Those who leave and those who remain

Text published in Greek in amagi.gr site in January 2017

Serb Zeljko Joksimovic did not just fill up the Lisinski concert hall, here in downtown Zagreb, last December, but also made a second, extra appearance. The pop singer's success in the Istanbul Eurovision contest in 2004, above Sakis and below winner Ruslana, is due to the twelve-point scores obtained from most ex-Yugoslav countries - among which the bitterly neighboring Croatia. The Serbian minority, now counting some two hundred thousand inhabitants, probably didn't determine the outcome of televoting. Just six years after the last border arrangement between the two countries -the return of troubled Vukovar to Croatia, in 1998- Zeljko in his way helped bridge some gaps - and continues along the same path, also doing duets, as with Bosniak Haris Djinovic and, recently, Croat Toni Cetinski.

Their common works are sung in a language which, to avoid hassle, you'd better call BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian). The limits of rapprochement are felt when you realize how old-fashioned, even unpopular, the formerly familiar term "SerboCroat" has become. Linguist Claude Hagege («On the death of life and languages») writes that the desire for differentiation may justify the identification of languages as separate, even if mutual comprehension still remains. In national divorces, as in human split-ups, there is usually the one who remains and the one who leaves; in the case of former Yugoslavia, those who left - the Croats - made the relatively more intense effort to hammer the identity of their new society using language (too) as a tool. How fresh these efforts are is something I can see in the difficulty of some people to get used to the Croatian month names, which replaced the known Roman ones and are associated with agricultural economy, nature and weather conditions (grass in April/travanj, scythe in July/srpanj, chill in November/studeni).

Those who remained after 1991 in the country formally called Yugoslavia, now that the scorched earth of the Dinaric Alps and southern Pannonian plain is cooling down, speak of the onetime brothers with a barely perceptible sense of superiority. They remind me somewhat of the references by Turks to the old times when "we all lived together" (Muslims and infidels) in the Empire, harmonically but still under the undisputed ruler. The anger of the Croat that left is mirrored in the complaint of the Serb that remained - or stuck, one may sometimes think - in the past. Although the leader of the Partisan and post-war Yugoslavia was a Croat (with a Slovene mother), his birthplace of Kumrovec is one of Croatia's few places where one will see his memorabilia on sale, in the small part of the village that has been converted to a folk monument. On the contrary, in Serbia nostalgia for the Tito era - as well as anything old and glorious - is much more evident: from the peddlers in the Knez Mihajlova pedestrian street of Belgrade, where the marshal is on display next to Putin, to the very flag of the Serbs, showing a crown that has not been officially worn by a head of their new nation-state.

We Greeks are now the "brother people" — the expression used by the taxi driver in my first visit to the Serbian capital, before he demonstrated to me his deep knowledge of my country's northern half and its shores. If the Serbs left from something, this was the Dalmatian coast, in which a Belgrade licence plate (or the use of the Serbian word for bread, hleb instead of kruh) can become a red rag. The Adriatic may be closer to Belgrade than the Aegean is, however the masses of Serbia (and FYR Macedonia) systematically visit our seas for years now. Croats, on the other hand, do not. Their Greece is that of the Westerner: the cradle of civilization, which first left its mark on the coastal area long before the Slavs' ancestors descended to the Balkans. Their islands may not boast the sandy beaches of Greek ones nor their size (each of the two biggest is approximately as large as Zakynthos), however they are next to them so they will hardly think of neglecting them so that they can explore ours.

Self-sufficient and brotherless, that's how they tend to feel as long as their independence is, still, fresh. However, the peoples of former Yugoslavia have ties that are not completely severed; some old links remain or are even revived, not just thanks to ear-friendly tunes and good-looking artists. Joint enterprises among Serbs and Croats are no longer a rare occurrence, nor are mutual invitations to scientific conferences; even the Serbian minority party has declared its support to the current Croatian government, a development signaling hope in a region where people my age are war veterans. Maybe it will be a while before we see again basketball brothers like those of the great "plavi academy", the legendary Yugoslav national team up to 1991 - as immortalized in the excellent film "Once Brothers" by Michael Tolajian on the friendship between Vlade Divac and the late Drazen Petrovic. However - and despite reaction in the beginning - basketball's Adriatic League is a living reality: this supranational championship features the best teams from the countries of the onetime common homeland: those who remained, those who left - and those who somehow found each other again.

