November 5, 1953
UNKNOWN ATHENS: From an editorial in Kathimerini – «Just a few meters away from Omonia Square one finds oneself in a city that has been abandoned for more than half a century. Its streets, dusty throughout the summer, become impassable in winter because of the mud and potholes filled with water. Just a short distance from these abandoned central districts, people need a lantern to get around at night, just as they did over a hundred years ago. (…) So there are real troglodytes in Athens who have been living in caves around Observatory Hill where the first inhabitants of the area took refuge in during Paleolithic times. (…) If one goes as far as Athens’s furthest outskirts, there are single-roomed houses, shacks and huts (…) and one wonders how these humble homes are lit, how they get their water supplies and how their inhabitants travel to and from work every day. Sometimes water supplies are found at a well or spring 10 minutes’ walk away, lit by the pale glimmer of an oil lamp (…). Both here, and even closer to the center of the city, water from the weekly wash is thrown into the streets, as there are neither drains nor cesspools.
