For the first time, Greece is actively participating with the Council and, in response to this declaration, The Elliniki Etairia sponsored last month a three-day symposium devoted to a campaign for the protection of our monuments. The Elliniki Etairia is an organisation which, for a number of years, has applied itself to this enormously important matter with single minded devotion.
The symposium, held in the spacious but crowded Lecture Hall of the National Gallery, was addressed both by the Minister of Public Works, Mr. Biris, and by the Minister of Culture, Mr. Trypanis, ample evidence that the present government is not only aware of the need for this campaign but is anxious to join it.
Mr. Kostas Karras, President of the Elliniki Etairia, in his opening address drew attention to the contradictory fact that while we admire and praise our past we are wantonly careless about its preservation. Indeed, there are few countries in the world that can equal Greece in the depth of its awareness of, and in its sense of debt to, its historical continuity.
Yet the thoughtless destruction continues about us. What is required is planning and a sense of purpose. This is what the Elliniki Etairia is determined to publicize.
The problems, of course, are enormous: organisational, economic, social, and, perhaps most of all, educational.
Lord Duncan Sandys, President of the International Committee of the Council of Europe, has said that if communities are not interested in saving their cultural past, then the governments representing them will not act.
The time is late for Greece — as it is in most countries — but it is also propitious. The government promises to act. Sensible proposals have been made. Plans are being seriously studied. The
accomplishments of the Elliniki Etairia are drawing a wider and more enthusiastic response.
The Phenomenal Snowmen
KYRIA Elsie dropped in for a visit in February to report on her most recent experiences. On the day of our annual snowfall, our friend recounted, she was driving toward Ekali in the company of an English gentleman by the name of Mr. Jones. He had just arrived in Greece and kept staring incredulously at the snow and the lines of cars heading north out of the city. He also persisted in exclaiming, ‘Well! I never expected to see snow in Athens! Where on earth are all these people going? It can’t be much fun motoring in this sort of weather!’
While feeling personally responsible for the weather and at a loss to explain the festive response to it, Kyria Elsie managed to answer calmly, ‘Why it snows at least once every year without fail! These people love the snow. It’s because of the weather that they are all going to the country.’ Mr. Jones was unimpressed. ‘If it snows every year regularly as you say,’ he commented drily, ‘why do they want to see the snow all that much?’
Kyria Elsie was stumped. How, she wanted to know, do you explain to an Englishman that at the first sign of a snowflake half the inhabitants of the city dash to the mountains to play and frolic — as often as not without boots, hats, or gloves?
By the time they reached Maroussi the first wave of explorers were returning to the city. Mr. Jones grew more bewildered as car after car drove slowly past proudly displaying snowmen perched on their roofs and bumpers, and skewered on to the antennas. Some were planted smack in front of the drivers who managed to stay on the road only by hanging their heads out of the side window or by carefully following directions from others in the car with a better view. (Kyria Elsie made no reference to the fact that the emphasis this year was on realism, with various parts of the anatomy carefully punctuated on voluptuous specimens. Not wishing to embarass her, however, we did not raise the matter.)
Mr. Jones sat bug-eyed watching the procession with astonishment. ‘Why are they taking their snowmen back to town?’ he demanded, convinced that Athenians were slightly mad.
‘Oh,’ said Kyria Elsie with all the dignity she could muster, ‘but that is a tradition. You must go and look at the snow and then bring back proof that you have done so.’
The roads by then were blocked in all directions, but nobody seemed to mind. Cars were filled with ancient grannies clutching infants, children gesticulating animatedly, and mothers trying to keep them under control. The fathers intent on reaching home with their prizes intact, drove slowly and with the utmost care. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ exclaimed Mr. Jones. ‘Neither have I,’ Kyria Elsie agreed, but added that she was not referring to the snowmen.
Dialing More Vicious Circles
IN our February issue we mentioned that an official of OTE had complained that Athenians spend more time on the phone than any other people in the world. While we were flattered, as we always are, to hear that we are first at something, we were compelled to remind him that much of our time is spent on the phone listening to others talking over crossed lines. This has led to a lively response from our readers who have enthusiastically kept us informed about the conversations they have overheard. Some of them are, of course, unprintable, but some have been interesting and even valuable.
