Greece’s beauty masks untold poverty

I’ve long been drawn to sketchiness. In the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, I always preferred the dodgy and slightly dangerous old-town Piazza area to the trendy and sanitised Bole area next to the international airport. But even by my sketchy-embracing standards, it was hard not to find the grim state of Athens deflating.

After all, this is the cradle of Western civilization. Now it appears to be the graffiti capital of the Western world. The luridly coloured scrawls are everywhere; Greek grannies air carpets over balconies marred by multi-coloured tags and swirls. The Parthenon temple still looks mighty grand atop the ancient Acropolis citadel dominating the skyline in the city centre, but down at street level there are a lot of people who look plain hard up and downtrodden. The tell-tale signs are hard to miss — the lined faces and permanent frowns, the hastened ageing, the dishevelled clothes.

Waiting for an ATM, an older gentleman with a small dog in front of me took so long, continually starting again and re-entering his info, that eventually I was driven to ask if I could help.