Greece’s deferred crisis

I am sitting in a busy café in Athens’s fancy Kolonaki district, watching the city’s elite stroll by in their well-fitting couture jeans, as the afternoon sun shimmers off the dusty streets. The women are weighed down by that most delightful of burdens — shopping bags from the local FENDI shop — and the latte I have just ordered comes at the recession-defying price of five euros.  

The regular demonstrations, which block the city centre and bring the police out in force, are now greeted with resignation rather than concern. It may take a little longer to travel home when the shops close -– which they do mid-day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays (on Sundays they are closed all day) — but summer is on its way. If this is a city in crisis I am sorry that I did not visit in earlier Dionysian times.

Most popular

Melanie McDonagh

When will the BBC stop adapting Julia Donaldson books?

Yet at the same time most people know the country is heading towards a severe crisis.