stopped. Our personal voices continued to be silent for a few more moments, suspended, and travelling throughout the centuries, in beauty.

As I reached Monastiraki train station, the rough taste of our existence invaded my throat. Its sound cut right into my rested soul, aggressive. It did not frightened me as in the morning; I felt that others were able to endure much more than this in the past, we will as well.

Photo: Romana Turina

Acquainted to farewells, she gave me appointment at the Hotel Grande Bretagne’s Winter Garden. In there, to the stained glass that adorns the ceiling, to the intricate marble floor, and the creams and gold that surrounded us, any expression of sorrow would mean nothing more than a child’s cry against the canvas of times past.

Everything seemed so simple: the way in which her father visited my grandfather in 1940; on the path of his ancestors, who travelled towards Vienna as herbs’ bearers, Vikos doctors they used to call them. The way in which both our grandfathers ended up in the same Austrian-Hungarian hospital in Pardubice, that back in 1916 was called Pardubitz. The way in which my own father played on her father’s lap, and the Greek became his Godfather in 1928. Finally, the afternoon in which we exchanged phone numbers over a common interest; and we both froze, in disbelief, at the sound of our surnames. To recognize the past in a stranger’s face is nothing less than to find lost family.

“I go home… to the herbs of Pindos”, she finally told me. I felt relief, “I shall not lose her, yet.” I thought.

“To the village, out of Athens’ madness!” I toasted in a dash.

Then, the fresh-brewed coffee, and warm pastries; the overall feeling of refined turn-of-the-century elegance induced us to whisper, lulled us into silence.

She smiled, fully recognizing my feelings but uttering none; her eyes suddenly watery, she lowered the gaze.

“We could be in a scene from 1900.” She joked over a sip of tea. Did she know he had been a guest at the hotel, Bernardo Bertolucci? Had she staged everything, as wise people do?

In there the abrasive quality of our times subdued for a moment, allies the soft hum of hushed words, the light steps, the sparkle of crystal glasses, the tender touch of damask napkins. The toilsome knowledge that Loredana is almost bankrupt softened as well. An historian, who turned into an antiquarian bookseller, she became aware it was time to change her life radically, once again, some months ago.

“I’d better before I start to look into the wheelie bins for food like others do!” she joked.

I failed, found nothing to say. Lost in the glossy mass of hair that can hardly be bent into a knot; on those lips sipping at life aggressively, on those lowered lustrous lashes that hid her amber iris, I remained mute. Then, eyes pointed into mine: “It is a better life if you know who you are, and act upon it”, she stated with a brave smile.

She is not the only one who acted upon it. I farewelled several people in the last few months; they all abandoned the city for a quality of life hard to find in Athens. Among them there is a director of photography that decided to move away, deep into the hills of Peloponnese, and now teaches children how film’s language works, the rest of his needs are covered by the crop his land produces. There is a film director who a few years ago arrived from the States, settled in Athens and worked in the flourishing advertisement market. Last month he moved to northern Greece:

“I want my children to know what seasons look like, what fresh fruits taste like, what real water is.” Determined, he set up an organic production of grapes with some winemakers, and never uttered a word on the lack of work that pushed him out of Athens.

As it happened, we spent the whole day together, Loredana and I. In the night, tipsy from the wine she insisted I drank, I let my memory go to our last day in Trieste. This time I was the one leaving, and she wanted to see me: a blue velvet hat well set on her flowing hair, an attitude like no others, she escorted me around town to see I find what I needed. We walked in a Christmas frenzy of lights and jingle bells; laughed all the way through on my attempts to understand the many languages she speaks, but mostly loved the snow. As we were about to part, thick powdered flakes started to fall, and that image of us did not fade. Back then, as now, times where changing and we had to move on.

As I returned to my flat, stepping on the cobblestones of Ermou street, I wished more people had the courage to move, to change, to react to the blows life strike us with.

“We belong to an economy of scales. We naturally understand the advantages one obtains due to change…Do not look at parliaments, look at the people already on the move. They are the force of life.” She smiled and throw at me.

She seemed so right, like a caravan lady who fears nothing; who belongs to the people able to do what is needed, as her family did when business brought them to Vienna. I can not but admire her determination, her dignity, and grace.

