Confusing Greek mentality

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 23

Confusing Greek mentality

By

ROBIN ROBILLIARD

I had not been long in Athens — that glorious and smoggy megalopolis, home to nearly half of Greece’s nine million people — when I was given timetables for getting the most out of life.

Work until 2.30, home for a big meal and get into pyjamas for a good two-hour sleep. A shower at 6.30 p.m. and you have a whole new day. You can go to a second job or to the theatre and then, in convivial company, to a cafe for another sizeable meal with music, singing and dancing. To bed at about 2 a.m. up by 6 or 6.30.

“This country has suffered so much,” says a civil servant who juggles two additional jobs on alternate afternoons. “We want to be as happy as we can right now!”

Most of the highly placed men now running the country were in exile during the military junta of 1967-74. As children, they had experienced the Metaxas dictatorship. Under German occupation in the Second World War, thousands of Greeks were either executed or died of starvation, then had civil war until 1949 as Leftists and Rightists amongst resistance fighters fought each other.

When the Government tried to decree staggered working hours, to be more in line with other countries (which would have meant most people not starting for home until 4 or 5 p.m.) there were strikes.

Although this was my first visit to Greece, I felt I was coming home. This infuriating, intoxicating country, where the harsh landscape has changed little in 2500 years, moulding the character of the people, touched something in me I recognised.

Within minutes I was using gestures that the landscape seemed to command. “Crikey!” said an American, as from the bus to the city centre we had first seen the Acropolis. “Now I know that I’m in the birthplace of Western thought and culture.” Greeks complain about their buses and how they are trampled nearly to death getting on. I had only to ask where I should get off to involve the whole bus in debate. Every Greek is convinced of his own omniscience. Whatever the subject — science, theology, politics, psychology — every Greek is convinced he is

right. “With 10 million Greeks in the world you have 10 million different opinions,” someone says. Too often, I got off at the wrong place from the bus. Drivers are impatient. Safety belts, now compulsory, are said to be saving the lives of many crash victims who have gone through red lights. “The Government is now planning a law to make it compulsory to stop at red lights,” writes a cynical columnist. In three attempts at using a taxi, I was deterred each time by the driver. They would either tell me the fare would be exorbitant and therefore I should walk, or my destination was too close to need a taxi.

It is a confusing mentality. “Go to someone else, I’m reading my newspaper,” says the man on a shoeshine stand. Athenians devour their newspapers in their perpetual hunger for news, but Greeks read less books per capita than anywhere in Europe. They can’t bear being alone. An Englishwoman married to a Greek who works in Luxemburg, says George’s temperament changes as he crosses the border to Greece. “He’ll start a flaming row, to be forgotten one hour later.”

I ask if it isn’t exhausting, all this emotion. “Not at all. Greeks have to blow up frequently to keep their adrenalin going. A Greek is alive to his fingertips, oozing vitality. He’s effervescent. The Englishman is lymphatic, made for the armchair, the didactic treadmill. That’s the difference between us.”

Failings blame laid on others

George can’t stand Athens for more than four days at a time, but he will retire to Greece. “The most painful experience a Greek can have,” he says, “is to know you are an orphan, alone, in love and away from Greece, and to be away from Greece is the worst of all.”

Greeks, he says, tend to blame everyone else for their failings. “It is dirty habits learnt from the

Turks, they’ll tell you, that they throw rubbish out car windows and pollute the sea. “It is from Greeks living abroad that I hear the most bitter criticism of their homeland’s inhabitants. The Mediterranean charm, which captivates tourists, irritates nationals who have learned order, punctuality and efficiency. “Greeks are individualists,” a migrant says. “The only time they pull together is against a common enemy. Every Greek thinks he’s the most clever, the chief of brains, and that Europeans are stupid. Germans, they will tell you, have no initiative, need to be given orders. And yet all Greeks want to go to Europe to buy things, to get a German wife. They both despise, and admire Europeans.” There is enormous waste due to bureaucratic incompetence. Ministers and advisers are intellectually very high-powered but the intermediate level, low paid and lacking motivation, do not carry things out. A Greek Canadian, persuaded to return to Greece to head a public office, works night and day. “There is no executive strata. You have to do everything yourself.”

I find male civil servants tense, coiled like springs. Promises to set up appointments come to nothing. “People are just hanging on until they can escape Athens for holidays,” someone says. Perhaps they are exhausted from second jobs and late night revelry? Only at the senior level, with the deputy director of the Secretariat of Youth, am I allowed time to sit down. He is urbane, very charming, but with such elaborately spoken English I cannot understand him: “The secretariat’s aim is to transform the reflection into concrete action with the appropriate high rhythm.” More sense is made of papers he provided. Set up in 1985, the secretariat sets out to train youths for jobs, finance youth cooperatives (school canteens, bike mending, pig raising), provide youth legal services. It has produced a youth card for store discounts, put a Youth Charter through Parliament, and hosts international youth congresses. But beneath senior level, I learn, decisions will be made, responsibility will be shunned. By making

the wrong decision, a career could be blighted.

