That all went according to schedule amounted to an act of defiance, necessary for the morale of the people. (Among the first repairs undertaken in the wake of the earthquake had been to the city’s major landmark, the White Tower: not a need of the first order, but important to the city’s spirit.)
This year, the fairgrounds bustled with activity. The number of participants grew to over three thousand, and forty-two countries were represented. There were twenty state pavilions including that of the United Nations, strategically located between the Romanian, Polish, and Hungarian pavilions on one side, and the Austrian and Federal Republic of Germany on the other. The crowds of sightseers contributed to the festive atmosphere with the occasional commotion adding to the excitement, as, for example, when a rumour swept through the crowds that the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Huang Hua, was on the grounds. It turned out that the visitor was Mrs. Hua, in town to call at Vergina, the site of a recently-discovered royal tomb believed to be that of King Philip of Macedon.
The excavations at Vergina have certainly added to the prestige of Thessaloniki, drawing more tourists than ever, especially now that the treasures are on display at the museum located directly across from the fairgrounds. Every autumn, of course, the Nation’s attention is regularly drawn to the northern capital, the location of a number of festivals including, in addition to the Fair, a national and international film festival, and the Dimitria Festival of Music. All of these events come to a head on October 28, OfoDay, when Thessaloniki is the focal point of the official celebrations, in recognition of the gallant effort made by Northern Greeks at the time of the Italian invasion.
A significant footnote to the Fair came during the celebration of International Mercantile Marine Day when the Minister of Merchant Marine announced a new project: the planned creation of a “Europort” in Thessaloniki, a major venture that will link several European waterways and railroad networks, providing them with an outlet to the Mediterranean.
Revelations
SAINT Augustine’s Confessions, describing the pitfalls encountered on the road to redemption, have been a source of inspiration to others who have attempted to follow in his footsteps. Alas, most mortals tend now and again to wander from the straight and narrow path. If widely publicized reports are true, however, it would appear that Stylianos, the Bishop of Preveza, not only meandered along the way but completely lost his sense of direction and proceeded to follow Saint Augustine’s steps in reverse. There are few things more soothing to the soul than a lusty scandal, and one that combines Sex, Church and State invariably sends the spirits soaring. Stylianos, guilty or innocent, has found himself up to his neck in a racy scandal that has inflamed the passions of clergy and laymen alike, and hit the headlines here and abroad.
It all began with an announcement by Minister of Education and Religion Varvitsiotis that he had in his hands evidence of certain extra-ecclesiastical activities of Bishop Stylianos which he was turning over to officials because he considered it his duty “to protect the standing of the Church”. Among the evidence was a coloured photograph purporting to show Bishop Stylianos in a compromising position with a nude woman. In response to this revelation, the eight-thousand-man-strong Association of Orthodox Priests immediately issued a statement declaring that the Bishop should be immediately defrocked.
Archbishop Serafim, the Primate of Greece, called the twelve-man Holy Synod into session and, with Bishop Stylianos present, examined the evidence. Bishop Stylianos, whose bishopric is in northwestern Greece, insisted that the photograph was a forgery, and denied carnal knowledge of the unidentified woman. Indignant, the members of the Holy Synod promptly ejected him from the meeting.
Archbishop Serafim afterwards issued a statement in which he noted that there were a number of details about the photograph and the affair that remained unclear and the matter would have to be studied more carefully. At a subsequent meeting in late September, the prelates again inspected various aspects of the affair and weighed at length Bishop Stylianos’s response. The task of probing the matter further was assigned to Bishop Iakovos of Mytilene (the island of Lesbos) who will submit a report of his investigations to the Synod once he has uncovered the facts.
Bishop Stylianos, whose name means pillar or column, firmly maintains that the photograph is a forgery and part of a communist plot to “undermine my position” — a reference to the fact that he was elevated to Bishop during the dictatorship, and that liberal elements have often called for his withdrawal. Whether or not Bishop Stylianos will be able to sustain his position will depend on Bishop Iakovos’s explorations. There seems little doubt that the Holy Synod will demand further action and that Bishop Stylianos will be brought before an ecclesiastical court. Meanwhile, the Bishop announced that he would take a leave of absence for reasons of ill-health which would inhibit him from carrying out his normal functions.
