Life in Athens

Dear Bloggers and readers,

I've been in Greece for 3 weeks now and it's amazing. To be honest, today is the first day I actually went to the university and the rest of the days was just "Erasmus life".

It's not that I didn't want to go to the university, which is really close to my apartment, but is had been occupied by protesting students for the last whole month and therefore we were not allowed to get in. Studying in Athens university is totally for free because it's a public school. Even the meals in the cafeteria are for free. Now the government wants the students to start paying a little amount of money and that's why they are striking. There are also protests and riots almost every day and at least one's or twice a week there's public transport and/or a taxi strike. That makes life a little harder because without public transport or a cab we cannot go anywhere and the streets are not really safe during a riot. Then I just have to stay home and listen to the sirens of police cars all day long. 

One time, there was a peaceful protest in the city center and because it was not really dangerous at the moment I walked together with them to the governmental building. That was quite an experience, but when a Greek guy told me that it was about to get dangerous I left really quick.

If it stays like this, I cannot imagine Greece to get over the economic crisis because the cost of all these strikes and riots must be ridiculous. And because there are strikes somewhere in Athens every day, the already weak economy does never operate for 100%.

Moreover, The Greeks cannot organize anything at all. Today we had to register at the university and it took like 2 hours to get only the most important stuff done. We only had to hand in some paperwork and we got some more paperwork back. But because of the bureaucratic procedures it took very long. Everything is still done by hand, most offices don't even have a computer. We'll get in total 4 or 5 different university passes, all for another purpose. A student ID card, a transport card, a cafeteria card, a sports card, and a card without any obvious meaning. We had to wait in cues and sign paperwork for all of these passes at a different location.

But the Erasmus life is great here! The Erasmus student network in Athens organizes many parties and trips and they always get us discounts and free drinks. That's really necessary because the prices of alcohol in clubs are way higher than in The Netherlands. And because of the good weather we went to the beach very often.

Anyway, tomorrow the classes will start and the real life will start again!