by Nikolaos Efstathiou:
(Niko Efstathiou ’14 is in Timothy Dwight College. He’s spending the summer in Athens, Greece, exploring the economic, social, and cultural changes taking place in his home country.)
“I feel like a true Greek god!” whispered the Australian guy sitting next to me while gazing with awe.
He was right. We had just finished climbing the beautiful limestone hill of Lycabettus, located in the center of Athens, and the entire city was spread out below us. The irregular patterns of the white urban buildings blended subtly with the Mediterranean landscape, while the dolphin-torn Aegean was shimmering in the distance. Right next to us was the Parthenon, overlooking the entire city while reminding the brave climbers of the past of the Attica plateau. The view was breathtaking. I couldn’t help wonder if there were some truth to the myth that the goddess Athena, protector of the city, had created the hill as a gift to the Athenians.
The voices of thousands of protesters suddenly brought my wandering mind back to reality. Athena had been kind enough to bestow another gift to the citizens of the city: the ideas of democracy. Below us we could see their paradoxical demonstration. The powerful voices of the so-called “frustrated Athenians” echoed while their slogans scrawled across gigantic banners were distinguishable from the hill: “We are awake, we are active, we are angry,” they read. A fragile economy with an immense budget deficit and years of economic inefficiency on the side of the government has brought the country to its current state of financial and social chaos. “Why should they pay for the crisis the government created?” asked the Australian naively, not realizing that this was exactly what the protesters where chanting.
However, arguably the biggest blow the Greeks have faced is their lost independence, leaving an injured national psyche. The country that once shone as a birthplace of freedom and democracy is now governed by corruption, inefficiency and the bureaucrats of the IMF. “The only thing that’s left is our history!” shouted the crowd, subdued by a feeling of melancholy.
As the sunset painted the sky in the palest shades of pink, I suddenly realized that in front of me lay the epitome of modern Greece — a unique nation poised between history and reality, magic and pragmatism, the divine and the humane. Having experienced a glorious past, Greece is striving to survive its present and forge its future. The shape of that future, as yet unclear, is what I aim to better understand during my summer here.