As for me, I shall visit her. We shall walk the gorge on the path of her family, drink the tea she picks personally, and tell stories.

One could legitimately inquire how this was possible. In looking for an answer I asked Dr. Raoul Kirchmayr, an Italian in between countries like myself, to give me his point of view on Berlusconi. A member of the équipe Sartre at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits (ITEM) at the Ecole Normale of Paris, he made an effort to explain what Italian contemporary history felt like.

“Italy lived throughout 17 years in which what we call ‘belusconismo’ was the dominant subculture. In the whole, the new political men who governed the country, after the end of the First Republic in 1994, were able to distinct themselves for the grade of incompetency, lack of institutional sense, arrogance and deficiency in political culture.[...] Berlusconi has been the embodiment of a part of Italy that rooted for evil and riches, who continued to milk the country for their own interests and against the common good. The media power offered by the TV channels – the private ones that Berlusconi already owned, and the public ones upon which he forced himself – gave him the power to create an imaginary reality, in which the Italians mirrored and identified themselves.”

As this agenda setter stepped down, he was called ‘the biggest victim of the economics’ by friends and some journalists. Is this the way Berlusconi will be remembered? Is Italy already at work to promote amnesia – as it already happened with the revisionist trend trying to unwrap the Fascist’s era in the pink? Is the court, now afraid to crumble down with its king, propagating this version of the story?

Pondering over these questions, it might be worthy to recall that Berlusconi seems to have lost his crown, but he certainly remains one of the best possible embodiments of a long lasting culture of criminal syndicalism born by the marriage of unrelenting fascism, patronage and graft.

There was a time when something called Propaganda Due, or P2, existed in Italy. It was a Masonic lodge that became a “shadow government” promoting far right politics, and operated illegally from 1976 to 1981. The most famous men linked to it are Licio Gelli, its Venerable Master who called it «l’ Istituzione» (the institution), and Silvio Berlusconi, card number 1816 (1978).

P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes, and it came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona’s financial empire, a banker linked to the Mafia. One of P2 most intriguing design was the “Plan for Democratic Rebirth”; a political programme whose manifesto was found by the police in 1981. It called for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.

Interesting enough, when Gelli spoke about Berlusconi in an interview to the Italian newspaper Indipendente, in February 1996, he was intransigent: “He took our plan of rebirth and copied it.” Such plan dictated the use of financial power for the rebirth of two movements, one on the right and one of the left, which would feed a vast net of promotional clubs. In order to enforce the idea, 10 milliard Lire were to be thrown into the Democrazia Cristiana, to buy off the party itself; 10 milliard more and the party were to be broken, and a free trade confederation created.

As far as the media was concerned, Gelli stated, “it was necessary to enlist two or three elements for each newspaper or magazine, nobody would have to know the others”, as they had to support the politicians affiliated with the plan. He continued with a list of ideas that Berlusconi did put into action: “To buy some weekly newspapers”, “to coordinate all the provincial and local press with a centralized agency”, “to coordinate cable TV with the agency for the local press”, “to dissolve Rai (Italian State Television broadcasts) in the name of ‘aerial freedom’; all of this to “control the public opinion” of the country.

Now, as the former Prime Ministers stepped down, this slice of Italian history is destined to the bin; time flies, and political memory is short these days as the economic crisis dictates the news.

One should never forget, however, that Italy tend to recycle trusted men; as in the case of Gelli, who arrived at the top of the P2 due to a career as Fascist, double agent with the Resistance, collaborator with the British and American secret services, and finally Italian secret agent. A willing public servant of the double state, he embraced the non Orthodox war against communism, and moved along so to form the P2 in 1976; an institution that assumed a flexible attitude in the occupation of key political points in Italy, and a business like philosophy that paid back well. As it might appear, it was just the right time for Berlusconi to come along.

History will write its pages, and they might vary depending on the agenda guiding the historian. Nevertheless, there is one grim truth that nobody can toss away, as Dr. Kirchmayr put it: “the most dramatic damage he [Berlusconi] inflicted on Italy is not the financial or administrative one, but the undermining of the Italian cultural basis for a civil life.”

