Another sunny day
Mar. 15th, 2020 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yannisSo, yesterday was another warm sunny day, so I went to the Μπάτης beach rightaway.
Of course there were more sunbathers than on Friday, two groups of people were even making barbecue, others playing this game I don't know the name of with two wooden rackets and a tennis ball, even the usual beach peddlers selling their beach shit appeared.
The weather was so warm and peaceful that I became drowsy and fell asleep for an hour or so. After I woke up I discovered that beach now has a free WiFi network, "WiFi4EU Dimos Palaiou Falirou", which was good enough to surf news sites so I learned all the awful news right on the beach, before returning home. It is really great, a huge improvement for the visitors, really. I spent there the whole day till 5PM, when the sun hid behind the clouds and it became relatively cold, so I caught a tram and went to SNFCC to see what's going on.
Not much, really. The National Library is closed till the 24th of March, the National Opera is also closed, the cafe is closed too, the canal is dried out due to maintenance works and even Bréal's Cup is gone and instead of it some kind of 3D projection in a box is demonstrated. Maybe they removed it fearing that due to less visitors and subsequently less staff it will become more prone to theft. I don't know really, I didn't want to talk to anyone. The three or four members of staff left were all wearing masks so they didn't seem very friendly/talkative. There were also no informational leaflets with monthly program or special events anymore and all the monitors were turned off.
But there are still many people hanging out there, around the dried out canal and in the park, and two kiosks on wheels are still selling streeet food (with bottles of sanitiser at cashier desks), and the free WiFi is still running and the free buses are running too.
So I caught one of these buses and went to Syntagma. The bus was half empty, there were about five middle-aged women, one of them constantly caughing, and two men who seemed to be bums. So I took the seat in the back row which seemed safe and was completely empty.
Syntagma also seemed empty. Regular buses/trolleys run with huge pauses, like ten minutes between them, and the same can be said about metro. So if you need to make one change, you should be prepared to lose at least 20 minutes.
Also, there is one more novelty in the regular buses/trolleys since yesterday: the front part of each vehicle, with driver's place, front door and a few front seats, is now blocked off with red and white barricade tape.
As for the other novelties/news, there is not much to say, since everything that was possible to close is now closed. Even so-called "Northern Macedonia" closed it's borders with Greece today.
The police raids establishments that don't follow the rules, like cafes and hairdressers, and fines the owners etc.
More and more people with transparent/blue plastic gloves everywhere. I guess shops had ran out of masks for quite a time, so people buy these stupid gloves since there is nothing more left for them to buy to "feel secure".
Two more people died, one of them was 90 years old, as for the other, I don't know his age, but I assume he was in the same age group. Five more are supposed to die in the nearest days.
On the bright side, the first woman who fell ill two weeks ago in Thessaloniki, and her child who also got infected, were discharged from hospital two days ago. As they both were young and healthy, they went through their illness quite well, so in fact there is nothing to worry about for people of my age.
But yeah, the damage is already done, tourism is dead and the global economy had already collapsed, so quite a dark future is awaiting for us. What a stupid crazy disgusting world we are living in, fucking unbelieveable.
Of course there were more sunbathers than on Friday, two groups of people were even making barbecue, others playing this game I don't know the name of with two wooden rackets and a tennis ball, even the usual beach peddlers selling their beach shit appeared.
The weather was so warm and peaceful that I became drowsy and fell asleep for an hour or so. After I woke up I discovered that beach now has a free WiFi network, "WiFi4EU Dimos Palaiou Falirou", which was good enough to surf news sites so I learned all the awful news right on the beach, before returning home. It is really great, a huge improvement for the visitors, really. I spent there the whole day till 5PM, when the sun hid behind the clouds and it became relatively cold, so I caught a tram and went to SNFCC to see what's going on.
Not much, really. The National Library is closed till the 24th of March, the National Opera is also closed, the cafe is closed too, the canal is dried out due to maintenance works and even Bréal's Cup is gone and instead of it some kind of 3D projection in a box is demonstrated. Maybe they removed it fearing that due to less visitors and subsequently less staff it will become more prone to theft. I don't know really, I didn't want to talk to anyone. The three or four members of staff left were all wearing masks so they didn't seem very friendly/talkative. There were also no informational leaflets with monthly program or special events anymore and all the monitors were turned off.
But there are still many people hanging out there, around the dried out canal and in the park, and two kiosks on wheels are still selling streeet food (with bottles of sanitiser at cashier desks), and the free WiFi is still running and the free buses are running too.
So I caught one of these buses and went to Syntagma. The bus was half empty, there were about five middle-aged women, one of them constantly caughing, and two men who seemed to be bums. So I took the seat in the back row which seemed safe and was completely empty.
Syntagma also seemed empty. Regular buses/trolleys run with huge pauses, like ten minutes between them, and the same can be said about metro. So if you need to make one change, you should be prepared to lose at least 20 minutes.
Also, there is one more novelty in the regular buses/trolleys since yesterday: the front part of each vehicle, with driver's place, front door and a few front seats, is now blocked off with red and white barricade tape.
As for the other novelties/news, there is not much to say, since everything that was possible to close is now closed. Even so-called "Northern Macedonia" closed it's borders with Greece today.
The police raids establishments that don't follow the rules, like cafes and hairdressers, and fines the owners etc.
More and more people with transparent/blue plastic gloves everywhere. I guess shops had ran out of masks for quite a time, so people buy these stupid gloves since there is nothing more left for them to buy to "feel secure".
Two more people died, one of them was 90 years old, as for the other, I don't know his age, but I assume he was in the same age group. Five more are supposed to die in the nearest days.
On the bright side, the first woman who fell ill two weeks ago in Thessaloniki, and her child who also got infected, were discharged from hospital two days ago. As they both were young and healthy, they went through their illness quite well, so in fact there is nothing to worry about for people of my age.
But yeah, the damage is already done, tourism is dead and the global economy had already collapsed, so quite a dark future is awaiting for us. What a stupid crazy disgusting world we are living in, fucking unbelieveable.
