Coming home
Tald
Athens
The birthplace of selective democracy is looking better than it has since the Fifties, when the modernists took over. The ancient capital will be ready on 13 August, the Games will take place, and the American basketball freaks will stay home, which is the best news I've had since Bill Clinton was impeached. (His tedious, longwinded 957-page self-indulgence is typical Clinton. Bill Clinton and Ahmad Chalabi, two of a kind, both desperate to win the title of greatest liar ever.)
The Games are way over budget, but then they always are. Athens has been transformed by them, and in some miraculous way so have the people. Ten years ago I had had enough. The socialists had come to power in 1980 and class revenge was on their mind. A friend of mine had asked a taxi driver to drop him off at Kolonaki, the ritzy part of town, and the driver had thrown him out. Businesses were being threatened with nationalisation without compensation, others had their loans suddenly called in by the central bank on government orders, There was spite, malice, envy and downright rudeness in the street. Manners had disappeared quicker than you could say Andreas Papandreou, the architect of class warfare in my country.
One of the first victims of these anti-capitalist purges was Karolos Fix. Karolos is Greek for Karl, and the Fixes had come to Greece in the small Bavarian coterie of the first Greek King Otto in 1831. Otto was the second son of the fanatically philhellene Prince of Bavaria, who was more or less imposed on the Greeks by the Western superpowers. Count Kapodistrias, the first president of modern Greece, had been assassinated by a Peloponnesian warlord over some ridiculous family feud. Otto was the only solution. Only a foreign
er could rise above Greek squabbles. The Fix family slowly but surely became totally Greek. By the time 1980 came around, the Fixes had become hated symbols of capitalism, their only crime being that of having had money for many generations. When the central bank nationalised the Fix brewery, Karolos left Greece on his boat and settled in Gstaad. It was rumoured that he had very little money. I had been a friend of his since schooldays, and obviously sympathised. I didn't shed too many tears, however. Karolos started a hedge fund and I invested with him. People told me I was nuts. He only knows about beer, was the message from the wiser ones. In very little time ihe Fix Family Fund had become numero uno, and I held the position of being its first investor. Fix has gone from strength to strength ever since, and last week he was back in our birthplace throwing a ball for his stepdaughter's wedding. It was as good as it gets.
One of the reasons for the success of the party was that Karolos and his wife Ninetta did not fall for the PR trap. There were no professional party-goers, no cheap celebrities, no chic hairdressers and no freaks. No IT girls, no actors, only friends from old Athenian families. Crown Prince Pavlos and Prince Nikolaos of Greece were there, and some real beauties like Chiara Visconti and Marina Livanos. I was seated one away from Karolos and after a while we looked at each other and started to laugh. We had both come back home, and it was a much better place than the one we had left long ago.
Who would have imagined it?' said Karolos. We Greeks have been divided since the great schism of the first world war. The southern part of the country wanted to fight on the side of the Germans, the northern with the Allies. After the catastrophic defeat of the Greek armies — we overran our supply lines deep inside Turkey — and the subsequent slaughter of the Greek population of Smyrna by the Turks, a bewildering succession of coups, countercoups, hung parliaments and fresh constitutions made life chaotic and uncertain. The second world war and the ensuing civil war between nationalists and communists did not exactly help. Neither did the seven-year rule of the infamous but wellmeaning colonels. The socialists of Andreas Papandreou continued exacting revenge and dividing the Greeks.
His death stopped the rot. The socialists who followed had realised the folly of class warfare. Although I hate to admit it, the EU has helped Greece like no other country, except for Ireland. As have the upcoming Games. I couldn't help noticing how polite the man in the street has become, and how impeccable the service in the good hotels and restaurants is. There is now a ring road around the most trafficchoked city of Europe, four-lane highways, trains and trams and an underground, and a state-of-the-art airport 20 minutes from the centre of the city, although three times further away than the old one that took hours to reach. Thousands of plane trees are being planted and the place is really looking good. It was about time. The next time I go there 1 shall be on my boat and cheering for Greek victories. And believe you me, we're gonna have lotsa them.
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