Patrick Brigham: Greece on the internet
It is not a language difficulty nor is it an inability for me to comfortably use the internet – after all I am a writer and a journalist – but for many Greeks, the idea of being online appears to be unnaturally abhorrent. For me, Greek attitudes towards life on the web, are akin to some aging aunt from Middle England switching off her cell phone when she gets home. Can you remember how annoying that was? I can.
This year, there has been a great improvement in Greece, and I can now pay all my bills online. Unknown to most, including many of the office staff working in the enlightened company’s which offer this service, perhaps it is an ageist thing? After all; according to local standards, I am well past it, and should not bother my poor dithering brain about such complicated things like computers. But while others stick to the heady subject of horticulture, I write books, and play hard on the internet.
All roads lead to Athens, as the paraphrase goes, but they often stop there too. In a country which seems to get almost anything and everything by courier; where the well known mantra – ‘I will have to order it from Athens’ – seems to punctuate each response to even the mildest unorthodox request, you might think that buying your goods on the internet, for delivery next day, is a brilliant idea!
Perhaps people have simply got used to the standard shopkeeper’s droll reply, ‘that it will be here in the morning,’ followed by the usual trudge back to the shop the following day, only to be told to come back tomorrow…
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(Photo: ilker/sxc.hu)
