Démocratie Réelle Maintenant des Indignés de Nîmes

Day 163-LXXXIX, from Ιτέα to Δελφοί, 16 km.

Delphi, April 18

Dear people,

It has been raining all night, and yesterday all through the day the scirocco had been blowing, the southeastern wind of which they say it can make you go nuts if you are exposed to it for too long.

As a result of this we found our tents covered with the fine dust of the desert this morning. I took it as a good sign. Today is a great day.

The march and the marchers according to comrade Antonella

 Along the road some of us have come to me repeatedly to ask about our route through the mountains. They wanted to be reassured. But instead of tranquilising their anxiousness, I always did the exact opposite. I told everyone that it was going to be hell.

 Now that we were finally there I called for a route briefing just before we set out. I like to rally the troops whenever there is a good reason for it. As usual I did so in Italian. It went something like this.

Yours truly on the docks of fair Itea. Photo by comrade Ali.

“Dear comrades,

Today we leave the sea. Take a good look at her. On the opposite side, high above us in the clouds, towers the snowy peak of Mount Parnassus.

The ancients narrate that when the waters invaded all the world, it was up there that Deucalion and Pyrrha, the last survivors of man kind, found refuge.

And it was from up there, at the end of global holocaust, that they descended back into the valley to restart the circle of life.

In the shadow of mighty Mount Parnassus there was founded the sacred town of Delphi, the belly button of the world.

Today, we, the March to Athens, will do the terrifying, the infernal, the PAN-DE-MO-NI-AL ascent to Delphi!

Yet however hard it will be, I can assure you that once you get up there you will realise that all your efforts have been worth it. Bon route.”

The road to Delphi

The road is more than one today. There’s the national road that most people take, there’s a secondary road, and there is the ancient, three thousand year old trail.

You won’t be surprised that I took the trail.

It’s another of the reasons why I prefer to walk with a bagpack instead of a trolley. The trail can only be trotten on foot.

It could have been truly infernal, because the weather menaced more rain. But the gods were benevolent to us. It became by far the most thrilling leg I ever walked up until today.

The first few chilometres went across the olive groves. The small plain of Itea is completely covered by them. When you start your ascent, you can see them from above. It’s a giant mint green lake, with sporadic cypresses rising up from it.

Comrade Aristocrates

At a certain point of the route you can see two legs into the past, to Itea and Galaxidi, and two legs into the future, to Delphi and Arachova.

Delphi is built high up a steep slope of mountain. Arachova is further up, almost touching the sky. You sense eternity all around. There’s no trash or any other sign of modern times, only the excrements of the goats. You walk slowly to absorb every single impression. You can feel the presence of the satyrs and the nymphs, discretely spying from behind the shrubberies to see who comes to disturb their peace.

But not only mythical figures are present on this trail. The wind brings you the echoes of many an ancient traveller’s footsteps.

Kings and nobles, mortals and heroes have past by this trail throughout the centuries. They arrived from sea at Kirra, and they walked all the way up, to interrogate the famous oracle on all pressing matters of life, great and small.

They saw more or less the same panorama that I’m witnessing today on all sides.

The beetle and the shit

I walk on, winding through the flowering fields, climbing the rocks, holding still in the shadow of a lone tree or a small sanctuary.

Everything in this place is mythical. The only living creature I consciously encounter on the route, except for comrade Aristocrates, is a beetle. As if he were Sisyphus, he is rolling an enormous piece of shit straight up the hill.

Arrival in Delphi

Parked in the square

Day 161-LXXXVII, from Εράτεινη to Γαλαξίδι, 22 km.

Galaxidi, April 16

Dear people,

It’s eight in the morning, the tent is lit up by the first light. Today is a marching day, it’s time to get up. If the sun is out, you get woken up by the heat, you don’t get the chance to snooze for another five minutes, because it soon becomes unbearable, you have to get out.

You sit up, you put on the same stinking clothes as always, you open your tent, and you wonder where you are.

You’re on the beach. The sea is five meters away. On the other side of the small bay, you see the hills of the Peloponnese in a blue haze. This must be Eratini.

