Sundays in Greece

Morning coffee in a balcony in an Athens suburb with bird song, date palms, and orange sky. Mid morning coffee in an outdoor cafe in the quaint ski town (of course) of Arachova. Mid afternoon coffee in Delphi.
On my first day I’m noticing some common themes in Greece: everyone has a balcony, people spend a lot of time sitting outside chatting, smoking, and drinking coffee, no one seems in a hurry, and the streets are as hard to decipher as the written language. Greece reminds me of Colombia in many ways—craggy mountains and broad valleys, cinder block and rebar construction, red tile roofs, unhurried pace, and sweat soaked shirts on my back.

Seemingly plastered onto the steep slopes of Mt Parnassos is the cute, but rather touristy town of Arachova, gateway to Mt. Parnassos ski resort and some interesting art work.

In the tiny village of Agios Germanos on the northern border, the town of has about 130 residents, down from 300 or so. In fact the entire region suffered a dramatic decline following the Greek Civil War, dropping from 15,000 to 1300 today. Yet there’s a very active social life, especially on Sundays when it seems everyone ends up at the village square sooner of later. The older men take their mid morning coffee, then the church ladies show up, gradually those working in the fields stop by. It makes me wonder if the loss of this type of public commons is a source of our political and cultural divisions. The commons can be more than physical space, it also the public sphere where active conversation and discussion happens, the agora, in other words. But the physical public space is vital, as people have to interact with other actual humans.