Reuters Fatalism is nothing new in the modern Greek psyche, as reflected by two of the most common expressions to be heard — “Tha doume” and “Ti na kanoume”. The first literally means “We will see”, but could more usefully be translated as “This probably won't happen”. The second, “What can we do?”, means in effect “I agree with you, my friend, but this is Greece, so...” Add to this now a degree of desperation. A one-time resident traveling in Greece today is struck by a kind of resignation among the people, a punctured bravado that borders on embarrassment. The debt crisis and “litotita” (austerity), are taking their toll. The past decade has seen monumental change in Greece as it has moved from the heady optimism of being a euro zone entrant and Olympic Games host to the reality of steep economic decline, chronic debt and reliance on foreign bailouts. There are evident improvements, despite current traumas. But there remain deep-seated problems that may take more than austerity and the threat of default to cure. Greeks are as proud a nation as any other, perhaps more so than many given the ancient golden era and the invention of democracy. But today, the sometimes aggressive bombast that went with that is muted. With 350 billion euros or so in government debt, Greece has become a financial market pariah after a decade of relative boom. It has gone essentially cap in hand to its euro zone partners and the International Monetary Fund just to avoid bankruptcy and have it spill over into the financial system. This has triggered the almost surreal situation in which even mighty global institutions such as Wall Street have been gripped by demonstrations, parliamentary votes and otherwise parochial news in Greece, a country about the size of Alabama. It means that among Greeks — students, farmers, cleaners, shopkeepers and politicians — the pride they felt at being part of the mainstream, no longer the Europe Union's economic basket case, has been dashed. “I wish we weren't in the euro,” said Yiannis Mendrinos, owner of an upmarket shop on the island of Santorini. Such sentiment would have been heresy back at the turn of 2002 when fireworks burst over the Parthenon and Bank of Greece in Athens and Greeks rushed to see euros, not drachmas, spit out of cash machines. Being in the euro zone has not only stopped Greece from devaluing its currency, its traditional method of handling economic crisis, it has also prompted huge price increases over the ensuing period. Greece, pre-euro, was cheap. Today, it is expensive enough to shock a visitor from abroad — and not just because of euro exchange rates that particularly hurt US and UK travellers. Petrol is at 10 to 20 cents a litre higher than it is in euro zone Belgium and Germany. A cappuccino costs the same or more than it does in Paris. Payments to taxis and local “taverna” eateries are no longer the afterthoughts that they used to be. This is not the kind of move to the mainstream that Greeks had envisaged. It has hurt both the crucial tourist industry — about 16 percent of Greece's 230 billion euro economy — and recently individual lives. Rania Pelekanaki, a cleaner in Crete, implied that a trip to the market for just the basics is a quarter or more of her weekly take-home pay. Over the past two years, consumer inflation has risen 7.9 percent, more than three times the 2.3 percent increase in labor costs, although over 10 years salaries rose faster than prices, helping add to Greece's lack of competitiveness. Not all of the money that has been spent and built up the debt, however, has been wasted. Infrastructure in and around Athens is vastly improved from a decade or so ago, mainly because of the 2004 Olympics. The roads to the impressive Eleftherios Venizelos Athens Airport would do any European country proud. The extended Athens Metro is clean enough and quiet enough to shame the equivalents in London, New York or Paris, even if those three are decades older and more extensive. Around the Acropolis, meanwhile, a new museum and walkway actually makes a trip to Athens, as opposed to the islands, pleasant. Politicians such as Yiorgos Farmakis, a vice mayor in Corinth, say that Greeks must embrace a new attitude to work and efficiency. “We must change,” he told Reuters, This was reminiscent of comments made by officials a decade ago when Greece qualified to adopt the euro. “We should not forget about real convergence (with other European economies),” Yannis Stournaras, then the Greek finance ministry's chief economic adviser, told Reuters at the time. Clearly somebody did. It remains to be seen how much difference the current shock to the system will have. Some of the old problems of Greece have not gone away, particularly what George Drakopoulos, general manager of Greece's main tourism industry body SETE, calls “the mentality gap” in the public sector. A customer-facing bus company official launches into an angry tirade against a visitor trying to buy 5.20 worth of tickets with 10 euros. An archeological museum is closed in mid-afternoon with no explanation or signs for tourists when it might be open again. Roads to what should be popular, money-spinning destinations are badly marked, if they are marked at all. Strikes and demonstrations show the depth of resistance to some of the free market initiatives groups such as the IMF insist are necessary for Greece to get back on track. Will Greece overcome it all? Tha doume. __
