Athens
– I landed in Greece late yesterday evening and went out immediately to try and
talk to the people queueing to get their money out of banks.
A
few young Greeks helped me find a cash machine directly right of a building on
Sofocleous Street, which until just a few years ago was home to the Athens
stock exchange.
I
asked them if they were from here and got a great response:
“Yes. And we’re proud!”
The
queue at the machine wasn’t actually too long — there were probably about 30
people. There were longer, snaking queues at other machines we drove past in
the city. This was past 11 p.m, but the place is still buzzing at that time.
The
one man that approached me said that the situation was the result of
“Zionists.” My phone was out of battery by the time I got to the ATM,
so I wasn’t able to record the conversation (though I’m not sure he would have
liked that much anyway).
He
blamed “Rothschilds” for the crisis, adding “we Greeks are
Hellenic, the people of light. Now we only have a little light, not like in
ancient times. They are trying to put us out.”
“It’s not the fault of German people,
it’s not the fault of European people. You have to get to the source… they
want to crush Greece.”
He
said that the City of London was the base of the Rothschilds and Zionists, and
that they ran the Federal Reserve too. He didn’t give me his name. I didn’t ask
how he planned to vote in the upcoming referendum, or which Greek political
parties he liked, but I could have guessed.
It
was clear from the people shaking their heads a little behind him that not
everyone agreed, but nobody else wanted to talk — understandably, they were
more preoccupied with getting their money out.
People
seemed on edge, even a little bit scared. A helpful Dutch girl waiting for her
friends said no-one knew when banks would re-open, or which ATMs would have
money tomorrow.
Some
20 metres away, it was a completely different story. There was an open-air
party in a courtyard, with young people drinking and smoking. It could have
been anywhere else in Europe and there was no sense that anything strange was
going on at all.
A
lot of the street I’m staying on seemed the same. The tills are ringing, young
people are drinking and the restaurants were full until the early hours of the
morning. The contrast between that and the tension of the queues to get cash
was stark.
I’m
not sure how long that can all last if there’s a severe shortage of cash.