As a result, people try to concentrate on their work, if they have one. Their attention is stubborn, stately focused on a possible future. There still are projects that they want to come to fruition; they still believe that endurance is rewarded with a promising outcome, and this make their sacrifice worthwhile. If a few weeks ago they felt on the threshold of a new era; now most of them have crossed over. They populate an unknown zone in time, a place where politics are not the same they used to be, and politicians cannot follow the rules of the past. This baffles them, and people’s reaction to it comes in different shapes.

On a call in between airports, my friend Maria confessed her shock over the fact that Italy faces the abyss as Greece does. “What has the future in store for our countries?” she asked me. A Greek history professor, but a foreign correspondent by trade, Maria cannot refrain from being deadly dramatic in everything she says. Confident in her understanding, I shared my concern over the sense of contingency that envelops our lives. I nagged a little over the political future of Italy, and adventured myself so far as to state that Greece has never before experienced such a crisis.

There and then, and just as I imagined it, Maria went mute.  “No… wait.” She uttered after a few seconds, and hit me with an interesting take on the current Greek crisis.

“Papandreou played well!” She started off with, but went on asking me if I noticed a pattern resembling a Backgammon game in the recent Greek political events. Puzzled as I was, Maria didn’t take long to understand that I don’t play the board game.

Happy to solve what for me was nothing but a riddle, she started lecturing as she waited for her suitcase in Rome. Backgammon, or Tavli as commonly known by the Greeks, is based on philosophy. Its beauty can be found in the grand design hidden into its board.  The wooden plank where the battle takes place represents one year, and each side of it twelve months; the twenty-four points on it are the hours in a day, and the thirty checkers represent the day in a month. Finally, the sum of the opposing sides of the die represent the seven days of the week, and the contrasting colours stand for night and day. The winner is always the one able to hold on to the end of the game, no matter what the opponent might throw along the way. “It is just like life.” She concluded.

I started to see what Maria implied; George Papandreou’s ability to endure, and play on the very difficult Greek political board, reminded her of the cunning of a Backgammon player. She stressed that from a strategic point of view what happened in Greece is good: the lame political routine made of micro politics, that finds a justification only in the desire of certain politicians to gain power taking advantage of a crisis, has now lost its larky flavor. Therefore, due to the seriousness of the situation, obsolete political practices have either to be put aside or to adjust to new rules. “Papandreou found a way to bend them all. It’s the Greek old way” she stated.

I admit that I did not see eye to eye with this interpretation at first; to me the never changing rules of Backgammon could hardly offer an inspiration for a new political routine in Greece. Nevertheless, I soon found myself mulling over it: “extreme measure for extreme political weather has been taken. It was a matter of nerves and strategy enacted to win the war, not a battle.”

Is Greece a country born out of extreme political strategies?  Maybe, maybe not; but the hardness of the game made me shiver.

As a child, I saw stories of kings and queens unfolding in front of my eyes on the chess board: some of them lived, some died; in the end nothing really mattered, it was only a game. In this case it is a country, and real people. Greece had to reach the point of ‘check mate’ to see everybody’s attention focused; to force them to take responsibility over what they can deliver.

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”, writes Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957) in the The Leopard (1963).  Is this the kind of manoeuvrings Mr. Papandreou had to pull to finally see some capable people working together for Greece?  Maria seems to be sure about it; I am keen on thinking she is right.

Then, the worse of me gets the upper hand and I recall Lampedusa, again: “We were the leopards, the lions, those who take our place will be jackals and sheep, and the whole lot of us – leopards, lions, jackals and sheep – will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth.” He spoke about politicians.

As most families in Athens set Greek flags on their balconies, I arrived at Mr. Novak’s home, an architect from Ljubljana who maintains a flat in the city for the past five years. He decided to have a little party to celebrate the 28^th of October with his Greek friends, and I was lucky enough to be among them.

Mr. Novak and I met back home, in Slovenia, while I was trying to trace the history of my family, as it was persecuted by the Italian fascists in Trieste, and in Ljubljana during the Second World War. A reserved man, at first he had observed me for a long time behind his elegant glasses; then, he invited me for a glass of handmade apple juice, willing to hear my story. We parted with the promise to meet again, this time in Athens.