Karlovac(i) talk

Bottlenecks cause trouble.

Four rivers merge at Karlovac, Croatia. The Kupa (ending up at the Sava who in turn meets the Danube) and its tributaries bring down the waters of the Dinaric col in parallel flows. The area often experiences flooding, especially when snow melts.


But the town is also at a geopolitical bottleneck, not just a hydrological one. It is 15 km away from Slovenia and 50 from Bosnia, twice a border town despite being at the heart of the country. It was an outpost from its very foundation, by a Karl of the Habsburgs who had to face the Ottoman spearhead in the vicinity. Hence it was exemplarily fortified, with moats preserved today as a six-ray park known as Zvijezda, the star.


Only during the years of united Yugoslavia had Karlovac ceased being next to a national border. Many people didn't know it or confused it with the Karlowitz of the namesake treaty (this one is in modern-day Serbia, they aren't identical). Locals seem to have preserved historical memory. Before the attack of the "Yugoslav National Army" broke out, inhabitants smelt the gunpowder. In the autumn of 1991, the defence front of Croatian forces was at the southernmost of four rivers (the Korana). The town still hasn't recovered from the damage to its industrial production. 

Karlovac bus station during the days of 1991

Karlovac is peaceful but also melancholic nowadays. The current serene impression (close to dead quiet) on the road dividing the bus and train stations has no relation to the bombed scenery in the photo from 1991. In the main square, the Catholic and Orthodox churches coexist but are almost hidden from the visitor - standing there without info signs, like relatives who got sour just before the party and forget to introduce themselves to guests.  

St. Nicholas Orthodox church (left) and Holy Trinity Catholic church (right). Karlovac, Croatia

In a timid attempt to open up to the world, Karl's town hosted a small exhibition on the day of Croatia's accession to the E.U., in 2013. Perhaps because - apparently - there is no "sister town" yet, the exhibition presented several other European cities as related due to homonymous names. All, but one, are related to some Karl [Charles] - a different one from the Austrian that founded Karlovac in the 16th century (as Karlstadt), but never mind.
 

To make the exhibition bigger, however, the organizers included the glorious Karlovasi of the Eastern Aegean in the honoured cities. I confess that as a Samian I had been impressed by the similarity of names when I first heard of the Croatian town at the time of the Yugoslav wars. Now that my island's second town has become known here, it may be worth for history researchers to add one more possibility to the mystery of its name, for which no single explanation has proven satisfactory so far - "karlı ovası" is in bad Turkish and supposed to mean snow-clad plain, which is hard to witness on Samos, whereas an etymology related to settlers from Ikaria island, "(I)Kario-va-si", sounds equally implausible too.
 

I cannot tell if Karlovac, founded shortly before Karlovasi was first recorded, had been a source of inspiration for Samos settlers. Imitation is not just a modern habit; it was not uncommon back then either. The only certainty is that, 400 years later - i.e. in the early 1900s - Karlovasi was the only island town on the Aegean that boasted a specific transport means, one that has been historically associated with the urban milieu of the onetime Austro-Hungarian domain. Tram, in its horse-drawn variety, existed prior to the war in Karlovasi, as in Karlovac. Can this be just a coincidence?

Horse-drawn tram at Karlovac

Dalmatian motorways

Published here in Greek on 18 April 2015

The new [then deputy] minister of infrastructure kept flattering those fellow citizens still naively believing in the abolition of tolls (and bailouts) by a single-clause law.

Even an inquiry committee to investigate the alleged scandal could be set up, who knows. For the time being, the government's only achievement on the matter is the reappearance of protesters enforcing free passage with lunchtime daytrips, especially as the weather improves - the struggle being continued in the next hours at seaside ouzo-restaurants (damn' crisis).

This whole anti-toll movement has a very interesting history. To many, it is identified with Syriza - and justly so. Several of today's MPs used to lead the dynamic actions after 2010. A separate "Won't Pay" movement's support got almost wholly absorbed by the new strong left-wing pole in the repeat election of 2012. 

Nevertheless, the 2008 pioneer was not a Syriza member, not back then at least. The Pasok man from Kalavryta, a former MP and prefect, appeared almost out of nowhere, preparing the ground. By invoking an outdated European directive, early refuseniks claimed that no toll should be levied on the Corinth-Patras route. 

