Greece Notebook

At the weekend, I tried — and failed — to get some money out of an empty cashpoint near Omonia Square. The Eurobank cashpoint was covered in fresh anti-German graffiti: ‘No to the new German fascism,’ it read in Greek, ‘No to the “dosilogous”.’ That’s the Greek for Nazi collaborators in the war. For any cashpoint users who couldn’t speak Greek, the graffiti artist helpfully added, in English, GERMANY= 卐. If the new, German-led EU austerity package goes ahead, the swastikas will keep spreading through Athens. I felt sorry for a German family eating ice cream in the deserted Estia café in Plaka. The couple, with four strapping children and granny in tow, looked the picture of six-foot-tall, blond, Teutonic health. The Greeks are too gentle to take things out on German tourists directly. Still, you can hardly blame Germans who don’t want to spend their holidays surrounded by Nazi symbols. Anyone who still thinks the euro is a magic weapon for ever closer European union should come here soon.

In Syntagma Square, opposite the Greek parliament, the Ethnike Trapeza bank cashpoint did have some cash. But the poor customers couldn’t move for cameramen filming the queue. Athens is a big city, but the journalists don’t stray far from Syntagma Square. On Sunday evening, I found a secluded spot, just below the Parthenon, to watch the sun cast its dying rays over Mount Lycabettus. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the clatter of steps from the narrow stone path winding up to the Acropolis. Who could it be? A lone Orthodox priest heading for the little chapel behind me? A stranded mountain goat? Nope — it was the BBC’s Robert Peston. He took a photo of the sunset and went on his way, in the eternal quest for a real Greek.