One youngman of our acquaintance, for example, was able to record and pass on Kyria Olga’s’Meat Cooked in Wine’. Meat, lamb, or rabbit would do, the good lady explained to her friend Kyria Maria, as the young man made careful notes. Kyria Olga, it seems, belongs to the ‘no nonsense’ school of cooking. Just add whatever you happen to have lying around the kitchen, put it all in a pot with some wine, turn on the stove and forget about it for a few hours. Don’t bother with onions, she advised. Cleaning and chopping them, it seems, is too much of a belas, a ‘bother’. The young man joined the conversation to inform the astonished ladies that dehydrated onions are now available at the markets. Kyria Olga immediataly collected herself and invited the young man to dinner. When we last spoke to him he was on his way over to her house to sample ‘Meat Cooked in Wine’. Kyria Maria was going to prepare some sweets for the occasion.
Another reader reports that she tuned in on what she believed was a crime. A pathetic female voice was moaning, Ί can’t any more! He is tormenting me! In the end he is going to kill me!’ This was followed by a crash in the background, a blood curdling scream, scuffling, and crying. Just as our informer was about to hang up and call ‘Emergency 100’, the woman returned to the phone and a disinterested male voice asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘He knocked over his glass of milk’, was the reply. Far from having been a murder, it was a wifely mid-morning report to a bored husband at work about their two-year old’s antics.
Meanwhile from OTE has come another announcement. They are about to introduce a new service guaranteed to tie up the service permanently. It is called ‘Dial a Fairy Story’ and will begin in the next few months. By merely dialling 196 the younger set can tune into a fairy tale — assuming they do not get a crossed line and another recipe from Kyria Olga. Anyway, our favourite fairy tale begins, ‘Once upon a time we got a right number…’
The Rewards of Panic
OUR FRIEND Kostas used to be a healthy, hysterical, middle class male who worried constantly, carefully weighed every investment in the hope of outwitting the economic forces, and regularly developed ulcers. In the good old days before the stock market went into its tailspin, he used to call his broker several times a day ordering him to buy and sell at the slightest sign of a lurch in the market.
We bumped into him the other day as he was examining a store front in downtown Athens and approached him with some hesitation. In view of recent developments in the economic sector here and abroad and the panic that has regularly gripped Athenians, sending them scurrying to the grocers, we expected to find Kostas reduced to a stammering idiot. Much to our astonishment he was not only calm, he looked downright happy. We asked for an explanation which he readily gave.
Unable to decide what direction the economy would take after the Junta took over in 1967, he panicked, liquidated his assets and invested in property in Kifissia. At the insistence of his wife — and much against his better judgement because he was convinced that costs were unnaturally inflated — he built a house on the property. It was completed just before construction costs soared. To placate his wife who wanted to move into it, he bought her an elaborate set of gold jewellery from Lalaounis. As a result of these investments, and the tidy income he draws from renting his house to Americans, he is now worth a small fortune.
Looking very smug and self satisfied, he proceeded to deliver his coup de grace. It seems that during one of the war panics that gripped Athens last summer he lost his head completely and raced around the city buying up all the non-perishable foods he could lay his hands on. From this source alone he received an unexpected windfall as food prices have continued to rise. Now, after careful soul-searching, he has decided that the panics are bound to continue and he is opening a supermarket.
We are happy for our old friend and were all the more delighted when we came across an article in Ta Nea by Nikos Kambanis who offered some sound advice to would-be grocers. We have translated it in part and produce it here for the benefit of Kostas and any of our readers who may have been considering expanding their activities into this area:
If you are planning to start a supermarket or just a grocery store in an Athenian neighbourhood and wish to fill it up with customers on the day of its opening, don’t bother to advertise or to print invitations. It’s an unnecessary cost. Just go to the nearest kiosk, buy a pack of cigarettes, tell the owner, in confidence, that they have just recalled the leave of a relative of yours who is a first lieutenant in the army, and that it sounds a bit suspicious. Don’t bother to say anything else. Take the cigarettes and go. The kiosk owner will tell ten of his customers that he has certain information that they have cancelled all leave of military personnel and that at any moment we will have general mobilisation in view of the forthcoming war. The kiosk owner’s ten customers will then rush off to tell one thousand of their acquaintances to turn on their radios at once in order to hear the government’s proclamation of war. These thousands will tell all their friends that the Evros military operation has already begun. By this time enough people will have been informed. They will circulate the news that they have heard with their own ears the sirens announcing an air raid, that the first naval battles and the first dogfights have taken place, and that our gallant forces have already captured Houlia Hozigit, the Turkish equivalent of our own Aliki Vouyouklaki. From there on you may relax and enjoy the pleasure of a merchant who sees his store being swamped by millions of customers buying anything that they can get their hands on that is edible.
