Very often, when I am stuck in the middle of a gigantic traffic jam somewhere between my home in the suburb of Psychiko and the centre of Athens, I think back on the good old days when the journey never took more than seven minutes.
A HEAVY rain fell on Athens on election day, grounding the millions of political leaflets which had been gliding, soaring, billowing, alighting on windshields and branches, and forming drifts in the streets since the early weeks of the campaign.
HISTORICALLY, political parties in Greece have tended to group, disintegrate, and regroup in a kaleidoscopic fashion around individuals rather than ideologies.
THERE have been further developments in the continuing saga of the Beatnik — that loathsome sea monster that occasionally prowls the beautiful blue sea that separates the fair lands of the Freaks and the Jerks, looking for treasure on the sea bottom.
Driving along the autobahn from Stuttgart to Munich, I pass a heavily-laden truck making its way up a steep incline. Painted on its sides in bold white letters is the name of the firm, SARANTOS HELLAS, and in smaller letters the message, Umwelt-freundliche Reinigungs – und Pflegemittel. Waibiingen – which roughly translated means: ‘Cleaning materials friendly to the environment’. Waibiingen, its place of registration, is a small town near Stuttgart. The juxtaposition of the Greek name and the message in German brings to mind the subject of much discussion in recent years about Greeks in Germany.
Βy the year 1985, tourists may well outnumber the fish in the Mediterranean, according to
SHOPKEEPERS who have been spending sleepless nights wondering if the predicted return this autumn to continuous nine-to-five shop hours would rob them of their three-hour afternoon repose, may now rest peacefully both night and day. On September 22, the government announced that the current, mixed, summer schedule would remain in effect until May 15, 1978.
IN MOST countries, when people answer the telephone, they either start off with a cheery ‘hello’, or with their phone number or the name of their firm. In this country, one is usually met with a clipped, ‘Embros!’ (‘Forward!’ or ‘Go ahead!’) or with a guarded’Nai?’or ‘Malista?’ (‘Yes?’).
Italian troops were already crossing the Albanian border when on the morning of October 28, 1940, Italy’s diplomatic representative in Athens delivered his government’s ultimatum that Greece capitulate. The Greek nation’s rejection of Mussolini’s ultimatum, an occasion annually observed on October 28 as a national holiday, did not find the country unprepared. It had been preceded by several provocative acts which forewarned the Greek government and eventually led, less than two decades later, to the Italian invasion of Greece. The first of these provocations was the 1923 bombardment and occupation of Corfu, an incident crucial not only to Greece but to world history, as it was the first test case of its type for the League of Nations.
Five hundred miles southwest of Khartoum the savannah of the Sudan is interrupted by the Nuba Mountains, a scattered collection of inselbergs which rise, rock bound, to relieve the tedium of the acacia-covered plain. Kadugli, lying at the bottleneck of two great ranges is small, partly squalid, partly beautiful, and shaded by spreading trees (a welcome remnant of the colonial empire).
