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Foreign Correspondent: Nov 13

Foreign Correspondent looks at how the people of Greece maintain resilience in the face of hardship.

Tomorrow night Foreign Correspondent looks at the other side of the stories emerging from the Greek economic crisis: how people maintain resilience in the face of hardship.

We’ve seen and heard a great deal about the economic apocalypse thumping Greece. Violent protests, enormous pain, staggering job losses, lives destroyed. But that’s not the complete picture.

Meet the Greeks turning national disaster into personal triumph. They’re not waiting around under the thunderheads of austerity waiting for the economy to turn and the sun to shine again. They’re taking matters into their own hands.

Thessaloniki banker Kostas Bozos went back to basics. He returned to his family village for an education in farming from his ageing father and then on to a local agricultural college to finesse those skills into winemaking and marketing.

Evangelos Vergos runs The American Farm School and is seeing his students greying before his eyes. Young enrolees are fast becoming outnumbered by mature aged students – city professionals dispossessed by the cities and their shrinking opportunities and who are trying to adapt and survive in a flight to Greece’s rural reaches and archipelago of islands. How many of his older students will return to the cities when and if the economy changes for the better?

“None. They’ve got a new way of life, there’s good opportunity to exploit and they’re going
to get stuck to that .” DR EVANGELOS VERGOS American Farm School, Thessaloniki.

Ironically, agricultural scientists Alex Tricha and Nicos Gavalas took their skills to the city where they landed government contracts and planned a future in the capital Athens. But when Greece’s financial plates began to shift and rock those contracts ended and their hopes and dreams were crushed. But not for long.

Alex and Nicos headed back to family on the island of Chios – about as far from Athens as you can get and stil till Greek soil – and set about establishing one of the more novel survival businesses you could ever imagine.

‘Everyone said you are definitely crazy my girl. Now they think they were damn stupid that they didn’t decide to do it.’ ALEX TRICHA Entrepreneur

On a trail through some of Greece’s more stunning countryside Europe Correspondent Philip Williams paints a very different picture of the nation than we’ve become used to in recent times.

He meets people trying to be positive and productive in the face of adversity and some discovering that the lives they discovered are better then the one’s they’ve left behind.

8pm Tuesday on ABC1.

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