Optimism and Statistics
A circular sent out by the Bank of Greece to all commercial banks in June stated that serious mistakes had been discovered in the collection of data upon which essential statistics are based.
A Riot of Color In Athens
As everyone knows, traffic congestion and environmental pollution in the Athens metropolitan area have become the besetting issues in the lives of about one-third of the nation’s citizens.
A Circuit of Athens
Though joggers are sometimes seen around Athens, singly or in pairs, the spirit of mass-running does not descend on the city’s inhabitants except during those formal Marathon meets which are generally international in character. It was doubtful, therefore, when Mayor Beis announced a popular “Circuit of Athens” event for May 9, whether it would awaken any widespread community response.
The Boublis Affair
A foreigner who aspires to become a Greek citizen (without going so far as to marry one) will find a path torturously strewn with red tape, judicial decisions and indecisions, appeals and reappeals, examinations and cross-examinations.
Acts of Hatred…
In the early hours of March 12, a bomb hidden in a confessional rocked the Athens Metropolitan Cathedral, causing damage estimated at well above a million drachmas.
Vingt Ans Apres
IT was the year 2002 and it was a beautiful spring day in Psychico when the old man came out of his house, took a wistful look at the ancient Renault 20TL that had sat in his garage for the last three years, immobile for the lack of a vital spare part, and trudged down the hill to Leoforos Kifissias to wait for the bus.
The Muffling of Wedding Bells
After weeks of speculation concerning the anticipated civil marriage bill and whether the government by making it obligatory would reduce a church marriage to a purely ceremonial act, the draft of the new law tabled before Parliament on February 16 proposed that both civil and church marriages be treated with equal validity before the law.
Born 1910 and Still Going Strong
THE elderly man who sat in the seat next to mine on a flight from Athens to Larissa, with his wide-brimmed fedora, a monstrous tie and large, elastic-sided shoes was so obviously a Greek-American that I studiously avoided his gaze.
An Uncivil Service?
On the night before Christmas when not a creature was stirring in the House of Parliament because of the holiday recess, civil servants settling down for a long winter’s nap were jolted out of their reveries by the sudden presentation of PASOK’s plan to reform the governmental bureaucracy.
Youth Will Be Served
ONE of the more intriguing of the PASOK government’s plans to improve the quality of Greek life was the promise to set up a Ministry of the New Generation.