Men With Little Black Bags
THE pages of the local press are regularly sprinkled with reports of black bags containing a Icing’s ransom being found on sidewalks, in shops, or on the back seats of taxis. Visitors to Greece may be baffled by these news items because they rarely explain why such large sums are travelling about in black bags- in the first place. The accounts focus instead on the human interest side: the reward offered by a grateful owner to the honest individual who turned the money in, the failure of an ungrateful owner to pay a reward, or the occasional bemused report of a bag containing a veritable fortune dutifully handed over to the authorities but never claimed. Individuals who come from countries where honest money is kept in banks, payments and transfers are made via checks, draughts, and other conventional means, and large amounts of money are accompanied by guards or transported in armoured cars, may assume that only “hot” money travels around in such a casual fashion. They may even leap to the conclusion that there is an inordinate amount of shady dealing in our country and that all men carrying black bags are up to no good, an impression we feel compelled to dispel.
The majority of men carrying black bags in the streets of Athens are law-abiding citizens. Many are bill collectors, runners, or clerks carrying large sums of money, all part of an honest day’s work. The remainder are businessmen, lawyers, doctors carrying what they appear to be carrying— briefcases, attache cases, or medical kits containing documents or the tools of their trade. Occasionally their bags may also hold large amounts of money. A physician, for example, may have tucked away with his hypodermic needles and other medical paraphernalia an envelope containing an inordinate sum of money. There is no cause for suspicion, however. Between house-calls and visits to the hospital, he intends to stop off to pay his rent and other monthly expenses, or to pay for a block of flats he is in the process of buying. Conversely, he may have just collected the rent on flats he owns or payment for a piece of property he has just sold.
The explanation for all of this is very simple. The plethora of banks mushrooming around the city notwithstanding, we do not feel comfortable with checks and other pieces of paper masquerading as money, and most of us still feel that the only reliable currency is cold, hard cash. (Up until recently utility companies and most government agencies felt the same way and would accept only cash, but checks have now penetrated the bureaucracy.) To streamline financial transactions, firms hire regiments of runners who spend their days racing around the city with black bags crammed with currency, making and collecting payments. Private citizens usually do their own running. With a good percentage of the nation’s capital . moving around the country every day in little black bags it is not surprising that the occasional one will absentmindedly be left in the back seat of a taxi, or other such place. When the risks of this system are pointed out, the average citizen will reply that the alternatives pose far graver consequences: The banks might collapse or, worse, significant sums of money regularly moving in and out of banks may fan the interest of vigilant tax officers, ever on the trail of the nation’s elusive taxable income.
The custom of transacting business in cash may be unnerving to those unfamiliar with it. This was brought home to us recently when a friend of ours, who had lived abroad for too many years, came into our office on a Friday afternoon in a state close to hysteria, clutching a large package close to his breast, and looking suspiciously over his shoulder. He insisted on seeing us alone, adding to our astonishment that he wasn’t sure he could “trust” the other people in our office. With the door of our office closed—we refused his entreaties to barricade it— he informed us that he had just sold the flat he inherited in Kolonaki. In view of the soaring real estate values in Athens, we assumed he had become slightly deranged to discover that he was a drachma-multimillionaire and well on his way to being a dollar millionaire. He said that, on the contrary, this had delighted him, but he had gone into a state of shock when, at the end of the transaction, the purchaser had nonchalantly handed over the outrageous sum in cash. Depositing the bulky collection of bills in a large, brown envelope, he nervously set off for his bank only to be reminded they were closed and would not reopen until the following Monday. Desperate, he had sought refuge in our office. We explained that we did not have a safe but offered to accompany him home and help him find a secure hiding place for the week-end.
At his house, it took some effort to persuade him it was ridiculous to dig a hole in the backyard and bury the money in cement since the banks would reopen on Monday before the cement dried. He finally settled on hiding it in the loft behind the hot water heater, reassuring himself that thieves were unlikely to haul out a ladder (which he hid, in any case), climb up to the loft, and scrounge around its recesses in search of loot. We refrained from telling him that any thief worth his salt would head directly for the loft since this is the favourite Athenian hiding place, and after making certain that he had enough food supplies for the week-end and all the doors and windows were shuttered, we took our leave and waited until he had barricaded the door with heavy pieces of furniture and called to us that all was well. We are happy to say that although exhausted after his week-end vigil, he made it safely and uneventfully to the bank early on Monday morning and blessedly did not absentmindedly leave his briefcase in the taxi.
