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Athens – City of Staggering Dreams

It is 40° Celsius today here in Athens, or about 104° Fahrenheit. Eggs could in theory cook on the sidewalks, not that I’d like to test it out.
As I go about my errands, a sudden dream strikes me.
Let’s say tomorrow morning we wake up and Greece’s economy was booming. How would Athens be different?
I began to imagine all those folks who left the big city for the countryside during the economic crisis returning back to Athens.
Apartments suddenly fill up and the streets are clogged with cars again. Conservation-minded folks give up their bicycles and return to the freedom-inducing cars.
The center of Athens chokes with cars, and buses too, as tourists return in droves.
Visitors had come during the crisis because of hotel and ferry discounts. Now they return, however, just because Athens and Greece are fashionable again.
The New York Times does a few travel articles, the signal in mainstream society that all is well in this Mediterranean country.
Along with the boom in tourism, there are new jobs in high-tech companies that settled in the Plaka area during the crisis years, because of cheap rents and a great location, and now employee thousands – many of them are immigrants from the Middle East who wanted to be part of a European country yet still be close enough to fly back to their homes in Qatar, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, etc.
As in any economic boom, the darker arts returned. Prostitutes and the sex trade flourish in the back alleys of Syntagma, Plaka, Monestiraki, Omonia and Theseio.
So do the pickpockets and scam artists, who find easy pickings in the tourist overflow.
Prices for meals zoom, and a village salad that once cost 5 euros, now is 9 euros and higher.
It is now nigh impossible to find a hotel. The Grand Bretagne is so full it resorts to giving rooms only to the most well- known and renowned.
Famous rock stars with their fawning retinues and Doberman Pinchers suddenly are the only guests at the famed hotel.
Limousines and Rolls Royces, hardly seen during the crisis years in Athens, now are spotted everywhere. Even in front of grocery stores.
Out of these expensive carriages come homeless-dressed teenagers whose last names are bin Habin, Schapiro, Heidelberg, Smith, Bouquet and Cilantro with the smelling-salt smirks on their faces and spoiled manners that only cheap and vast wealth could endow.
Athens turns into one vast giant Stoli party; bars are everywhere – rooftops, basements, alleys, even in people’s homes – and the alcohol flows like glacier water in spring.
Few have any manners anymore; people are spotted fornicating in the National Gardens and genital petting – once rarely seen in public – is not only accepted but openly encouraged. People think: well, at least they touch each other instead of rioting as they used to during the crisis period.
Those quaint grandmothers in black no longer exist; a government act forbids them from walking the streets of downtown Athens. Ditto the old pensioners playing backgammon in the tavernas: they too are not allowed to waste time on silly games.
Police officers retrained after the economic crisis have now become social workers, rarely arresting anyone but instead give spot therapy to those causing infractions.
Speeding tickets are a thing of the past (there is even a police museum with examples of such old archival relics, including handcuffs no longer in use).
All police officers now retire at 33, the same age as Jesus’ death; the rationale being that young police officers communicate easier and better with the young that now populate the city.
The young do not want the old around; those old foggies remind them of death and besides, these pensioners are ugly, urinate on themselves and smell like wet socks.
Marijuana? “What flavor would you like?” the young bartender asks in the downtown cafe.
Opium, speed, hashish, uppers, downers, crack, whatever drug in demand is easily available, sometimes even compliments of the local bank to encourage new savings and checking accounts by the young.
Athens had turned into a mecca for these blissfully young. And the beautiful. And the apparently smart. And the sexy. And the financially able.
If you don’t fit any of these categories, you’re regarded with derisive laughter. There is no worse crime in this reality than being poor and polite and caring about your community.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, to thank all the young voters who swept him into office, regularly leads his bevy of ballooned, tattooed bodyguards to Kolonaki, the most fashionable district of Athens, to hobnob with the youth vote, as he calls it, often drinking expensive cognac and sharing the latest Lady Gaga jokes.

For some, in this vision, Greece is considered the epitome of the democracy Solon and Socrates dreamt about.
For me, I was choking with fear from what I saw and I snapped myself back to reality.
I was in Syntagma Square. Marble was missing from steps and walls, from the riots of the past few years, but the place looked as it did in the past.
The tree where the pensioner shot himself is now marked by flowers and placards and anti-capitalist signs.
I looked around the downtown Athens staring back at me. Worn, weary, tired, needing a make-up but otherwise beating its usual chaotic self.
Empty shops along Ermou visibly show the economic crisis in action, but people still looked through the windows of those stores still open, and some even carried shopping bags.
And grandmothers in black trodded the streets. I let out a sign of relief as we headed back to our hotels; it was just a daydream.
The heat was unbearable, and the awful vision made it worse.

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