Welcome

 

Hello, and welcome to my blog about life and times in Greece.

Living in Greece nowadays necessitates a good dose of humor and a sprinkling of schizophrenia. Many lapse in despair; but Greeks do survival well and never fail to see the funny side of things. Every disaster is followed by a spate of jokes that sprout, overnight, like mushrooms.

One oldie, highlighting the problems of Greeks failing to agree on things political, is the following:

‘What happens when two Greeks get together?’

‘Three political parties.’

This, however, is not meant to be a political, historical, or even factual blog. Those interested in facts can find most Greek papers online in English. This aims to be a collection of vignettes, snippets of life, seen through the eyes of a Greek.

If you are a visitor in a country, or even an expat living there, however implicated or committed, however unable to leave because of a spouse, or work, or the elderly mother-in-law, your perspective is not quite the same. When the locals complain about things, you always tend to feel a tiny bit smug: after all, it’s not really your problem, is it?

But Greece is my problem: my home, my roots, my history. So I felt inspired to comment on what I, and the people around me, are going through – from my own, biased, particular point of view. Things I see, stories I hear, bits I read in the paper. The good, the bad, and the just plain funny.