And so for our last night in Greece we moved to nearer the airport and spent the evening in the main town of Zakynthos. This place was totally wiped out by an earthquake in the early 60s ( apart from one sixteen century church) so it would be hard to describe it has having old world charm but it was pleasant enough. I suspect that one “the season” gets underway it will be Hell on Earth but for now the main language spoken was Greek and it was harmless. Zakynthos has escaped the worst of the meltdown thanks to tourism but even here the signs of unease are clear.
Posters protesting against the rise of the Nazi Golden Dawn party were everywhere to be seen.
In the main square outside a bank Kappa Kappa (the commies) was holding a protest and Concert. This is a communist party that has yet to accept (unlike most European commies) that Stalin had its faults and that it is a good thing that the Berlin Wall has come down. As a result it is pretty unelectable – hard-line Stalinism is not cool even in a country facing meltdown.
And so it started with a video which basically equated, ad nauseam, Golden Dawn with the holocaust. Frankly Golden Dawn does contain some incredibly unpleasant characters and to describe its leaders as Nazis really is not that unfair. The film went on to show that Russia won the second world war ( there was one five second snap shot of D-Day) but to Bolshevik marching songs it was clear that it was Uncle Joe who smashed the Fascists. You can follow that lead but I doubt many will. The commie concert featured a conventional band with a female lead with a pretty weak voice. Her opening number was Yesterday. That sums up Kappa Kappa fairly well. It went downhill from there.
And so for entertainment we wandered to the next square where the Anarchists were staging a gig. The band were four men from the sort of punk/thrash rock genre plus a bird on the synthesiser who was heavy Goth. The lead singer looked a bit like Leon Trotsky although being a committed anarchist he would no doubt have taken great offence has I pointed this out. They sang in Greek which as just as well as the passion in the lyrics was clear and I suspect that I would not have agreed with a word said had I understood what was going on. I resisted the urge to wander up and ask if they would play a request: Born in the USA.
However we stayed for a good while. The band were talented, passionate and tuneful. Immune to the poison of the lyrics we happily rocked with the anarchists.