Life Without Lights

There has been a lot of employee strife lately in Athens, and all of Greece, as some people are unhappy about pension and social security reforms that are being proposed. As a result, many unions and workers organizations have been striking. At first it was mostly the public transportation and one day there was a protest in the streets. More recently it has been the power. Workers in the power companies have been striking by shutting off power in random places for a couple of hours at a time, and now because they won’t work normal hours there is a lack of power and the electricity has been shut off at intervals to try and conserve the power we do have. While these strikes are illegal as they are dangerous for the general public (street lights randomly going out, people getting stuck in elevators, and people on medical machines at home) no resolution has been reached.

My apartment has been the subject of a number of power outages lately, but typically the power returns within a couple of hours so it is more of an inconvenience than a problem. But the last time it went out was around 4pm on Sunday. An hour or two later power returned to our street and to our apartment building, but not to our apartment. It being Sunday, a day when most public works are closed, not much could be done. Thankfully with no power our apartment still had water, but unthankfully the next day was Clean Monday, a national holiday as I mentioned earlier, so no one would be working then either. Ultimately we wound up without lights, hot water, a fridge (we had to throw out a lot of food that started to go bad), and stove from 4pm Sunday until 1pm Tuesday when an electrician came to the apartment.

It was not quite the adventure I had hoped to have while in Athens, but my apartment and I are lucky to have made good friends with the other students in our program. We ventured out to others’ apartments for shower and to get some hot water for tea and such. Living by candlelight and flashlight was less than enjoyable, but it could have been worse (thank goodness it hasn’t been too cold around here lately). I am very grateful to have power back as I was starting to feel like I was living in the “old country” and didn’t realize how much I would miss the use of a light bulb. Everything is fixed now and we are keeping our fingers-crossed that our street gets a break from all of the power outages for a while (many of the other Arcadia apartments have not lost power once yet), but I’ll keep you posted.