Shortly thereafter, the concession agreement - passed by a large majority in Parliament - incorporated the existing State tolls to the funding scheme of the new motorway to be constructed. In exactly the same way (via a parliamentary process studied since 2002 and hardly a novel one), the State's operating rights on four other motorways were transferred at the same time (2007-2008) to private special-purpose companies.

This whole process didn't give rise to a serious left-wing and/or patriotic reaction. Local MPs and local authority leaders were almost unanimously happy that the motorways would be "made". People trusted the private sector, judging from the first generation of such projects. Construction progressed fast, service and safety were improving - and tolls were being paid without complaints. International finance parties acknowledged the existence of a "toll culture" in the country.

A driver wouldn't examine, for example, what exactly he was paying for through the State-run tolls, for almost half a century. "Children's fares" were an open secret, as were other frauds, part of an unhealthy management reality and - as revealed later by the State's auditor Mr Rakintzis - bad corporate governance.

There was no crisis in 2008, Greeks didn't sense that their incomes were being reduced or that they would have to be economical. Therefore, the rates of 0.04 EUR per kilometre (plus inflation and VAT) didn't appear excessive. Nor were they, compared to the rest of Europe, with which we were anyway converging in terms of purchasing power. 

Naturally, the gradual abolition of an all-purpose redistributional fund - and its replacement by bank accounts financing specific projects under clear conditions - was not a welcome development for everyone. How could one support, however, a non-transparent and outdated model.

The golden opportunity arose in 2009 when, with the first dark clouds amassing over the horizon of the Greek economy, Pasok candidates did not hesitate - despite having themselves voted for the concession agreements - to promise cheaper tolls.

And when recession started, from 2010 onwards, to show its teeth, the torch was passed on to the leftists who, taking advantage of the Pasoki's inability to make good on their promises, simply raised hell.

Local leaders joined too, asking for exemptions, jumping on the bandwagon and highlighting certain local shortcomings of the toll structure, who for its biggest part nevertheless achieves an optimal balance between construction cost and the required distance-based proportionality.

Despite commitments made in late 2013 (as concession agreements were amended) to correct these local issues, the reactions have since been provoked as well by the new political heroes: regional prefects. This is now a cross-party movement: the person who introduced the original concession agreements to Parliament (under the New Democrats) now calls tolls a plague!

Social envy is a key ingredient of reactions. It is clear that the liquidity of concession projects is being eyed-upon by public bodies which, for various reasons, cannot achieve something comparable. A revival of the infamous bucket-fund would probably be convenient for those agencies.

Abolition of tolls would mean the end of concession projects, but this minor detail is overlooked for now. A "smarter" variation calls for maintaining the contracts until the end of construction and then write these debts "on the snow". A less obvious, but equally important, detail is the need to maintain the motorways themselves, in whichever way their construction would be funded. Some have started labelling the current maintenance regime a luxury, as if "using a dog leash made of sausages" - despite the admittedly overwhelming improvement in quality during the concession years. 

A better dog metaphor would be the Dalmatians, purchased in huge quantities thanks to the namesake movie - only to be abandoned as soon as kids got bored of them. In 2005 everybody asked for "motorways everywhere", far beyond the Greece 2010 strategic plan (itself impossible to materialize in full, due to the crisis). Karpenisi, for example [a small town in mountainous central Greece], would be at the intersection of two major highways - one along the Megdovas river and another across the Veloukhi mountain. Populists (sometimes sons of modernist political families) currently engaging in toll-bashing had better tell the public how they intend to fund the projects - not the irrational ones they still promise or adopt, but the ones currently being built with a thousand hurdles and struggling to stay decent. 

Solidarity

Greek version first published on 14 March 2015.

Poland is the answer to a lot of things.

As, for example, to the question, "Which country was simultaneously attacked by all its neighbours, along a frontier thousands of kilometres long in total?"

For what took place in 1939 was not just an attack to Danzig (today's Gdansk) by the western/northern neighbour, Hitler's Germany.

But a concerted invasion from the other two points of the horizon as well. The new, pro-German Slovakia from the south - and the Soviet Union from the east.

