Not just us, as in our borrowed VW Polo; not just Us, as in all of Crete (the population of Crete usually suffers en masse from whatever technical malfunctions happen to manifest themselves; when you call to complain that your internet connection is down, the first response is usually "Do you live in Crete?"); but US, as in all of Greece. That's right, the whole country.
The cause was, in a nutshell, a strike by the 400 or so government-employed drivers of the public use fuel transportation system; their aim was a 300% pay hike, which as of today (the following Thursday), when the strike was called off and gas was back in the pumps, they haven't achieved (not surprisingly). I imagine that the government will retaliate by opening up their previously closed profession to whoever wants to go through the proper training.
The result of this twenty-first century drought was predictable, in a country where the gratuitous use of the automobile has been taken to extremes that rival that other bastion of consumerism set in a Mediterranean clime, Southern California: kilometer-long lines at the few functioning petrol stations, fury, petty crime (mostly in the form of stranded motorists stealing gasoline from parked vehicles), and general insensitivity towards one's fellow man. Today, when the filling station in the neighboring village opened up for business dispensing the golden nectar in rationed increments of 20 euros (which for the average Cretan's vehicle of choice, a grotesquely oversized four wheel drive pickup truck, amounts to about an eighth of a tank), I was treated to an experience I had previously only heard about: sitting in my car for an hour, slowly inching my way towards the pump while doing all I could to convince my car that it could and would make it the next twenty feet on the thimbleful of gas left in the reservoir. A few hours later, driving to town, I counted over one hundred cars in line at one station.
All of this had a few positive effects, among them the increased use of public transportation for a few short days (until the public buses' gas deposits ran dry, anyway, which did happen in a few places). Of course, it didn't stick; as soon as gas was available again, everyone ran back to their cars and their own private worlds. But the following incident, illustrative of a number of social phenomena in modern, urban Greece, occured during the peak bus usage of the previous week, and was related to me second-hand.
If you haven't been to Greece, or haven't been in quite some time, you may not know that she has received a tremendous influx of immigrants over the last few decades, so much so that certain areas of central Athens (most notably Omonoia) are said to have a Greek populaton of zero. (Actually, there was an article not too long ago in an Athenian newspaper about "The Last Greek Resident of Omonoia", so I guess the native population there is 1). The major flow of immigrants was initially from Albania - it's estimated that some 20% of Greece's population of 11 million is Albanian - but in recent years it has expanded to encompass many parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East (most notably Syria), the Indian subcontinent, and the Philippines. Unfortunately, a very large section of Greek society has responded to this influx of hitherto unfamiliar faces, hues, and tongues with extreme xenophobia and a particularly nasty form of racism, often resulting in ugly displays that would shock most residents of the American South.
So, on to our anecdote:
Central Athens, Monday afternoon, rush hour. Outside the bus, snarling traffic, searingly hot, polluted air, a cacophony of horns and voices; inside the bus, not a word, only exhausted office workers jam-packed into their seats or standing in the aisle, one arm clutching the overhead handle and the other reaching up to loosen a collar or wipe a sweaty forehead.
Into this humid silence steps a gaudily-dressed, sixtyish year old woman with platinum hair. Obviously annoyed that there aren't any seats available, and that nobody gets up to offer her theirs, she comes to a stop in front of a dark-skinned fellow sitting next to the window. From his features, complexion, and dress, he is apparently an immigrant from somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. She gestures towards him, and says: "You, get up and let me sit."
Receiving no response, she tries again. "Didn't you hear me? I said, get up and give me your seat."
Nothing. She snarls, and announces in a loud voice: "Well, you think you're smart, don't you? Damn foreigners, you have no respect for anything. This whole country is full of blacks and Albanians, stealing, murdering, living like animals. Well, it's our own fault that we don't round you all up and do something about you once and for all."
She continues in this vein for some time. The African man ignores her; the rest of the bus remains silent but for a few indignant whispers.
Suddenly a seat opens up, right next to the African. The woman immediately sits down, and continues her racist diatribe without missing a beat. Her neighbor continues to ignore her completely, which only fuels her rage and results in louder and more obnoxious philosophizing on her part.
At some point, the bus stops and two uniformed men climb on board, at opposite ends of the vehicle - ticket inspectors, whose arrival sends the passengers scrambling, raking through pockets and purses to find their validated stub to present to the officer and avoid an exorbitant fine (something that many an unwitting tourist, unfamiliar with the Greek system of buying, validating, and retaining tickets for public transportation, has suffered). The woman, sitting in the middle of the bus, opens her hideous leather bag and produces her ticket, holding it on high triumphantly as if to proclaim, "I am a lawful, decent citizen; I continue to uphold our society's sacred values in the face of the depravity brought upon us by the modern world."
At which point her neighbor, utterly silent and composed until this moment, suddenly swoops down and in a lightning flash of decisive action grabs her ticket - and eats it.
The color drains from her face; her mouth hangs open; she quivers with shock and perplexity; and it is in this state that she is addressed by the ticket inspector: "Ma'am, your ticket, please."
She turns to the officer, indignant, and shouts: "The black man ate it!!"
The entire bus erupts in laughter. The ticket collector takes her for either a nutcase or a particularly pathetic cheapskate, and writes her a hefty citation.
Her neighbor obediently proffers his own validated ticket, and turns back to the window, expressionless.
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