We must give credit where credit is due. The city of Piraeus, with its old mansions, twisting streets and splendid view, is in many ways distinctive. The sordidness to be found in all seaports is to be found there, too, but putting this aspect aside, Piraeus has a personality that is all its own.
A Sunday drive reveals well-tended streets, playgrounds with colourful, modern equipment, manicured squares that are there for the people to use, which they do, sitting and swinging on garden furniture as though they were in their own back yards. At the restaurants around Turkolimano, natives and tourists alike sit looking relaxed, their chatter dying down periodically as the cannon signals a race and they turn their heads to see the flag rising on the pole at the end of the peninsula. Vendors appear with bags of pistachios explaining how good they are even to the natives, little girls peddle chewing gum, and those precious men all decked out in white move along pushing their wicker laundry-hampers-on-wheels before them as they sweep up the slightest suggestion of litter.
On a recent trip, however, we grew uncomfortably aware that something was amiss. The lamp poles stood starkly bare, the wrought iron flower baskets that used to be attached to them with colourful displays of flowers having been removed!
Our suspicions aroused by this discovery we hastily drove over to a little platia near Karaiskaki Stadium to see if it had been tampered with and were reasssured to see the green lawn still carefully spread out, children romping on it and parents swinging themselves in the white rockers. We drove over to the municipal square to inspect the situation there.. It was blooming with real flowers that had been planted in the ground and with hydrangeas that had been planted in flower pots sitting in wagons. The square looked lovely but there was no sign of our baskets or the imitation flowers.
It was some years ago, and after months of admiring the lovely flower displays, even imagining their perfume filling the air, that we discovered the ‘truth’ about the green thumb of the official Piraeus gardeners when a friend explained that the flowers were clearly fake because ‘thus and such’ flower could not possibly grow in the same pot with ‘thus and such.’ Not long after that we stopped our car one day and got out to see what type of grass grew so brilliantly and lushly, despite the burning sun and the heavy traffic of feet, in our little platia and discovered the answer: synthetic. We decided that if a choice had to be made between asphalt and fake grassland between fenced-off lawn and a place for children to play, we prefer the synthetic variety. We continued to secretly enjoy the displays of flowers and imitation lawn.
We can only speculate as to what has become of the flowers. Perhaps Mr. Skilitsis has acquiesced to the naturalists and permanently removed them; or perhaps our men in white, forever sweeping and cleaning, scooped them all up and carried them off to put them through a laundry cycle and will eventually return them to their places. We can only wait and see. An awful question has, meanwhile, crossed our minds: what will be the fate of the ‘modern chairs’ that replaced the kafenion ones? Some years ago, there were many objections to their initial appearance in Piraeus on the grounds that they were uniform and lacked charm, but we rather like them. They are comfortable and far more suited to drawn – out dinners and lengthy conversations than the usual uncomfortable things to be found in most tavernas. Those who wish to ‘preserve’ anything that is ‘quaint’ should be selective. Old-fashioned furniture is usually miserably uncomfortable and men have striven for centuries to design chairs to conform to our bodies. Can anyone objectively say that the ‘kafenion’ chairs are aesthetically more pleasing — let alone more comfortable? We think not.
Promenade
Those who are over forty and in search of nostalgia would have found it at the Junior-Senior Prom of the American Community Schools of Athens. More than that, they would have had a choice of eras about which to be sentimental since the dress of the young students and the music provided by the Navy band drew on several.
One no longer describes young women as ‘visions of loveliness’ but that is exactly what those ladies were, in hair styles that would have been difficult for earlier generations of women to attain and in fashions subdued and original, drawn from the latest ‘look’ and variations on those of times past. Unencumbered by the whale-boned attire and the frizzy hair that their mothers had to suffer, they moved and danced with ease and grace.
The young gentlemen… and that is what they appeared to be… reached all the way back to the Crusades in their hairstyles and looked downright romantic. Their carefully groomed locks would have put a Hollywood Sir Galahad (real knights in their time must have been rather tacky) or an Edwardian gentleman to shame. They wore nicely cut suits, dinner jackets in white, black and maroon, tails, four-in-hands, and various combinations that made them look infinitely more handsome than did their fathers’ generation with the plucked look and standard dress. There were a lot of corsages on girls’ shoulders, and it would seem that young men still observe that custom.
