What better for a mystery than this place, you already 2000 years ago, so well familiar with the dark side of the world. Came to the foot of the pilgrims from Athens, days ran only to overcome the fear of death: in Eleusis, the place of redemption, where they worshipped Demeter, the goddess of life. Elefsina is the name of the place it is today, and he is still full of secrets.
for example, on the bottom of the sea. Ships, sunk and forgotten. In this picturesque Golf, the is protected from all sides and from the weather favors, there are so many shipwrecks that they had small lighthouses set up, so that no ship is a dead rams. So how in that place, where three wrecks are to each other.
But now it needs to be cleaned up, the big Greek ship graveyard to disappear. The government has promised, because of the hazard to the environment. And because of Elefsina, this forgotten is bright are a niche backyard with a great past, 2021 European capital of culture. Sounds like a joke.
“no,” says Christos Christakis, “this is our Chance.” Christakis sitting at the wheel of his car, standing in front of the cement factory Titan. “I’m here every day, to show them that this is actually a public road.” The huge factory with five tall chimneys is a spirit plant, nothing more is produced, the company uses only the port. Right behind it is a hidden Bay opens. Since ships are unrigged with history and stories, and stored in Elefsina.
Bay full of Oil
“Sweet water” is the name of the Bay, on the beach, fresh-water springs between the tar stains. To the right and to the left of a tank monster film of plastic floating in the sea, there are oil Booms, next to the giant wreck they act in strings like Spaghetti. “We demand protection,” says Christakis.
We, the citizens initiative Ecoeleusis. They were only a few people, about a dozen, says Christakis. You don’t want to Elefsina is the largest ship debris remains in place in Greece. Christakis was born in Elefsina, 60 years old, a math teacher. “We have to think of the next Generation,” he says. As a child, he swam in the Gulf. There was also a lot of industry.
The came early to Elefsina. The cement factory in 1902, it delivered in the Middle East and supplied the whole of Attica, the Region around Athens. 30’000 people live in elefsína, but still more came here only to Work. In the construction industry, you have felt the Greek crisis, then, first of all, the business is practically dead.
Christakis is often on the go, look whether what ships do in the case of the dead. But it’s nothing to do, he says. The port authority is, for him, one of the main people responsible for the Disaster. “We would like you to do something, but they don’t do anything.”
“A tragic Situation”
the building of the port authority is as unadorned as the office of Charalambos Gargaretas. The port boss has a tidy Desk, as he had already made order in the ten months he is in office. “I could not imagine what I would find here,” says Gargaretas, “this is a tragic Situation.”
Gargaretas speaks of the “sins of the past”. He has previously worked in the Greek privatisation Agency, he is an Economist. The privatisation of state-an edition of the international lender, they will in Greece is very controversial is operated. Gargaretas says, the port of Elefsina will not survive without the private Investor. “I don’t see any other future.”
Elefsina was always in the shadow of the much larger and more famous port of Piraeus which is not far an hour’s drive. Cheaper and open to the dirtier and more dangerous cargo. Not A Tourist Town. And then of ships that wanted no more, or in the crisis, no one had landed here at once. “The owners just left her.” Or the police took them, because they had discovered Contraband. Courts should deal with later, the seized ships, but these remained. And often no one paid more then port charges.
Gargaretas has started looking for the owners of the last 20, 30 years in Elefsina forgotten ships. He wants to apply a law from the year 2001. It gives him the opportunity to take a ship into possession, if no owner is found. “I have the support of the government,” he says. But to take a ship, in a out-of-court procedures, he must first go through the hell of the Greek bureaucracy.
“I stretch out my Hand, and then you ask me: “Why are you doing this?””Charalambos Gargaretas, port-in-chief
He has identified in his area of 27 wrecks and 12 dangerous ships, all of which would have to “immediately” from Elefsina. Some drove away been rudderless from the coast, through the Gulf, they had to be towed. Now Gargaretas promised to the people in Elefsina, to eliminate the ships. Only, how is this going to go? “We need to dismantle the port and then the big parts away,” he says. For this he needed a license.
a Lot of friends has not made Gargaretas in the city with this idea. In the case of the citizens ‘ initiative, you are very suspicious of the port-in-chief, you believe him, that he really wants to clean up. “It all has no logic,” says Gargaretas about the resistance, he didn’t expect. “I stretch out my Hand, and then you ask me: Why are you doing this?”
the heads
Perhaps, says Gargaretas, had learned the people in Elefsina that each new investment to bring only more burden on the environment. That always over their heads to be decided.
Christos Christakis of the citizens ‘ initiative does not like the word “ship graveyard”, the Gargaretas used. A cemetery is usually something that remains. You have to ask the teacher later, in a Café, what he thinks of the plans of the port bosses, he says: “Here there is no place to ship scrapping.” The Café is located in a magnificently restored old manor house.
Video archaeologists discover says ship graveyard in the Mediterranean sea
Christakis, in Elefsina, many woke up properly, as in September 2017, a Greek oil Tanker, the Agia Zoni II, the need to be long since scrapped, would have to be sunk off the coast of Athens, and a giant oil Spill had contaminated the beaches of Salamis on Piraeus to the fine Glyfada. To talk “because people began to about the shipwrecks and the dangers here in our Gulf.”
But not only fear could make a change, says Christakis, but also hope, and he draws from the views of the capital of culture. There is already a thick book with the ambitious event motto: “Transition to EUphoria”. The example of the Ruhr area city of Essen, which has already made its coal Mines to cultural places. So similar, says Christakis, will you do the same in Elefsina, enough industrial ruins there, Yes.
Since Charalambos Gargaretas of the port authority knows that Elefsina capital of culture, he asks: “How do we bring people here, what we show you, and what do we do with the dirty side of Elefsina? Should you hide, or say, “this is it, look”?”
With the Evgenia P, the allies in 1944 landed in Normandy, and now it is here in the water.
For example, on the Evgenia P, a ship that was used in 1944 for the allied landing in Normandy. After the end of the war it came to Greece, served as a ferry and is now a long time in Elefsina, with an open tailgate, slightly tilted to the side, a Greek pennants flying from the flag mast. You could build maybe a Festival Bar in there?
Gargaretas has other plans, he has found the owner of the tank wrecks, which is located behind the cement factory, with all the Oil in the belly. With the man, he wants to create to eliminate these perhaps the biggest sin of Elefsina. Then the people would believe him that he means it. “I bet.”
When he had called the owner of the wreck, have the wondered, to actually hear something from Elefsina, after a half-eternity. “It was the first Time that someone asked him, officially, what it can do.”
climate of lawlessness
Now it wants to rain, the port chief out of his office, even if it is still. At the door he stops for a moment and says something in Elefsina is now no longer a secret: Where lawlessness prevails, is always to earn easy money. Elefsina is to long to be a place where a Greek Mafia thrived. “A lot have made enough Profit,” says Gargaretas. And now, what he meant with the statement is understood that he was fortunately still young. It has to do with the old time. “If we change nothing,” says the Greek, “who should do it then?” He says people of his Generation.
The sea is the night black, not a star, only the light of fire, to show the ships the way is lit, away from the wrecks. The night belongs to here, even today, the mysteries.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 29.01.2019, 10:50 PM
