In the early ’50s, before the transistor radio had arrived in Athens and before electricity had arrived in most villages, it would be rare of a day (and especially of a night) not to hear wherever one was in city or country, ‘live’ voices raised, expressing the longings and laments, the hopes and sorrows that lived in the songs of Vassilis Tsitsanis.
In moments of nostalgia or irritation, Athenians complain that the uncontrolled growth of their city has deprived them of the intimacy of a small capital while providing them with all the inconveniences of a megalopolis and none of its compensations.
A visitor arriving in Athens in the mid-fifties might easily have been struck by a certain resemblance which so many young women in the streets bore to one another.
Business is tough. What with increasing costs in paper, labor, postage, electricity, typesetting, printing, and all the other services that go into making a magazine, it’s a small miracle that so many make it to the newsstands each issue, especially since it seems to be a rule that revenues never rise as fast as the costs.
Writing this month’s column fills one with a special sense of responsibility; for, since July 1, “Our Town” is no longer the noisy, dusty, crowded, smelly and otherwise disagreeable city we have been used to. For the next six months, all these trivial inconveniences will fade before the city’s new glorious status as the “Capital of Europe.”
Last month’s merriment began right on the first of May. Being May Day, when leftists gather to demonstrate and rightists disperse to pick flowers, and being a Sunday besides, there began an official rescheduling of deferred holidays that snowballed into a Commercial glacier. For over two weeks few transactions which an economist might call profitable could take place.
Easter, with its message of hope and salvation, is the greatest feast of the Greek Orthodox calendar.