When we arrived at the Hilton, order prevailed as these glamorous young creatures served themselves from the buffet. Except for the occasional difficulty of identifying each other, they seemed quite at ease. The turn-out was impressive — about 300 people including students and faculty. We did not, we must confess, witness the crowning of the Queen of the Prom… yes, that still happens… but when we looked in later the couples were dancing to the music provided by the Navy band and ranging from Glenn Miller and polkas to the latest in pop. One teacher commented that some of the students had complained that there was not enough current music but we thought that they seemed to be enjoying themselves all the same. What we would like to know is this: in the last decade of ‘youthful’ upheaval and endless wrestling matches between the generations over clothing and life-styles, has this sort of thing been clandestinely taking place all along? Have young students been surreptitiously observing these rituals in conspiracy with their teachers who guard their secret? We did not dare ask any of the students if they were having a good time for fear that they would feel duty-bound to reply in the negative. Anyway, we could see that they and their teachers were having a ball.
Progress
There are those who shake their heads disapprovingly at the appearance of all ‘new’ or ‘modern’ things in Greece and are horrified at the sight of television antennae making their appearance all over the country. Women-in-black standing in doorways may make for romantic pictures, but the women involved find life infinitely more interesting if they have something to occupy their minds.
On a recent visit to the provinces we were party to negotiations over the renovations of an old house. The Man-of-the-House was determined that an out of the way spot should be preserved, despite the fact that the space could be put to better use, as a ‘corner.’ When asked what purpose it would serve, he replied that the lady of the house would sit there and crochet!
This vision may have satisfied the fantasy view of this man’s world but our thoughts raced to the poor woman. Tatting, knitting, sewing and such, may occupy the hands but they occupy the mind for only fleeting moments. We are glad that television has arrived here and brought a few extra dimensions into the lives of those who were forced to be bored much of the time, and we are glad that new-fangled modern equipment and progress are improving the lot of the average Greek.
It would be very nice, of course, if Greece were to profit from the experience of countries who have suffered the evolution of development and nice if Greece managed to run the course without committing offences against nature, art, logic, and ‘good taste.’ Much ado has been made recently of the pollution in Athens, of that emanating from automobiles and Eleusis, and the desecration of the seacoast of Attica — a subject to which we will return in later issues. Every nation, in the process of development, however, will commit its mistakes.
It would be even nicer if refugees from the industrialized countries of the world would not hope to exact from Greece the price incumbent on the preservation of dreams of an ‘untouched’ land… untouched, at least, by progress… and of old customs and ways of life. It is, to begin with, condescending. At best, it smacks of Wordsworth’s Lucy…’ a violet by a mossy stone, half hidden from the eye’… totally removed from reality.
Every country must pass through its cycles. It is unfortunate that Greece, like other countries before it, must abandon, temporarily at least, customs and ways of life that attract those who are in search of curiosities. But this country, like most others will come full circle. Already there is a growing awareness that worthwhile traditions must not be thrown out with the wash, and attempts are being made to preserve them.
Meanwhile there is a certain value in transferring oneself to the role of the woman-in-black, and to the farmer struggling to make a living and to meet all his obligations as he tends his groves. Those old enough to remember the life of the past recall it as rich and happy. It may have been so. It occurs to us that the women standing mutely in the doorways would not long ago have been surrounded by many children and busy tending to the needs of numerous grandchildren while the farmer would have had his entire family participating. Perhaps their lives were, indeed, full, but they must also have been harsh. Whatever the case, their lives today are not nearly as romantic or fascinating as one would expect and it too often revolves around remittances from an absent son which are no substitute for a son-present. The future of Greece lies in its own development and not in the pseudo-romantic visions of those in search of escape from the contemporary world. In indulging oneself in that sort of vision for a nation, one is indulging in the ugliest form of colonialist mentality.