Proportionally to its population, Poland paid the highest toll compared to any other country in the Second World War. It is estimated that it lost 6 million people (out of a total of 35 million). Some of the most tragic cases of human carnage have to do with Poles (e.g. the officers murdered by Beria's NKVD at Katyn) or occurred on Polish ground (such as the large concentration camps).

For two years, the basic "Nazi collaborators" were the appliers of state socialism in Moscow. Only when they were attacked themselves did they denounce the alliance with the "bad" socialism, the national one (hence "nazi", from "Nationalsozialismus") and tried to lead the international antifascist struggle. After June 1941, spontaneous hammer-and-sickle rebel movements grew rapidly (e.g. Greece's EAM National Liberation Front didn't exist before September 1941).

And when the German defeat was imminent, Poles weren't at all discussed in Stalin and Churchill's "percentage agreements". Soviets kept the territories east of Brest (todays Belarus) and shifted Poland westwards, by handing over Pomerania and Silesia that were captured from the receding Germans. They controlled Poland for 45 years, as it was "too distant" for others to claim it - only the Pope might have been interested, but as Stalin wondered, "how many divisions did he have?"

Nevertheless, when - following 35 rather quiet years of Soviet influence to Warsaw (a city that gave its name to the "Warsaw Pact" i.e. eastern bloc) - the first Polish Pope was elected at the Vatican, something did change. Shortly afterwards, Poles were cheered up when the Solidarity trade union came to the forefront at Gdansk (ex Danzig). Lech Walesa's popularity led to a repeat of Soviet interventions against skittish allies, which had occurred in near-perfect 12-year cycles (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 - the very last one on themselves, with the coup against Gorbachev in 1991, just before their collapse). This time, in 1981's Poland, martial law was declared under Jaruzelski, so that Solidarity would be crushed.

And here may be the answer to another question - why Pole seems to confuse so much some of our compatriots - such as the minister who "coordinates the government's work", while he should rather coordinate some mangled historical information inside his head (he recently said that Poles "cooperated" with Nazi Germany, in the framework of a paranoid and harmful anti-Germanism promoted by Greece's new leadership).

For at that time (1981) we had again a political change in our country. The first foreign-policy crisis of the new Andreas Papandreou government was our differentiation from the rest of the EEC (the other 9 countries back then), who wanted to apply sanctions against the Jaruzelski regime.

Asimakis Fotilas (father of a likeable young politician of today, by the way) was Deputy Foreign Minister when he took off after a European meeting - in which he had, "wrongly" as it turned out, supported the communiqué. Upon landing in Athens, he had already "placed himself" out of the cabinet.

Andreas Papandreou wanted the support of the anti-rightwing bloc, nurturing EAM's memories. For that reason, he had decided to adopt a stance that satisfied Soviets and pro-Soviets, under fire then by those who were both anti-American and democratic. 

I remember a Greek Communist Party (KKE) wall writing saying that "Poland will not become Chile", implying that Jaruzelski thwarted a supposed capitalist "reactionary" takeover of Poland. This was a somewhat odd claim, though, at the time that Poland had a junta, a socialist one of course, but equally uniformed to that of Pinochet. 

Plain folk, on the other hand, were so confused that I doubt whether any intended message was passed to the supposed target audience. The following summer, a relative of mine, in the broader left-wing camp, proudly praised Poles, for bravely daring to raise banners at Spain's football stadiums, in the 1982 World Cup, "against the junta" - meaning Solidarity's banners, which in essence said the same thing. 

Years passed by, we met Poles for a while in their small, quiet immigrant community (before the Albanian influx), around Michail Voda Str. in Athens; and several years later as partners in the enhanced European Union. They joined the "club" later than we did, and yet their former Premier is now head of the European Council. I think we envy them for that too, as well as for their overall decent standing at the international stage, despite their having suffered more in total. Going a long way back, we would even owe them a little bit of gratitude for their king, who expelled the Ottomans and ended the Vienna siege. Coming back to the present day, it would suffice in my opinion if we could just admire them a bit, instead of envying them. And, in any case, respect them a little more, avoid offending them by claiming that they were "Nazi collaborators" at a time when we are about to turn Europe upside-down on the pretext of our own resistance.

