Greece crisis: Sense of foreboding permeates everyday life

Kannellina Giannakaki is taking shelter from the rain at the entrance to the Golden Hall, a gleaming, upmarket shopping centre that was built less than a decade ago but already feels like a monument to another age.

“Nobody is shopping in there,” she says, drawing on a cigarette, nodding towards the empty boutiques. “This area [Marousi, north of the city] is considered quite well-off. But they’re only browsing, walking around, drinking coffee.”

Giannakaki, a lawyer who has taken time off work to look after her child, is waiting anxiously to see what will come of the latest round of brinkmanship between Greece and its international lenders. She thinks they'll strike a deal, but "if things go wrong" she and her family would move abroad, perhaps to London. "I'm afraid for my child. I don't want him to grow up in a situation like this."

On the surface, this looks deceptively benign. Banks and shops are open for business, and queues haven't formed at the city's ATMs. When the clouds clear and the sun comes out, children play in the parks and buskers fill Syntagma Square with music. Tourists still wander the ruins of the Acropolis and crowd the narrow streets of the Plaka neighbourhood.

But five years into a deep austerity programme that has seen the economy contract by a quarter, social deprivation widen and unemployment rise to over 25 per cent, the highest level in Europe, the spectacle of their country teetering on the brink of bankruptcy is met with weariness and anger by many Greeks.

In what has become a ritual, thousands of demonstrators descend on Syntagma Square every night – some urging Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to resist international pressure to accept more austerity in exchange for releasing billions of euros in bailout funds, others reaffirming their attachment to Greece's membership of the euro zone.

“There’s no hope,” says Giannakaki. “I love my country, and I’d like to stay here. But when you have a child you think differently.”

Empty showroom

In some areas, economic life has virtually ground to a halt. At the empty, air-conditioned showroom of his car dealership in the Kifissia suburb,

Spyros Pergantis

says he has never seen it so quiet. New car sales in Greece have fallen from 280,000 in 2010 to 72,000 last year. The majority of those sales are for the rental or fleet market; just 40 per cent is retail.

And since the beginning of June, orders have fallen by 60 per cent, Pergantis says, because “everyone is waiting to see if there is an agreement” with the troika.

“They’ve stopped buying. The economy has stopped because nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.”

As the race to avert a Greek default has moved ever closer to the deadline of June 30th, the day on which Greece must repay a €1.6 billion IMF loan with money it currently doesn’t have, reports have circulated of huge bank withdrawals by Greek savers fearful of capital controls or an all-out collapse.

Strolling through Kifissa, where French bakeries, Thai restaurants and luxury retailers occupy prime space on the wide tree-lined streets, retired couple Elias and Themis admitbeing “afraid” about Greece’s future. Asked if he was tempted to withdraw his money from the bank, Elias opens his wallet to reveal a thick wad of €50 notes.

Dimitrios Birgiotis, an accountant from the island of Chios who is on a short holiday in Athens, says the biggest single bank withdrawal he saw recently was €100,000. "Believe me, from January people have been taking out money," he says, referring to Syriza's arrival in power.

“They’re playing poker,” Birgiotis says of the ruling party. He believes Europe and the IMF are “trying to help” Greece, and that Athens should get its own house in order by reforming pensions and curbing tax evasion.

But while Syriza naturally divides opinion, even some of those who didn't vote for the left-radical party believe it has already achieved a measure of success – and in turn restored a modicum of national pride – by holding out for a deal that will result in its securing better terms from Greece's lenders. This was a feeling captured by Katherina Sergidou, a party member, who said at an anti-austerity rally on Sunday evening: "I believe we have the power to build a society here in Greece where, even without a lot of money, we have our dignity."

International stage

University student

Alex Retzis

says he voted for Antonis Samaras’s conservative New Democracy in the last election, but he has been impressed by Syriza’s performance on the international stage in its first six months in office. He admits being concerned about the current standoff – his parents recently withdrew the €10,000 they had in the bank – but he is convinced the Greek government is playing its cards well. So impressed that, if an election were called tomorrow, he’d vote Syriza.

“I think [finance minister Yanis] Varoufakis is doing better than the last government,” he says, sitting in the shade in a park in central Athens.

“At least now we know we are not the slaves of Europe . . . Now we say No sometimes. We don’t do everything they say. He’s a Greek hero, Varoufakis.”