View of Eratini

First thing, you take a whizz. In the villages it’s no problem. There’s always the countryside around. But in the cities you have to choose your bathroom carefully. You look for a tree or another piece of green in a quiet place, and you mark your territory like a dog.

Then you stumble to the breakfast table. Among the first people to rise there is Mami. She is in charge of the pantry. Some say she is in charge period. “¡Es una mamicracia y lo sabeis!” people sing, but that isn’t really true.

The content of the breakfast table always varies. On a good day there is bread, homemade marmelade, local honey, cheese, pastries, oranges and juice. On a normal day you’re lucky to find some biscuits, a piece of bread, and yesterday’s leftovers. Sometimes there is nothing at all.

If there are leftovers, you take some along for the road. At ten we should be walking. After breakfast you break up your tent.

“¡Juanito! ¡Diez minutos y a la puta calle!” I say to my roommate. He grunts, he grins. He knows I’m joking as far as the phrasing goes, but the ten minutes stand.

Juanito has his own tent, but whenever he is too lazy to put it up, he sleeps with me. When he has moved his stuff to his shopping cart, I tear my house down. I’m getting attached to this little piece of canvas. It shows the signs of the times, it gets wet from the bottom, and one of its bars had to be replaced in Patras, but it has held ever since Rome.

I close my bagpack, I attach the tent, it all fits. I leave an empty space when I lift my house onto my shoulders. I’m like a snail.

It’s ten o’ clock. Some people are still loading the shopping carts. Some tents are still standing. I’m not going to wait. I go.

Except for Mimo I’m the only one walking with full gear, ever since Salerno. Only for two days I walked with a shopping cart, when comrade Diego asked me to take his trolley to Agrinio. I didn’t like the experience. I prefer walking as a legionnaire.

Today is the longest leg of the march in Greece. We walk the thin grey line between the sea and the mountains. The rough coast of Focida. This territory is almost uninhabitable. There are no cultivations, there are only few small villages, and the rest is mountains and sea.

The views are marvellous. Like most of the time in Greece. This country is overwhelming in its beauty. It’s so much that you get saturated. You almost take the beauty for granted.

After three hours walking I eat lunch and take a siesta under an olive tree. At the end of the afternoon I enter Galaxidi.

View of Galaxidi

First thing is to find the square. Usually it’s no problem. You go to the center of the center. And in the middle of it, you will plant your tent.

We are on the harbour side of Galaxidi. It’s a nice little town that hasn’t been completely destroyed by real estate speculation. The bars are full, tourism is important business here.

I build my tent. I go on reconnaisance, to feel the vibe, to look for a bar with wifi that can serve as communications headquarters for tonight.

I return to the camp. Everyone has arrived by now. I feel the pulse of the group. It’s still pretty slow. We are doing ok, but it’s like we are wading through the water these days. It takes a lot of energy to advance.

There is lack of news from our comrades in Athens, and even if voices reach us, they are not positive. It’s like we’re getting infected by the general sense of hopelesness here in Greece.

Galaxidi is a good example. If people don’t ignore us, they appreciate us, but they don’t bother to talk to us, or to take part in our assembly. Apparently they don’t see the point.

Only two of the locals finally sit down when we try to start an assembly. “Everyone minds his own business here,” one of them says.

The assembly becomes an informal chat. The two locals tell us about the problems. One of them is water. The tap water here is undrinkable. People have to buy their drinking water in plastic, because there is no connection to the fresh water aquaduct from the north.

It has been a problem since the 1940s. At every election, politicians promise that they will finally solve it, and they never do.

“Why not?”

“Because this is Greece.”

After the assembly I go to look if the kitchen commission has prepared dinner. In Eratini comrade Chino had made a tasty dish of lentils. Tonight there is only sticky pasta with a bit of rosemary.

I don’t complain. I’ve had worse.

After dinner I walk off to the bar. We hardly ever fail to find a sympathetic place where the communications commission can plug in and work, even without the obligation to consume.

So I write my piece about today. Afterwards I walk around and go to sleep.

