Greek restaurants and cafés are open, but business owners show cautious optimism
With relatively few new coronavirus cases over the past few weeks Greece entered phase four of lifting lockdown restrictions on May 25, opening bars and restaurants, and allowing domestic travel, a week earlier than planned.
Phase one, which began on May 4 with the opening of smaller shops and service providers, was followed by phase two on May 11, when remaining retail outlets, except for shopping malls, opened their doors and more than 200,000 employees returned to work. Stage three began on May 18 when archaeological sites, zoos and botanical gardens, as well as secondary schools and shopping malls.
“This is a very important phase – not only because people will be able to go back to work, but because going out is part of our culture and a lot of people were feeling very stressed and frustrated because they couldn’t visit their favourite cafés,” says Georgios Kaloutsakis, owner of luxury hotel Abaton Island in the Cretan resort of Hersonissos.
In the streets of Athens, Greek TV stations showed scenes of joy on May 25 as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis strolled through bustling streets to greet business owners, and clients who’ve been unable to visit their favourite restaurants for the past 73 days. But it’s hardly ‘business as usual’: come rain or shine clients must sit outdoors at pavement tables set several metres apart, whilst plexiglass screens protect cash registers and employees serve food and drinks wearing gloves and masks.
With hotels due to open on June 15 – the date when Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has also announced that tourists from 20 countries considered to have positive epidemiological data would be allowed to enter the country with only random testing measures in place – residents on Greece’s islands, which have been relatively unaffected by the pandemic, are worried that Mitsotakis is moving too fast.
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On Crete, an island famed, even amongst Greeks themselves, for its thriving social life, cafés and taverns in many smaller towns and villages are deserted, despite the fact that the island has only had 57 confirmed cases so far. According to a just-released survey by Greece’s Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods (IELKA) more than half of those questioned said that they would avoid cafés and restaurants until the end of the epidemic.
British expats Derek and Gill Pearce, who left the UK several decades ago to set up a lavender farm in a village near Chania, are worried too. “We loved being able to return to our favourite café Posto, it was like coming home, but we do worry about tourists arriving in June,” they say.
It’s the same story on the other side of the island. In the mountain town of Ziros on the Lasithi plateau the kafeneions where locals would usually sit for hours sipping syrupy elleniko coffee and playing with their komboloi worry beads were a vital part of communal life pre-Covid-19. But these traditional cafés, which were packed before the start of the crisis, are near empty on May 26, a day after reopening.
“People are scared; we’re all scared – we know so little about what’s going to happen in the near future and we know so little about this virus – and of course we’ve all been badly affected financially, so people don’t have much money for extras, like going out,” says Anna Katras, owner of popular local taverna O Katras.
Her only client, sheep farmer Kosti Harkiolakis, agrees: “We think that it’s possible that the virus will return in September. Many of us are really stressed about this,” he says, pulling back his mask to sip his iced coffee frappe.
Like other local business owners, however, Anna Katras is cautiously optimistic. “I think people will return to us soon,” she says. “Unlike some of the cafés in the bigger cities I haven’t put up my prices either – I want to work,” she adds.
On the coast, where most of the island’s tourist industries are situated, people are desperate to get back to work as well. “We have nothing – we have been furloughed without wages; unemployment payments here are low, or non-existent. I have a family. What can I do? They must eat, so I must work,” the manager of one luxury hotel, due to open on July 1, confides anonymously. “But I am also worried about being Europe’s ‘star performer’ – if things go wrong we will really be in the spotlight,” he adds.
In an ambitious joint action plan ahead of opening the country to holidaymakers, Greece’s health and tourism ministers have divided the country into three risk zones according to the standard of health facilities, with Crete and the mainland in the low risk Zone Three and most of the country’s remoter islands classed as high risk, Zone One areas. They have also introduced a new S.A.F.E (Stay Alert be Fully Educated) programme, designed to prepare all sectors that are likely to come into contact with the virus.
“ I think the government is doing the right thing – now is the time to take our lives back, respect the existence of this dangerous virus and learn how to protect our people from it,” says Georgios Kaloutsakis.
