Letter from Nea Kifissia

Letter from Nea Kifissia


Quiet tree lined streets of a barren city with indoor pools and a private airport for private planes. This is affluent Nea Kifissia. A Northern Suburb of Athens, Greece. Where there are some of the best grammar schools in the city, and a Starbucks too! Nea Kifissia, where you can eat a roll of sushi that costs twenty six Euros (plus a twenty four percent tax) and then relax your tired jaw at the hammam while a diligent worker scrubs the money off of you.

Five minutes away, Ex President Samarras lives in a walled in European mansion handed down from his mother's side, an architectural Michelangelo one might say. Lush greenery and a bountiful amount of guards surround his home for the next two blocks.
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Outside those walls people are hungry. My cousin was pocketing eight hundred Euros a month with a Masters degree. Half of the country's youth is unemployed and immigrating. Burglaries, crime, and suicides have all increased in a country where it was the norm to leave your front door wide open and be gone for the day.
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Inside, we have two homes, a driveway, five bedrooms, six balconies, two fireplaces and two dishwashers. We still hang our underwear outside to dry though, like everyone else. Europe doesn't fancy dryers. From the balconies you can see the mountains in the background where the summer fires happen. Or you can watch the country burn from where you sit atop your bidet, whatever.

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We go to the Laiko, the farmer's market, two blocks away. Housewives with Louis Vuitton's shop for their salad recipes. The gypsy mom sitting on the floor makes her toddler son steal a cucumber. He goes back happy. The sun moves across the clear baby blue sky.

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Inside Nea Kifissia, business is booming, a trendy and modern shish kabob joint, Biftekakia & Souvlakia, has franchised three new restaurants during the economic crisis. Real estate prices remain favorable to the seller and there's a newly made AstroTurf soccer field for a famous soccer team to practice on one block down, not that I mind.