Five Greek flavours in Denmark

The Danish "Rion-Antirion" Straits 

The "Sound" between Copenhagen and Malmoe is the narrowest entry point to the Baltic. In Scandinavian tongues it is called Øresund, as we learned thanks to the cable-stayed bridge inaugurated in 2000. The øre prefix means (a) gravel beach and (b) one cent of the Danish krone. Maybe more than a coincidence: there was a price for passage through these straits. According to legend, the king controlled traffic from the Helsingoer fortress (Hamlet's Elsinore, that is), shooting with the guns in order to warn pirates and other would-be free-riders - and surcharged the gunning costs on top of the toll rate. Today, the bridge [of a similar type to that of Rion-Antirion in Greece] has made Malmoe a suburb of Copenhagen (the two downtown areas are within 6 train stations from one another - barely an hour's ride). Helsingoer still serves a part of cross-channel car traffic via the once-busy ferry; at the same time [and contrary to the two fortress towns at Greece's Rion and Antirion] it has remained attractive, not just for the Shakespearean palace but also for the exceptional marine museum and cultural centre at the premises of the old shipyard.

 

 

Ja sou, ti kanis?

My home island of Samos happens to be a favourite holiday destination among Danes. No idea if this is related to the old local flag, used during Samos' autonomy period (1834-1912), which looked like a cross between the Greek and Danish emblems. In any case, there is a centrally-located restaurant called "Samos" near Copenhagen's Cathedral. We found nice and reasonably-priced food there, with tzatziki served in all dishes, plus paper-napkins featuring basic Greek vocabulary, allowing some basic tourist-friendly vocabulary to prospective Greece visitors - such as "ena uso parakalo" for "one ouzo please".

 

My royal(ist) love affair

The combed hair is unmistakable, despite the dim screenshot (and the equally dim collective memories). At Amalienborg, one of the numerous palaces of "Europe's oldest kingdom", there is a special room dedicated to the marriage of Anna-Maria, sister of today's Danish queen, to the pictured gentleman - Greece's then king Constantine (also a descendant of a Danish royal house). The screen shows the official 1964 wedding movie (a similar one is to be found here). It is a high-quality film - reportedly the most widely shown one in Copenhagen that year - in which the royal yacht, after passing through the Corinth canal, lands near Athens, where the royals are welcomed by a very tall George Papandreou [grandfather of the recent namesake Greek leader], Greece's then prime minister. Just one year later, the polite relationship between king and PM were no longer there; Greece's parliamentary monarchy entered a crisis with no exit, terminated only by its abolition through the 1974 plebiscite. 

Our citizenship

Whatever the changes to secular regimes, faithful Christians look forward to the true citizenship, which according to the Apostle Paul "is (only) in heaven", as quoted on the Greek inscription at the building of Copenhagen's Lutheran Diocese - at Nørregade 11, opposite Our Lady's Cathedral. This epistle had been sent by Paul to the residents of the northern Greek town of Philippi [near Kavala] (Philippians 3:20).

















Always on my mind

George Papandreou the grandson had spoken about [Greece capable of becoming] a "Denmark of the south"; however, Scandinavia had already been connected for a long time with the specific political family and the broader centre-left spectrum. Andreas Papandreou was based in Sweden for his resistance activities against the Greek dictatorship; nevertheless, Denmark had a fair share of the action as well. In 1968, a onetime Greek Embassy employee named Mavrogenis was murdered at a forest near Copenhagen, apparentlly by Greek junta agents. How apt, therefore, that one day after grandson George announced his latest political party, we saw at Helsingoer a poster for Carmina Burana, a musical theme associated in the past with rallies of the seminal political party of Pasok, which was founded by Andreas P. and had dominated Greek politics in the post-junta period.

 

Why I (still) don't want U" - The need for a new Athens map of fixed-track transport

Where not a single spade has been used, there is time to prevent mistakes. I am referring to the U-shaped line, part of the Athens metro planning for nine years as if nothing has changed. It was recently announced that, with a bit of good will (i.e. cash and final designs), the 12 km between Galatsi and Goudi are feasible [see link]. The goal seems down-to-earth, just one-third of the original 33 km, certainly more realistic than the outrageous "paper drills" of the 2009 Regulatory Plan [see Link].

But I still "don't want U" [see link], same as in 2010. For more or less the same reasons.

