Inaccessibility

Yesterday I was driving around for quite a while, trying to find an open pharmacy. Unfortunately, in Greece, the cure for a case of baby stomach flu on a Sunday afternoon involves a 50-minute drive and two stops at two different stores (the first did not stock the much-needed lactose-free baby milk). Greeks, including myself, are quite used to this inaccessibility on Sundays. On a good Sunday, I might be missing some vanilla essence for those Nigella Lawson cookies that I love to bake on weekends. It's annoying, but I just skip the vanilla step and hope for the best. On a bad Sunday, if someone in the family isn't feeling very well and I haven't “properly prepared” myself for food-poisoning or a little kid moaning in pain, I feel lousy and maybe a bit guilty for not having been proactive. Yesterday however, I felt disappointment and anger.

As I was driving through Halandri, a very commercial neighborhood in Athens, miles of closed and unlit stores seemed to be mocking me. There I was, trying to find an open store on a Sunday, in a country whose citizens need to work more, now more than ever. I couldn't help but wonder how we can afford to be so lazy. We know that after the early hours of Saturday evenings, any kind of normal commercial activity will have to wait until Monday morning. Monday afternoons are out of the equation and so are Wednesday afternoons... We have learned to live with inaccessibility, often misunderstanding it for luxury. But hey, luxury isn't having to drive for 50 minutes when there are more than 5 pharmacies situated within a half-mile radius from home (as evidenced on a map provided by an iPhone application I recently downloaded). It may have been considered luxury for the people who own the pharmacies and all those other stores, but is no longer relevant to the current situation in Greece. I know a pharmacist who actually wants to keep his store open on weekdays from 2pm to 5pm, but can't because of the Union. Where's the luxury in that?