16th November. I can’t believe I haven’t written anything since late summer. Politically, the shenanigans within Syriza have dominated the news. I wonder if the madness is spreading to New Democracy. This morning I said to my wife that the only thing that can undo the governing party is the party itself. Then I wake up from my afternoon snooze to find out that Andonis Samaras, an ex-PM and senior ND figure has been expelled from the party. The question is: will he take others with him?
We had a long summer, a short but pleasant autumn, and now we are in winter, but there is one reason to be cheerful: November is Metro Month! On Saturday, 30th November, the Thessaloniki Underground will open its doors to the public.
There is already an existing mess over the ticketing system. This week there has been another fuss over the logo. It was put out to tender for €8,000, withdrawn, put out to tender a second time for €30,000, again withdrawn, only to be offered to a small graphic design company in Athens, which received the €30k. Surely a backhander somewhere along the line – no pun intended.
Hopefully, there will be no more fuck-ups in what has been about forty years of farce. I was young and single when the Kouvelas Hole was dug between the university and the International Exhibition Centre. For over thirty years it has done nothing except add to traffic congestion. And, unbelievably, the hole still exists though it won’t form part of the nearby University or Syntrivani Metro stations. Kouvelas broke the state monopoly on radio and TV. He opened a TV channel called TV100 and a radio station with the same name. He boasted that advertising revenue would pay for the Metro… as if revenues from a local radio station would pay for about 10km of tunnelling. Madness.
The article below has some good photos of the metro and the controversial logo. It also has some useful information. For example, unlike the Metro in Athens, nobody can throw themselves onto the tracks because of the plexiglass screens (like the Jubilee Line in London). Though very useful for suicide prevention, the main danger to life and limb would be the Greek concept of queuing. In the crush to get to the front of the queue there would be a greater risk of someone being pushed onto the tracks were the plexiglass not there.
Wickedly, the article compares the Metro to the folk poem, The Bridge of Arta (Της Άρτας το Γιοφύρι). In the poem the bridge collapsed every night until a human sacrifice was made, the chief builder’s wife, I think. In Thessaloniki, funding, contracts and legal disputes have plagued the project. However, no tunnels have collapsed, so the wives of the builders can sleep peacefully at night.
One last comment on “foundation” sacrifices. Some unlucky rooster was usually the sacrificial victim, though the tradition goes back millennia and is not limited to Greece. Here is something that I have just come across regarding the island of Iona in Scotland. It shares striking similarities with Arta.
“On the Scottish island of Iona, two saints were trying to found a monastery. Every day, the workmen would lay the stones of the foundation. Every morning, they would return to find the last day’s work undone. It seemed that the church would never stand. Then, one night, St. Columba heard a voice: “The building will not stand until you bury a living man in its foundations.” St. Oran volunteered to be buried under the church. The men dug a pit and laid him down in it, piling stones over his body, and the church rose above him.”
On the bright side, a man – not some hapless wife – was sacrificed. In January 1997, I personally witnessed a foundation sacrifice. The foundations of the building directly opposite mine had just been dug. I think some concrete had already been poured too. There was a small gathering, a priest, the builders and a cockerel. I think the priest also had holy water and some greenery in his hand. The rooster was slaughtered there and then. We’ll only know if the cockerel’s sacrifice was worth the effort if the building survives a 7.4 Richter scale earthquake. As the builders were the same people who constructed our block of flats, let’s hope our “coq hardi” down below is still propitiating the gods on our behalf.
In this article https://www.ekathimerini.com/in-depth/society-in-depth/1253561/thessaloniki-metro-the-m-that-saved-a-public-procurement-and-divided-an-entire-city/ eKathimerini focuses on the shady dealings involving the logo. Personally, I like the logo as I consider it Greek and international at the same time, but €30k for a circle broken by a lower case μ and the word METRO (Latin alphabet) within the circle. That’s a total of seven characters, or about €4,500 per character. And five of the characters (METRO) required no imagination whatsoever.
Tuesday is generally a good day for me, so on 3rd December I plan to board a train at Voulgari and make several trips along the line. I’ll have my camera with me.