Being in London for almost 2 months now, I got to meet quite some people. I am embarassed to say it, but almost all of them Greeks. Anyway, this is another point of discussion, which might be the reason for a new post in the future.
Most of the Greeks I've met are working in London already or, like me, looking for a job. It is interesting that most of them, if not all them, came to find a job here so that they can secure a better future back in Greece. The usual story, the one I am telling as well, is: I will work here for a couple of years, gain some professional experience, maybe save some money and then I will go back to Greece. Most of the people who will tell you this story have been in London for 5 years already or even more. They are telling this story since the first day they arrived here. What then makes them to stay here longer than 2 years? Why won't they return to Greece?
Thinking about it, because as I already said I am also one of those who tell this story, I realised that they are staying here for the same reasons they left Greece in the first place. We don't leave Greece to meet new cultures, very few come here for that. We don't leave Greece to gain professional experience. In fact, we don't leave Greece, Greece send us away!
People come here and stay,because here you feel valued, you feel that you can make a difference to other people lives, you know that your work will be appreciated and rewarded. Whereas in Greece.. well you know how things are in Greece. Thus (an academic touch), noone is going back to Greece in a couple of years. Why? Because things are going to be as you left them, or maybe even worse. Worse because when we left Greece we had heard about other countries whose citizens are respected by the state, but we hadn't seen it. Now we know they exist and were a part of those societies and the injustice of the Greek society will be more obvious, more irritating and harder to bear.
What am I saying then? That there is no point in going back to Greece? Professionaly probably there isn't. Things won't change for quite some time. We should then measure what is more important in our lives, what matters the most. All of us who say the "2-years" story want to go back to Greece, but not because we honestly believe that things are going to be different. "Nostos" is what we feel. We will go back, like Odysseas (or Ulysses) went back to Ithaca, for things that are priceless and only home can give it to you.
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Tilburg, of Tilburg University fame, is a small city in the south of the Netherlands. I love the Netherlands, even if I know that there is someone somewhere in Rotterdam laughing at my photo posture on my photo-bearing cards that left my pocket and reached his hand at the Rotterdam train station ... Utrecht, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, are the cities that I've been already And Tilburg of course, that I would go for a second time only if someone drags me there, beaten. The whole city is reminiscent of a pool of dirt, flat-out.
But there is a greek guy there, that has two or three restaurants, kitchy-greek and all, and he's doing business with the university crowd. All defense parties are led there afterwards to sit in very nice wooden benches and have the huge portions of mousaka that the guy's wife serves. Decent food, meeting my refined standards --- excuse me, but I'm staying in France for quite some years already...
Immigrant from the eighties, nothing more than a high-school graduate, he lives and works in the Dutchland. Why would you say that you are in a different ground from the one he stands upon? Would you honestly say that you are different?
alex, it seems you think ahead...check out this article from kathimerini (sorry, it is in greek...):
http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_ell_100042_28/04/2007_225164
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