- In 2005 (and as late as the end of 2009) we were thinking that money is there. Securitization, i.e. loans to be paid back by future revenues, was in fashion. On the Athens Ring Road's (Attiki Odos') handover to the Greek State tolls would be maintained so as to pay back the loans for construction of a giant metro line [see link]. This (theoretical) ease inspired design largesse. That's over now.

- Athens' current fixed-track network is still underperforming. A few days ago the minister, the same minister that (again) promised the fourth metro line, inaugurated a suburban rail station at Tavros [see link]. (Parenthesis: Fortunately, thanks to the damned George Papandreou, the same minister is  now responsible for both urban and suburban trains - there used to be separate ministries for Public Works and for Transport). Unfortunately, trains pass only every two hours through this new station, located in a neighbourhood just outside downtown Athens [see link]. Instead of being the metro of west and north Athens, as it could, the suburban rail is virtually unexploited. This cannot last forever. Someone, sometime will put on the map this worthwhile fixed-track network. And they will see that it covers the centre, the port, the airport as well as the business node of Maroussi. Not bad. If the suburban rail is taken into acccount, one can see the metro network's "shortcomings" in a different light. Different kinds of questions will then be posed, such as:

(1) Is it worth building a new metro line along Kifissias Ave. when the suburban rail can take you directly from [Maroussi's] OTE building and Skyscraper City to Athens and Piraeus?

(2) How "deprived" of a metro are the working-class neighbourhoods west of the Kifissos River, given that the metro reaches Peristeri, a new line (under construction) will link Aegaleo to Piraeus and there is also the suburban line from Piraeus to Liossia and Menidi?

From that viewpoint, only a few areas remain to be covered. Practically we are left with the densely-populated Kypseli, north of the centre, and the zone either side of Syngrou Ave. [see link]. These two could be linked by a fixed-track route passing through the centre.

I've got news for you. This route already exists and it is called the tram. Today it links the seafront and Nea Smyrni with Syntagma Sq. In conjunction with the redesign of Panepistimiou Str. (whichever form this may take) it will reach Aigyptou Sq. [near the archaeological museum]. By extending it northwards, it is possible to serve - gradually and at a fraction of the cost for an equivalent metro length - an area dependent for decades on jammed trolleybuses. If tram now causes an allergy similar to that which led to the abolition of its old Athens network after 1955, we don't have to go as far as Brussels and its pre-metro, i.e. the light-rail network that evolved into a metro [see link]. In Athens' Plakentias to Airport stretch we have the first successful track-sharing case Greece. A fixed-track network (on condition of a normal gauge, i.e. the metric network of the late 19th century, fit for the museums, is not included) may accommodate a large spectrum of trains. If a line (open to modifications) is in place, everything is feasible, at the right time.

The U line exists on paper since 2005. It replaced the metro design's original plans for branches of the main lines towards Galatsi and Maroussi [see link] - branches being problematic from an operational viewpoint. With time the U line itself acquired, of course, its own branch, once the heroic Vyronas municipality demanded to have metro service. Moreover, I sadly saw that the recent announcement featured a repetition of the bad example applied in the current SW metro terminal of Haidari a.k.a. "Agia Marina" [see link - i.e. an edge-of-town station next to the Aegaleo mountainside. This is now to be replicated across the town, with a station to be named Near East - whereas Far East would be a  more appropriate name, at this remote location between the Shooting Range and Mount Imittos.

To put it plainly: A metro is expensive to build and therefore it is customary to align it amid sufficient bread - i.e. along busy, radial routes in densely built-up areas. 

In order to make courageous decisions, it is important to take a comprehensive look, not a partial one. As already mentioned, a proper map will be of assistance - as pictured but with an equivalently thick line also for the suburban rail (not the thin one used on purpose in order to underplay its potential). The essence behind such a map would be the integration of urban and suburban fixed-track services in one single body, not the exception of the former Greek Railways (OSE) - the latter to be incorporated in a supposedly lucrative package, heard of for years but not visible yeet. We won't live to see a new 2004. A lot of tears were shed for the crumbling stadiums ten years after the games. As a transport engineer I hope others too will speak out about the need to get disengaged from pharaonic project-mongering and to fully utilize the, not insignificant, networks our country obtained at a time when we all believed it was entering the next level.