I love this march, and everyone who participates in it, I love this life. But sometimes, for me as for everybody else, it’s like I’m wading.

Sleep tight,

Oscar

Day 158-LXXXIV, from Άγιος Νικόλαος to Εράτεινη, 10 km.

Eratini, April 13

Dear people,

The hard core of the march is still the same as ever. We are now a little less than twenty people. In Agrinio we lost our American comrade Diego. He keeps on reporting about the revolution from Athens. In Patras we lost almost our entire Italian contingent, the ‘conspirators’. The only Italians left now are Max and me.

We also left behind one of our Catalan comrades. He is in hospital. He was feeling really bad, and so they did al kinds of checks on him. I haven’t understood well what happened, but according to rumours he is suffering from a severe case of broken heart.

Acampada Marathias

On the road to Agios Nikolaos

Fortunately, there have also been people who joined us lately. In Mesolonghi comrade Mimo has returned. Mimo had already participated in the early stages of the march, and he caused quite a stir in Emilia Romagna, as a result of being a schizophrenic with a special love for knives.

Mimo is a Moroccan from Bruxelles. He has spent much of his life on the dark side of the system, or in prison. He used to be a professional car-jacker and a home-jacker, someone who steals your car or breaks into your house without minding that you are there. At the stoplight in broad daylight he would just open the door, force you out of the driver’s seat, take your car and race off. For a high class Mercedes he would make about five thousand euros.

He served eight years in total. He caused a lot of pain and distress to many people, but he says he never physically hurt any of them. He is done with his old life, and amazingly it doesn’t seem to weigh him down. He maintains an air of innocent childish happiness, which is exactly what the march needs right now, because overall, morale is still very low.

Siesta along the way

Apart from Mimo we have been joined by two Algerians from Patras. They are ‘illegal’ immigrants without ID, trapped in Greece. For years they have been trying to find a way to go to France, to their family, and they were delighted to hear that our policy is to refuse identification to police.

That’s why they came along. When our French contingent returns to France through the Balcans after Athens, they might try to join them.

One of them told me what it’s like to be an Algerian. At home, you suffer poverty without the prospect of ever getting out of it. The country isn’t poor, but it’s irredeemably corrupt. There’s oil, and on the coast the climate is favourable enough for many types of cultivation. But all the riches of the nation are divided among each other by a small clan of generals.

About twenty years ago people rose up against the establishment, under the banner of islamism. When the islamists won the elections, the generals reacted by cancelling the results and by starting a campaign of state terrorism. Everyone who was suspected of supporting the islamists became a target. And even if you weren’t, security forces could enter your house and shoot you through the head, as an example for your neighbours.

Hundreds of thousands of people died, the country was pacified, and the system of endemic corruption went on like before.

Today, as a normal Algerian, you can either live your life on the edge of hunger, or you can join the police, to control the masses and receive a decent pay. The only other possibility is to emigrate.

In the last few years, Spain and Italy have been stepping up their border patrols to prevent immigration. By now Greece is the weak spot from whence to enter fortress Europe. For us, priviliged European citizens, it’s no problem to cross from Greece to the rest of the EU, but for someone who comes from the other side of the wall, it’s much more difficult.

The sans papiers here live in a permanent state of fear. When they get arrested, they risk being deported to a concentration camp for immigrants, where they are either held indefinitely, or forced to negotiate their return back home.

View of Agios Nikolaos

And if isn’t the police they fear, it’s the fascists. With the economic situation degenerating, it’s easy for some people to blame the immigrants, and to make unprovoked attacks on them.

“All I want is to live a normal life, to work, to take care of my family,” Ali says, “that’s why I came to Europe. I thought Europe was the land of human rights.”

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Life may be hard for the Greeks nowadays, but for an Algerian without ID life is much harder still.

Then the March to Athens comes by, waving its flag of peace and shouting its slogans about a different world without borders. After all they have been through, we present a sign of hope. So they come along, and we welcome them into our tribe.

Here in the march they found three things that they had hoped to find in France.

 Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.

Day 154-LXXX, Πάτρα.