There is also the nervous realisation for the civil service that each change of party in Government brings a change of senior bureaucrats. Civil servants cannot be sacked, but they can be given early retirement or shunted to some distant suburb.

Arrogance extra factor

The opposite of Kefi, the Greek word for high spirits, is anischia, a feeling of disquiet, being worried. In Greece, there is plenty of both. Overriding all this, there is an arrogance in the character in the country which has produced more geniuses than any other in the world. Migrant Greeks criticise the arrogance: "They think that being Greek is enough, that the world owes them a living. Only outside this country, when Greeks are forced to stand on their own feet, to become top businessmen, academics and artists in the United States, professors in West Germany, do they learn rationality, precision and ethics,” says one migrant. But I admire the young Greek god who holds up a stream of traffic with a slight gesture of one hand. This is in fashionable Kolonaki Square, where the talk at pavement cafes is of ski-ing on Mount Parnassos, of getting yachts and holiday homes ready on islands, and of politics. So keen are the Greeks to catch up with Europe’s standard of living (although their industrial revolution started only 20 years ago), many cars have notches for carrying skis which are not yet owned, as a status symbol. It was the French who discovered and developed the skifield on Mount Parnassos, and who run an aluminium smelter; the Soviets about to invest in a second smelter.

“The average Greek,” says a sociology professor, “sees himself as two people. He’s convinced that in his veins runs the blood of the ancient Greeks, from whom he inherits nobility, courage and creativity, while his devious, obstinate and selfish characteristics are Roman. The poet searching for the stars is Greek, the part fighting in the dirt is Roman.”

Poets and linguists

Old-fashioned management and shoddy goods, as well as a leaden bureaucracy, are the main causes of Greece's economic problems. When the Government took over 60 per cent of the 40 largest enterprises because they were in financial difficulties, the idea was to replace out-of-step private owners with professional technocratic managers. Recent studies show that State-run companies are even more badly managed.

Greek businessmen, wearing suits and ties, even in summer heat, prefer to confront each other to do business, not trusting the telephone. A company president will go himself to a Ministry to cut red tape. When businessmen meet for lunch, the conver-

sation is as likely to be about art, poetry or philosophy as high finance. Every educated Greek writes verse. Most businessmen speak French, English, German. You see suave, older Greek men in designer shirts, knifeedged ironed trousers and Italian shoes in the company of oliveskinned beauties. The women aren’t their wives or daughters, but this is the country where a Government minister can take a 20-year-old to a nightclub and be admired for his virility. It is other sorts of scandal that interest a press dependent upon sensation. Newspapers accuse, try and virtually sentence people before they become police suspects. Only recently have innocent victims started to sue. The courts, according to a woman judge, are more or less incorruptible. Greeks are among the most litigious people on earth, with disputes over land and traffic accidents the common cause, plus an unquenchable thirst for drama.

In spite of growing unemployment (10 per cent of the work force), Greece has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world. It is usually foreign women behaving provocatively, who are the infrequent victims of rape. Greek mothers on one island banded together, to put up notices forbidding topless bathing. The risk of shaming family honour, and community pressures (you don’t harm the neighbour who knows you), are deterrents to crime, but with the flood

of village young to the cities — and anonymity — juvenile delinquency and narcotics arrests are increasing. Athens is where everyone wants to be for fun and opportunity. There is unchecked noise, but you don’t see slums. No-one seems to go hungry; Young villagers, studying .or looking for jobs, will receive baskets of food from home. Conversation in Greece is competitive repartee, verbal oneupmanship, with humour barbed to puncture a pose, lie or reputation.

But no Greek will accept a joke about himself: “If you vote for me, I’ll build you magnificent schools,” says a poltician in a campaign speech. “But , we haven’t any children,” the crowd yells back. “Then bring me your wives and I’ll make you some children,” retorts the politician winning the round. I ask a foreign diplomat to explain the fanaticism with politics: “With no meritocracy in the system, politics has a direct affect on your life. If your party is in power, you have more chance of getting what you want — a job for you and the kids, planning permission, the chance to make a deal.”

It is also part of the Greek system that a party revolves around its leader’s image. When that leader dies or retires, the party usually collapses. One is left in no doubt that Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou has the Cabinet in his hands. If you don’t toe the line you are snuffed.

Each time I returned from the islands, those magic places that float above the sea, to gray and gritty Athens, my proprietor’s welcome became increasingly ecstatic. There is a national obsession with hospitality. Greeks judge themselves and their neighbours on the hospitality sweepstakes. If a Greek cannot get his way in an argument, he will threaten not to stay in his opponent’s house on his next visit to that village.

Warm hearts, night safety

Sophie and Pagona, New Zealand Greek sisters who left the country as pre-schoolers with their parents and returned as university graduates to live in Athens, compete to tell me why they love Greece.

"Because of the warm hearts of the people, delight in life lived fully, with all their senses awake. Sure there are annoyances, like the disregard for time, the whole day it takes to get a tin of mum’s cookies out of customs, but it’s safe to walk alone here at night.” The stereotype of male hassling? "It’s very original. When our strait-laced mother was here, visiting from New Zealand, a truck driver yelled out to her ‘I wish you were my mother-in-law!’ ”