All links are in Greek

 

Let's get energetic

The Greek version of this post appeared on 27 Dec 2012

A few days before Christmas, on a Piraeus street, without a single grill house at a radius of at least 100 metres, I thought a grill party was going on. It was a bit less tasty than that, for my nose.

There was an explanation for this, my fellow-traveller gave it to me. It seemed reasonable. A few evenings later, I got convinced. It was Christmas Eve and the same smell dominated the south Athens exterior coastal highway - quite far from the zone of influence of any souvlaki-house.

I parked my car outdoors in Kallithea, a southern Athens suburb full of blocks-of-flats (with scarce indoor parking spaces). One and a half days later, the windscreen had ashes on it.

Four-plus-million-strong Athens now burns far more wood than ever. Reduced incomes and increased taxation have forced many households (and companies) to limit consumption (which is not necessarily a bad idea, the old TV ad with "grandpa in T-shirt" was an exaggeration by all means) while looking for "alternatives" - albeit, ones causing additional problems of their own.

Unfortunately, the consumer's own choices cannot alone lead to greater energy efficiency. For the game is "fixed", regulated by the State through taxation. Equalizing taxation for heating oil with that  of vehicle diesel was a violent act. It was also strongly advertised: allegedly for fighting illegal trade (meaning, enforcement had failed); however, they failed to mention that Germany, a generally exemplary country, is one of several countries that still apply differential taxation (vehicle diesel is generally 50% more expensive than heating oil in the EU's largest economy).

It is not absurd that so many people turn to "something cheaper", such as:
- Natural gas (sometimes LPG too) - also subject to a totally controlled oligopoly, the State can do pretty much whatever it wants regarding taxation.
- Electricity - convectors, heat pumps, even "silly" energy-devouring fan heaters or winter airconditioners. There too, the Public Power Corporation - precisely, those Frankenstein companies / authorities created by so-called liberalization - maintains a State monopoly and does whatever it wants.
- Wood or "pellets" for fireplaces, stoves and other "traditional"-style, smelly heaters. Sometimes, sophisticated solutions (or makeshift ones) are being applied, in the spirit of "central" heating (hot water or air flowing in the whole home). At other times it's simply that standards get lowered, so that we feel hot in the living room, get rolled up in our bedrooms and simply shiver in the bathroom. Some people call this wretchedness. Worse, the need for hard savings leads also to the degradation of other quality standards, not just comfort:
(1) Safety: Cleanness and maintenance require cost (and care). Things were simple with the mass product called "central heating in blocks-of-flats". New tricks come with new knowledge to be mastered.
(2) Environmental impact: Shall we see again centrally-placed electronic signs informing us about the values of pollutants? Shall the overall impacts (at town and even country levels) of this dramatic change in habits ever be measured?
(3) Energy efficiency: At the end of the day, in a world seeking a more viable balance between energy production and consumption, especially in a country still based on imports for covering its energy needs (oil, gas), taxation-inflicted distortions can hardly lead to efficiency. I will consume what (seemingly) costs me less, which nevertheless does not necessarily lead to wiser use of (truly) limited resources.
To be fair, distortions are caused not only by taxation but also by the very oligopolistic structure of the energy market (the oil cartels et cetera) as well as political tensions and fixations.
- "Taboos" (e.g. nuclear energy) are not uniquely Greek - see Merkel's "green reaction" after Fukushima.
- "Green growth", too, wasn't of course only George Papandreou's vision. Here, it's true that the lack of policy was masked under an impressive new ministry title (headed by Tina Birbili), with "Climate Change" added to its name; also, solar energy "entrepreneurship" was promised "to the people" (not to mention the recycling factories which, according to some Pasok people back in 2009, would serve all of the Balkans - not an energy issue admittedly, hence no further mention here); finally, an energy certificate requirement came into force, little more than a job opportunity for several fellow-engineers with decreasing workloads during the recession. Whether our homes become more "energy efficient" just because an engineer spends a couple of hours - for 200 EUR - to get a "paper" issued, this you can judge for yourselves.

Last but not least: the unspeakable behaviour (roguish farting, pardon my French - full of methane) of some politicians and journalists towards an MEP who dared say that "the king has no clothes", that is, the search for specific energy sources (fossil fuels) will not necessarily lead to economic, environmental or energy benefits for the country. I think that this attitude is part of the package also including "ecologists" bothered by wind generators...