I entered the block of flats where he lodges at ease. In the elevator I ended up fearing for my safety while it lifted itself laboriously to the last floor; as a result, I knocked at Mr. Novak’s door with a sense of joyful relief. In less than a minute I found myself on the sunbathed terrace, the first to arrive. Up there, a hidden garden awaited me but my eyes were immediately captured by a piece of stone carved in what was clearly art nouveau style.

As the master of the house joined me with some freshly made Orehove Rezine, a walnut cake worthy of a fairy, I was still mesmerized at my discovery. I recognize that piece of stone but I could not recall its origin. Everything I was aware of was that it did not belonged to Athens; it seemed to come from Tromostovje, Miklosicev park or Presemova street in Ljubljana.

“I did not bring it along from home, if this is what you think.” Miha whispered to me, mirth in his face. “I found it here. It is a piece of the Maison du Peuple.”

The carved stone belonged to the first example of art nouveau building, which was designed by Victor Horta (1861- 1947) for the Belgian labour party in 1896 in Bruxelles. To the great distress of the international public opinion, and a coalition of 700 architects from all over the world, the huge and beautiful palace was demolished in 1965. Among the architects was the former owner of the flat, who joined a band of Venetian students in a quest to save some parts of the building – mostly finely curved metallic parts, and stones. The arrival of the token on the terrace followed her return home.

In recent years, Ms. Marika would not sell the flat but to another fellow architect, who would understand the value of that relic. What is more, it had to be a plant lover, since she wished to see her selection of Greek herbs and veggies, in the greenhouse next to Horta’s masterpiece, survive the changes of time.

The news that most of Mr. Novak’s Greek friends would visit him especially to learn about the greenhouse came as a surprise to me. I soon learned that more and more greenhouses continue to appear on the top of several Greek blocks of flats, as well as on large balconies, and gardens of little detached houses. Mr. Novak’s enthusiasm is evident: “Necessity makes people go back to nature. For many this begins with a pot and a wish to pick their own cherry tomatoes!”

The sweetness, the enchanted marvel of Victor Horta’s new style reverberated in me with those words. People need nature and they come back to it again and again as time pass by, always in unexpected ways. In this case, the greenhouse and its content were the centre of the attention for a whole bunch of friends during the long sunny afternoon.

I continued to glance at the carved stone as I heard intellectuals and executives ask about the best way to grow veggies on a balcony. It felt as if we were under the best spell we could ask for: the scented leaves, the delicate arms of the plants stretching themselves on the greenhouse’s grid, and those iron jambs that had been bent so to match the art nouveau stone close-by, spoke of the energy of life as intended by Victor Horta from the very beginning. Instinctively, I promised myself I would make time to visit the Horta Grand Café en Art Nouveau Zaal in Antwerp, where part of the Maison du Peuple’s interiors have been used to build a large café.

It was a special 28^th of October. At dinner, we celebrated the value of the Greek people, recalled Mussolini’s wish to impress Hitler in attacking Greece, and the Germans who had to run to his rescue. A British writer said a few words on the Greek fierce resistance; because there was a time when the Greeks stood alone, side by side with the British, against Fascism and Nazism. Back then, the most powerful army in Europe, the Germans troops, were almost decimated in Greece. The loss were such that Hitler found himself forced to delay an attack to Russia, a mistake that helped the Allies to defeat him.

Later on, as I helped my friend in clearing the terrace from the leftovers, watching the Greek flags in display on most of the balconies around us, he admitted he would like to see the Greek people make their country great once more. There is not a doubt that Mr. Novak has great faith in this, as many of us foreigners do.

I accepted a slice of that freshly made Orehove Rezine, as it is customary in Slovenia not to let a guest leave without a token of our friendship, and agreed to meet again once at home. We both smiled at those words, both conscious that we somehow were at home already.

One of these mornings, I found myself in a train filled with men traveling in mass to reach Syntagma square. They talked about how they wished to walk in front of the Parliament to state they are tired, that they worry for the future of their families.

As I snapped out of my little worries, there in the train, I became aware I was the only woman among them. I felt slightly intimidated, and grew more and more alert. Imagine my surprise when I saw my next-door neighbour, a senior Greek citizen who owns a small bookshop in Monastiraki, picking out of his pocket a slim parcel, open it in front of his friend, and reveal nicely cut slices of pastourmas. There was a sparkle in his eyes as he uttered: “Just in case we get hungry. You know, up there in Syntagma”.

