Teacher Dude’s Grill and BBQ: What we’ve lost - A personal account of the crisis in Greece
I could give you a list of statistics and figures that show just how bad the situation has got here in Thessaloniki, such as rise in unemployment or I could tell you how many businesses have closed down in the city over the last 12 months. Then there are the number of suicide attempts “successful” and “unsuccessful” that have taken place in Greece recently. But I doubt that they would mean much to you. Numbers have a strange way of draining the life out of any disaster, reducing it to simply an accountant’s end of year report.
Instead I would like to talk about what I have lost and through that give you an idea of the what people are going through. For my the most poignant memory of late has not been people sleeping out in freezing temperatures or pensioners rifling through rubbish bins for food, nor has it been the sight of kids as young as 8 years old collecting scrap metal from bins and off the street to sell. No, for me the worst image has been that of a cardboard box, inside it the things my daughter will be taking with her to her new home 200km from here.
Unable to survive economically in the city Lydia and her mother have decided to move away to be closer to her family. The small flower business her mother has struggled to keep afloat for the least two years is now completely unviable and so is being closed down. With people now waiting to see what happens before getting married and fewer and fewer buying flowers to take as presents to friends and family the shop has become a liability and will close down in the next few days.
http://teacherdudebbq.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-weve-lost-personal-account-of.html