Be prepared for a post that might make no sense...
As everyone must have heard by now, Greece is in serious economical trouble, and EU has ordered the governement ot fix or else. They plan on fixing things by making us everyday folk even poorer than we were before. Wages, benefits, pensions and other such are getting cut while taxes, bills and VAT are going up. In other words most families will be bankrupt and many small businesses will close and the rest of us will end up counting every penny and still won't make ends meet.
Obviously the trade unions aren't taking it sitting down. Besides the near daily demostrations in the centre of Athens, we have weekly and bi-weekly strikes. Which is all very good for civil servants, but we poor sods who work in the private sector still have to go to work. Because the greek private sector is one of the most underpaid and insensitive private sectors in Europe, we are expected to show up for work even when all means of public transport are on strike!. Their response is, "So? Take a taxi", or "It's about time you got a car".
During last week's general strike I got a taxi to and from work. Before going to the office I had to go to the town planning office - which I can reach by foot - so I deftly caught the secretary at a distracted moment and handed her the taxi receipt as "getting back from the planning office". But I still had to return home!
Only thing is there was another general strike today, and there's more comming next week. I do not earn enough to afford all these taxi fares! So I decided today to try going to work by bike.
I must first point out that I'm not in particularly good shape. I'm not completely hopeless (I do two dance classes a week after all) but I have no stamina (I never did, even as a kid), I have low blood-pressure and have weak knees. So, yeah, I was never an athletic person.
But I do have a bike, and I do try to ride it as often as I can (which isn't much with my schedule).
It takes me about 45 minutes to get to work by public transport. Today I discovered that it takes me 45 minutes to get to work by bicycle too. The only problem is I only have the strength to cycle 30 minutes on the tiring hilly roads of Athens. The 15 last minutes I had push myself with a throbbing head and a churning stomach to finish.
The way back was worse. I only managed 20 minutes before feeling ready to pack it in. The return eventually took me 1 hour - I was too tired to move my limbs.
I think I should also mention, that being the masochist that I am, I still went to my dance class this evening...
So now I think I have every right to claim I'm exhausted. Very exhausted. The only up-side is that I must have burned 800-1000 calories today (I looked it up). Imagine if I had the stamina to it every day, what great shape I'd be in after a month!
With that thought in mind, I'll just go and collapse now.
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