G I N E T A I !!! It can be done !

by: Peter Economides

GREECE AS THE APPLE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
An article by Peter Economides

*

The article that appeared in TO VIMA newspaper on 21 December 2014, translated into English.

It encapsulates my new year wish ….. Greece as the West Coast of Europe.
Maybe it won’t happen this year.
Maybe not next. But it can happen.
If we want it …..

GINETAIIt’s inevitable. One day soon we’ll pick ourselves up from the rubble of this crisis.
We’ll stand up, dust ourselves off and move forward. The question is who will we be on that day? How will we think? What is the motivation that will drive us forward?Will we finally understand who we are and where we live?
Without clinging to the past but moving fast forward into the future.
Will we have leaders brave enough to encourage us?
Smart enough to know when to be there and when to get out of the way…This is what I imagine.
And this, I am sure, is what we can be ….“The crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The ones who see things differently.”The Apple of the Mediterranean.
The West Coast of Europe.
The fresh young edge of this tired old continent.
The creative corner.It’s an idea that I put forward three years ago.
And Nick Malkoutzis from Kathimerini replied: “It’s a crazy idea. In fact it’s an idea that is just about crazy enough to succeed.”It is succeeding….
In the space of a few short years Athens has transformed into a city with a vibrant startup culture. Greek mattresses are the rage in New York. Supermarket shelves are filling up with beautifully designed, high quality food products. Indigenous Greek wines such as Malagousia and Asyrtiko are winning top awards on the wine lists at top restaurants from Sydney to London at prices upwards of €100 per bottle. I love it.Greece is the new cool.
Willem Sodderland talks about it in his buzzable.biz piece, “Why Greece is in better shape than Germany.” We’ve become creative through necessity. On a continent that is generally lazy, complacent and defensive and has not, for the past 70 years or so, had any need to be otherwise.I was in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago.
And it had me thinking.
Whatever the West Coast of America represents today, that’s what Athens once was.
Startup city.
And the startup ideas then were democracy, philosophy, medicine, mathematics…I want Greece to be the West Coast of Europe.
“Den kanei kryo stin Ellada …”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *