Tourists can travel the Greek islands this summer in a state of sweet oblivion to the country’s financial crisis. Or they can look a little closer and find the undercurrents of a people who fear the future. The islands present a surreal picture of survival, where life continues as normal. Except on the front pages of newspapers, where politics dominate and Greeks ruminate while sipping their morning coffee.
It’s a different story in Athens, where the effects of seven years of cutbacks to public services and pensions paint a stark picture. In the busy streets surrounding the Acropolis, street tables are full. An elderly man wandering by picks leftovers from plates after diners stand up and leave.
A few streets away the European Techonopolis Jazz Festival is in full swing. Young Athenians are drinking beer and smoking rolled cigarettes. The stalls are thronged with shoppers. Outside the gates, a dozen activists are distributing leaflets for an upcoming anti-fascist camp.
Among them is Marianthi Kolokythos (23), a trainee nurse from Athens.
She says the crisis or ‘krisi’ (the origins of the word are Greek, meaning turning point in a disease) has fuelled support for the fascist ideologue.
“The people didn’t know what to do about facing the crisis and losing their jobs and it was much easier for these guys to convince people that the problem is the immigrants and the only way to get through the struggle was to kick the immigrants out,” she says.
Amid the changing political landscape, young people face growing pressures, Marianthi says. Greece has a 30 per cent unemployment rate, rising to 50 per cent for under 25's. More than 35 per cent of Greeks live below the poverty line.
My airbnb host in the middle class suburb of Nikea, works in a bank. He blames the previous government who capitulated to a series of Troika demands resulting in the current economic stagnation. Previous to that, he outlines a situation that echoes Ireland’s descent into financial ruin. Cheap money, reckless lending and a population held ransom as a result.
The crisis is a quiet one, he says, not overly evident on the streets. Instances of whole families subsisting on one pension are common. In the worst cases, people who previously enjoyed a comfortable income have been reduced to begging from their neighbours, in their local square; a particularly hideous plight for civilians who hold pride in their nation so close to their hearts.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” my host sighs.
It’s as if a sort of fiscal fatigue has set in.
In the centre of the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean sea, on Tinos Island, the Greek tradition of devotion to the family is evident everywhere. The island is famous for its Church of the Panagia Evangelistria, which houses a reputedly miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary.
The architecture is quintessentially Greek, the streets heavy with bougainvillea and lined with pretty shuttered windows. Because it attracts visiting pilgrims more than the party set, the beaches are largely empty, the roads quiet and in the village of Kionia, 3km west of the main port at Hora, the restaurants are practically empty. But it’s still early in the season. The upside is that my sister and I have the beach – with its sparkling turquoise waters – to ourselves.
We find some bikes in a hotel next door and upon hearing of the impossibility of cycling 30km from one end of the island to the other, because of its steep hilly terrain, embark on a torturous journey. But it’s worth it for the happy accidents encountered along the way. We hitchhike the worst of the inclines, securing lifts from a local builder and a goat shepherd from Athens respectively, loading the bikes onto the back of their trucks. We pass through sleepy hillside villages that attract only those who are lost and pass through Pyrgos, perhaps the most magnificent of the island’s attractions, a village of sculptors set amid mountains of green marble.
The final destination, the fishing village of Panormas with its colourful boats bobbing on crystal clear waters, calls for a celebratory swim and a congratulatory ouzo.
A few days later in a taxi to the village of Valox, famous for its strange landscape of giant boulders, our driver Helen (29) is talking excitedly about a job interview. She’s driving her parent’s taxi but desperately wants a job. Prospects on the island are minimal, so she’s beyond nervous ahead of her interview at a local butchers.
“It’s really hard to find work. And when you do, you are treated like an animal,” she says, of working long hours for minimum pay.
From Tinos to neighbouring Syros, the capital of the Cyclades, the hour long ferry costs €7.50.
I catch an overnight ferry from here to the Dodocanese Island group, to Patmos, Greece’s “spiritual” island, so called because it houses a cave halfway up a hill, where St John is thought to have written the Book of Revelations. The Cave of the Apocalypse together with the Monastery of St John is a designated World Heritage Site and both attract hundreds of visitors daily.
The island is hilly but otherwise cycle friendly. The local bus system gives access to the main sites and there’s a handful of round-the-island boat trips to explore a selection of great swimming beaches. Tourism is relatively steady due to the island’s religious importance.
Kostas Mallios owns a souvenir shop at the gates of the monastery. He says visitors act like a buffer protecting islanders from the worst ravages of the crisis.
“The season is short, we have a few months to make money and in winter we make different work to survive. Of course, I am worried. But it’s slightly different here to Athens,” he says.
A novice monk in the monastery, Elefterios Kanellis grew up in Cairo but fled after converting to Christianity. We get talking after he asks me to cover my legs, take off my hat and uncross my legs while sitting in the monastery’s ornate chapel, which houses the head of St Thomas the apostle in a silver goblet.
“Everyone is suffering. The monastery is trying to help as much as possible, but we are not millionaires. We use the donations we get here in the monastery to help people who come to us asking for help. But we have financial problems too,” he says.
Despite the hardships of the ongoing crisis, island communities are providing ongoing support for migrants arriving on an almost daily basis from Turkey.
Picturesque Symi island is 25 miles north of Rhodes and four miles from the Turkish coast. When I arrive, there are 45 migrants sleeping on a balcony at the police barracks waiting for their papers to be processed.
Father of two Allah Alsadi from Damascus fled the war in Syria for a better life for his family. An engineer and former Shell employee, he hopes to make it to northern Europe to find work.
“It’s impossible to stay (in Syria), there’s no hope to find work for my children. Conditions are not great here for us right now but the police are looking after us very well,” he said.
Everyone is in agreement that the EU needs to do more to help both local communities and arriving migrants. UN figures show that Greece is now shouldering the heaviest burden of this maritime refugee crisis, with 68,000 migrants and refugees arriving in the first six months of 2015.
At the other end of the scale, Symi is the destination of choice for mega yachts charters originating in Bodrum and Izmir on the Turkish coast, where rubber dinghies are fetching prices twice their value such is the demand on the services of human traffickers.
Over on Santorini, tourist excursions are packed to capacity. Akrotiri, site of the ruins of a Minoan Bronze Age settlement buried in the volcanic eruption of 1627 BC, the best restaurant of the three week Greek excursion emerges. The Portobello Grill serves up the best salad of rocket, kiwi and pomegranate seeds with a smile from waiter Jorgio, from Thessaloniki. He’s one of hundreds to leave the mainland behind to eek out a living on the islands. But he’s jovial, entertaining and upbeat, which is one of the striking things about Greece in the midst of this maelstrom.
They are well informed, resilient and ready as ever to smile in the face of whatever life - and the Troika - throws at them.
