The virtues of a good Greek salad

Between ancient culture and its contemporary accomplishments, Greece’s simple but timeless elements also appeal

Simple pleasures. The attractions of Greece to the outsider are many and diverse, but often center on basic or timeless elements that appeal to the senses as much as refer to the ancient legacy or contemporary advances.

By John Ross - Kathimerini English Edition

What brings visitors to Greece? With something like 13.3 million visitors expected this year — far more than the entirety of the country’s population, and in the midst of a tourist industry crisis of worldwide proportions — it may seem rather pointless to try to break down the numbers even if it were possible, and even if all tourists could enumerate their reasons for being here. If you asked, many might well just say they had some free time, spare cash, and deficiency of sun in their lives, and so plunked themselves in a hotel room with a view.

Most, though, can probably be sub-divided into either cultural tourists or vacationers. The former come to prowl ancient ruins, haunt the country’s museums, fry their brains in the hot hills of Mycenae at midday, or shade their heads in the dark coolness of Byzantine chapels and churches. The latter come for the physical sensation of beach, sun and sea, often lubricated by copious quantities of drink and various extracurricular activities usually of a nighttime variety (and drinking ouzo or local table wine doesn’t quite qualify as cultural enrichment).

It is fair to say, judging from the standing-room-only crowds on beaches everywhere these days, that the former are in the very distinct minority, numerically, though presumably they have an outsized effect in indirectly advertising Greece and its unique offerings to others. After all, lots of countries have beaches; but only one can boast an Epidaurus or a Knossos. This is not to say that culture and nature can be wholly separated; the physical siting of temples or monuments has a huge effect on how they are perceived, and their impact on the viewer.

So far, so obvious. In either case, it’s safe to say that a country’s strengths, to a large extent, are those that entice and interest others. Such matters directly concern the 2004 Olympics. For a country in Greece’s extraordinary present position — in the world spotlight increasingly for the next two years, now apparently ridding itself of its Achilles’ heel of terrorism, and preparing to host the world Games in August 2004 — the question of what to emphasize, and how to advertise itself, assumes immense proportions, which could have consequences for its tourism industry and, more broadly, for its image at home and abroad, for decades to come.

A country in this position can do one of two things: display the well known, or the less well known. It is a delicate balance that is not easily resolved. Doing the former is tempting but can easily slip into comfortable complacency, or worse; an opening ceremony that featured kids running about in togas, or dressed up as olive trees, or forming ancient temples on the field could easily run the risk of unintended national self-parody. And doing the latter risks being adventurous merely for the sake of it.

One of the encouraging things so far about the Athens 2004 effort is that, in the main, it has shied away from displaying Greece’s most obvious elements. For all their prodigious talents, it may be better that Mikis Theodorakis or Vangelis Papanathasiou won’t be choreographing the opening ceremonies, in lieu of a much younger figure, Dimitris Papaioannou, who made his name in modern dance. And the recent decision to hold, as the first Olympic event, a road race around the streets of Athens was an admirably bold, almost in-your-face decision to showcase Athens rather than apologize for it. It would have been easier to start, as is usually the case, with archery, which will be held against the splendid backdrop of the Panathenaic Stadium.

A key public relations aim, stated time and again by Athens 2004’s President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, is to show Greece’s less well-known side: its contemporary self, as member of the EU and EMU and of the global community.

With its cultural legacy as a rich starting point, the country’s physical beauty as the picturesque setting and the heritage of the ancient Olympics as its trump card, the one area that will be doubly emphasized, as a sort of counterbalance to the weight of history, is Greece of the 21st century (all of 18 months old at this point). Just as a political party will move to the center when it’s got its flank covered, so too can the organizers concentrate on the modern, under-appreciated side of the country. The rest — culture, nature, history — is already a given.

Put another way, much of the motivation behind these Olympics seems to be about showing the world what modern Greece is capable of: a small country that can put on a huge show, a poor country that can boast every cutting-edge technology, an occasionally disorganized country that can choreograph a two-week enterprise with clockwork precision, a much-maligned city determined not just to make the best of it but also to show itself off. Perhaps reflecting innate Greek pride, there is an element of defiance in this approach; as if Greece aimed to prove all its critics wrong. What is equally important, however, is the need to prove Greece’s many admirers right.

This loops us back to the question of tourism and why people come here. Strange as it may sound, the Greek salad would probably be high up on most visitors list of most-loved elements of Greece. Devotion to this humble concoction of tomatoes, onions, green peppers, feta, olive oil, and (if you’re truly lucky, in these austere times) several black olives is arguably one of the things that links nearly all foreign visitors to Greece.

Naturally, many Greeks get a laugh out of this — making a meal out of salad and bread? — but any taverna in any tourist spot on any summer’s day will show devoted international homage to the humble horiatiki. It’s appeal goes far beyond its fresh taste; it is a reminder of a simpler time, when satisfaction could be had with the most basic of ingredients. The horiatiki is a useful metaphor for simplicity, of popular culture, and of days cherished but now past.

The rest of the world is awed by Greece’s ancient legacy, ancient and Byzantine, and it will be impressed to see it demonstrate a competent contemporary edge as well. But in between is another source of simpler virtue; the modern Greece of earlier times, say, of the 1950s and 1960s, before the tourism boom and high-speed catamarans and jet skis — the time which some Greeks look back on with bitterness as a time of poverty, but many others, both at home and abroad, with longing, as a sort of golden age for the country.

Many devotees of Greece and Greek lifestyles have an emotional link to the humblest of items, like the Greek salad, simple in content but so rich in implication. So in the zeal to showcase the best of Greece, dedication to the ancient and to the contemporary sides of the country shouldn’t be allowed to completely overshadow the simpler, enduring joys that lure millions to Greece year after year.