Reuters
July 11, 2011
One fine, sunny morning last week, Yiorgos Farmakis, one of the ancient Greek city of Corinth's seven vice mayors, was both late for a meeting and too wired up to talk when he got to it.
The problem, he explained after a reviving glass of chilled water and a few minutes to compose himself, was that a school building under his jurisdiction had closed and all the furniture and equipment had to be moved.
With city drivers busy elsewhere, Farmakis decided to do it himself and had been driving in the sweltering heat through chaotic traffic to put the old building's contents into storage.
It is the kind of pro-active thing, he said, that Greeks are going to have to do if they are to extricate themselves from crippling recession and unemployment and a debt burden that has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.
"With good organizing, with goodwill, all together we can do it," he said, sounding through translation like a cross between a campaign poster and Barack Obama, but clearly meaning it.
It is going to be an uphill struggle.
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