In front of the innate humanity of this man’s gesture, I relaxed and started to observe the people around me, to listen to them. Behind me, a group of friends was planning to drink a good Greek coffee at the Café before walking to the square; further on, another man was laughing. To the rear, some were literately chanting songs one might hear during pleasant social occasions. I couldn’t but realize that these men were grandfathers, and fathers, and middle aged men, and teenagers with a bright smile. They were all heading for a walk that made them feel important. They looked necked to my eyes, well aware of the other kind of people they might meet in Syntagma.

Busy as one is in order to go along with a normal routine while showered by all the difficulties several strikes force upon us, I soon forgot the morning encounter. In the afternoon, as I travelled on foot from one place to another among the beautiful buildings of Plaka, I met other people. Those whose emotions had transformed into somehow enlisted people;  women and men I surpassed, and were all looking at a point in the distance. They seemed not aware of anything but of the route they followed, mechanically. Hanged on their neck were different models of  gas masks, some of their faces covered in a white paste, and behind them fires and thick black smoke.

As I walked among them, I instinctively moved closer to the building to my right and hunched my shoulders, as a cat does in trying to pass by unseen. Before I knew it, my move revealed itself correct: in front of me there were others. These did not seem to be people; fury and irrationality prevailed, while stones were thrown at what I believe was the police, and more rubbish bins were set on fire. Then, I realized I was wrong. Those stones were not for the police, but for other fellow citizens trying to keep the situation as calm as possible.

As the night set in, those who remained in town were either obliged to work, or in need to give voice to their emotions not peacefully. When I left the office, I found my way out of  Syntagma square. I pushed ahead as fast as I could, I needed to reach the car that was waiting for me in a safe street. I knew that a third kind of crowd had moved down toward Monastiraki, in a feast of violence. I feared them, those under the effects of anarchy’s fumes to whom rationality means nothing.

In front of me, around me, ashes and tear gas still active in the air, disheveled cobblestones and crashed plant vases, burnt rubbish bins and missing iron bars. The thoughts of smashed window’s crystals and the image of my Greek neighbour in the train fused in my mind. The small shop he did not close once in thirty-seven years to go on a holiday might not be there in the morning.

My way to the car was so quiet, such a new experience in a still warm Greek night when people used to be out and about. I went along. Between the buildings only some quick walking figures, citizens like me who tried to go home; most of us lodging far from the centre of the capital. Walking, while my eyes, nose and throat hurt more than I had imagined, there were but questions in mind. What would have those breaking the shop’s windows to say to the shop’s owner? What exactly democratic they see in a night of rage in town, which offers nothing but the annihilation of other people’s hard work? How can a citizen throw a stone to another today, when everybody is in trouble? How can a State be if everybody thinks but for himself?

My day was not over. In the night I had to travel toward Piraeus. There the atmosphere was peaceful and somehow cheerful. The home ground of Olympiacos football team, Karaiskakis Stadium was lit and filled with passionate people. The Champions League match Olympiakos – Dortmund was on. I liked to imagine my next-door friend had eaten his pastourmas in Syntagma, and was watching the match as I passed by; that he was safe, as safe should had been his shop.

Suddenly, a found myself asking what democracy looks like. To me it seemed about the rights to open your own shop, intact; it was on the faces of those smiling proud people walking peacefully, and on those working, no matter what, because democracy is about duties as much as rights. It is also about a policeman I know, who was recently put on reduced pay, and works as a bartender in his spare time; and those who go to teach despite the chaos around them, because young people need to learn that a sense of responsibility starts on the job one does.

Correct me if I am wrong, but pondering over Democracy today, my mind goes to some words of Alexandros Panagoulis I found in a book purchased in my Greek neighbour’s shop.  I am a romantic, and I would like to quote them here: ‘Let us weight every actions we see in life with our intellect, and let thinking be the guide and the spirit of our actions. [...] Let thought lead without passions to create hates.’ (Other will follow. Palermo: Flaccovio Editore, 1972).