Bring out the Baby Strollers: Protest Madness in Greece

Before coming to Greece, I always named Bolivia as the most protest-crazy country I've visited, but Greece takes protesting to a whole new (and completely absurd) level. With the sheer quantity of absurd protests every day, it's easy to believe the stories that:

1. Students don't go to university here to learn; they go to learn to protest.
   
2. There are professional protesters in Greece that are paid by different organizations to hold signs and yell fervently for every cause from social security to trash pickup.

Every day we receive a new email from the US Embassy of the day's protests in Athens and they range from slightly plausible to downright outrageous. My favorite so far was a few weeks ago where the demonstrators expressed "their solidarity towards the political prisoners and Zapatistas in Chiapas State, Mexico". Not Tibet. Not Darfur. Not any type of really big pressing problem on the international stage in 2008.... I went to Chiapas in 2001 and it was a really great place to visit, but still?!?!?

This weekend had another nice slate of protests planned:

From: US Embassy Athens
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 4:09 PM
To: ATHENS-ALL EMBASSY; ATHENS-DAO
Subject: Weekend demonstrations

1. Citizens of Athens with baby-strollers, wheelchairs and, shopping carts have scheduled a demonstration for Saturday, April 12, at the Municipality Cultural Center of Athens (50 Akadimias Str.) at 12:00 hrs. The demonstrators will march to Exarchia Square. The demonstrators will protest for pedestrians’ rights and will call all citizens “to reclaim the streets of Athens”.

2. Panathinaikos Team fans have scheduled a gathering for Sunday, Apr 13, at Areos Park (downtown Athens) at 16:00 hours. The demonstrators will protest against the management leadership of Panathinaikos Team.

So this weekend, they've busted out with the baby strollers and shopping carts to protest Greeks' inability to park properly. And I'm trying to picture the equivalent of the second protest as a mad frenzy of Dallas Fort Worth residents storming Texas Stadium in a protest of the management of the Dallas Cowboys... :)

And a few weeks ago, the security staff at the US Embassy waited for hours for a anti-American protest to make its way up the street from the Greek Parliament building to the Embassy... but either the protesters didn't feel like they were paid enough for the day or maybe they just got tired, but they gave up before they even reached the Embassy and went home. It was only about a mile up the road.

ABSURD. But at least humorous.

The General Lee in Athens

At an Embassy dinner on Friday night, a FBI guy was talking along about how he was out and about in Athens last week and he saw a Smart Car (one of those really tiny European cars with only two seats that can park parallel or perpendicular to the curb) painted as an identical replica of the GENERAL LEE from the Dukes of Hazard, complete with "01" on the door and confederate flag on the top.

I asked him if he managed to take a picture of it and he said that he really wished that he had his camera with him, but he didn't... Tooooooooooooooooo bad. Still it's a pretty funny thought... might have expected to see something like that in the South, but definitely not in Europe!

It's all Greek to Me!

Oh, this is great.

I was about to try to put my first post in quite a few months onto my blog and ... well, this whole thing is in Greek. I'm looking for a little HELP ME PLEASE link that says "English" but blogger apparently doesn't feel helpful this morning, so I'll be brave and attempt this anyway:

I'm in Athens Greece now and have been here since the beginning of February. I am here spending time with my boyfriend George and doing some consulting work for the World Bank's Education Statistics Unit via email/Skype. I got so far behind on my blog that I didn't know where to start to update it, so I have just decided to start now and will try to do better about adding in funny tidbits and updates on where I'm off to next.

My next move will be in the beginning or middle of May. George will be moving along to his next Embassy on May 19th and we are still waiting to find out where he will be sent. Between his two posts, he is going back to the US to visit his family and we will finally have a chance to meet each other's family and friends. We're both pretty excited to meet the people we've been hearing about for so long.

After that, he'll go along to his next post and I'm going to continue my World Bank work at a currently undefined location... we'll see where I end up. :)