Today, (Wednesday, 13/02/2008), Greece is on general strike. The strike will last for the whole day, crippling the whole nation, as buses, trains, and airplanes were shut down. Schools are closed and hospitals are only dealing with emergency cases. Almost all public services, even news agencies join the strike. From the news, I know that the workers are demanding a better pension in their retirement system.
The effect of this strike for me is quite significant as the secretary of the programme who is responsible for the lecture room we use did not come to work today (I don’t know if she joins the strike or not), forcing us to move to the opposite room. This room has no projector and the lecturer has only his powerpoint slide. So we copied his slides and viewed his slides on our laptops while he explained quickly (and later more quickly since someone realised that electric socket is limited and apparently few laptops will last for more than one hour - gasp!)
Another major impact we felt was we have no free lunch(!) I told you before that Greek students have free lunch and dinner on weekdays. But after class, we found that the cafeteria was closed, most likely due to the strike. We walked for quite awhile to reach some shops where some of us bought burgers and I bought spinach pies (typical Greek pie, usually eaten for breakfast).
It turned out there are still buses operate in Thessaloniki, but only very few. Someone told us that probably only 5% of buses operate throughout the day. I don’t know yet if supermarkets are closed due to this strike (but I don’t think so), I have enough food for dinner. It’s not much, but I’ll survive.