Day 155-LXXXI, from Πάτρα to Ναύπακτος, 22 km.

Nafpaktos, April 10

Dear people,

Nobody here would deny that our visit to Patras has become a complete fiasco. And even it wasn’t, it surely wasn’t worth sacrificing two days of margin.

Grey Dutch skies and persistent rains disrupted most of our stay, but even without it we wouldn’t have been able to create a vibe here.

Tents drying in Patras

The fact that police never showed up simply meant that they didn’t care. Also the communists, who had organised a concert at fifty metres from our camp, ignored us completely. Here in the big city it seems that many of the locals regard us as a band of hippie gipsies. They say we have no idea of what the hell is going on in Greece. They have already tried this peaceful resistance thing last year. The square was taken. But it didn’t work.

“This is a war. We didn’t start it. But if we want to win, we have to fight. Your love-peace-and-harmony train is very amusing, but it won’t lead to nothing.”

We held a small assembly hiding from the rain under the gallery around the square, and that was it. The second day we were completely flooded, and we retreated to a semi-covered area on the edge. Only comrade Lorenzo heroically resisted.

Only Lorenzo held the square...

In terms of numbers, Patras was a massacre. We left eleven people on the ground. The highest amount of casualties we have suffered since we left Rome.

But numbers don’t always tell the truth. Three of the people who left had rejoined us here and weren’t keen on walking. Other three were the Greeks from Mesolonghi, who would have returned anyway. Then there was comrade Manuel and company. Four more, straight to Athens.

Morale wasn’t high in the group after all this. And as to express the spirit of defeatism, there has been a feeble attempt of rebellion against my route proposal.

I knew it was going to happen. Once we crossed the bridge to the Peloponnese it would be very tempting for some to stay on this side, and to go from here, along the coast all the way to Athens without natural obstacles worth to mention.

Usually I’m fine with almost everything that the assembly decides on tactical or organisational issues. But there are two strategical decisions that I had wanted to make sure from the start. One was the arrival in Igoumenitsa instead of Patras, and two was the adoption of the northern route that passes by Delphi and Thebes.

Today's "facultative" route

I had presented the route proposal to back up my exuberant Altamura speech in favour of Igoumenitsa. And even though the route itself was never officialy consensuated, it was more or less implicitly accepted as part of the Igoumenitsa option.

All along the way, the Greeks who have inquiered into our proposed route had been surprised of the answer. They warned us that it was a hard and difficult road. They advised us to take the Peloponnese route. “Much easier.”

You have to know that I can’t stand ‘easy’ as a reason to do something. And every time the Greeks said we should go by the southern road, I was more and more convinced I wanted to follow the one less travelled by.

Patras was the only chance to go the Peloponnese way. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when the conspirators acted on the night before we left.

You can rest assured, dear friends, the attempt to change the route has miserably failed. It was badly prepared and clumsily executed. It was supported by three people who aren’t really known as dedicated marchers. They didn’t present an alternative itinerary and their only real motivation was to avoid the mountains.

My northern route proposal is indeed considerably longer, it passes by tiny villages where we could lack food supplies and it includes two ridges of mountains to cross. But nonetheless, and mostly because it was carefully planned, it could count on wide range support.

I didn’t even have to defend the proposal personally in the assembly. Instead, much to the delight of the Greeks, I limited myself to telling the story of young Hercules…

One day, while walking through the woods, young Hercules came to a crossroads.

At the crossroads there was a goddess. And the goddess said: “Hercules, this is your choice in life.”

She pointed to a wide road that gently sloped through abbundant olive groves and cornfields, down to a lovely bay, rich with fish. “This is the easy road. It will lead you to wealth, love, and happiness.”

Then she pointed to a small rocky trail that steeply ascended the mountains and disappeared high up in the clouds. “This is the hard road. It leads to pain, fatigue and despair…

“But,” she added, “this is the road that leads to glory.”

We all remember the name of Hercules, so we all know what road he took.

Carrying the trolleys back down on the north side of the bridge

Announcing the popular assembly in Nafpaktos