"Excuse me, milas agglika?"
“Nai, ligo. A little."
“Do you know what time it is?"
She shows me her watch."How do you say... quarter past nine?"
“Yeah, that’s right. Thanks. So are you a student here?"
“Yes."
"What do you stucly?"
"Economics."
"What do you think about the student occupations?"
“It’s okay but I think it’s hard to study here. It’s a lot of work."
She didn’t seem to have understood the question, so I went in for some small talk, "Do you like Thessaloniki?”
“Yes, it’s a great city."
‘Are you from here?"
"No, I’m from Crete. Do you know where is Crete?"
“Yup. What's it like?"
“Very nice. I’m from Hania. It's a big city, not so big, but it’s alright. There are four big cities on Crete, Iraklion is the biggest. I think it’s the 3rd or 4th biggest of all Greece."
"My names Alex, what's your's?"
“Ionna. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too, So..." Small talk was harder than it looks. I plunged back in to the topic of politics. “So, were you in the student movement two years ago? You know, the occupations, the katalipsi in 2006?"
“Ah no, I was in high school then?.”
“So what do you think about what happened in December?”
"It was awful!"
"'What was awful about it?"
“The police shouldn’t have the right to take someone’s life. It’s very very bad."
"That’s funny in my country someone would say it’s awful and they would be talking about burning the banks - they would have forgotten about the boy getting killed."
"That’s terrible."
"Yeah, really. So I bet you smashed like a hundred banks."
“Ha ha! No, but I went to the protests!”
"I like how everywhere there's graffiti here for the prisoners."
She looks to where I point out the slogan written for Polikarpos Giorgiadis, from November 17th, on the wall across from us.
“Yes," she says with a little laugh I can’t quite decipher.
“So do the anarchists here have much support? I mean from normal people?"
“Mmmm, I don;t know. I think yes among the young people and not so much from other people.”
“ I went to the katalipsi at the university yesterday. They had a talk about Konstantina Kuneva and the workers, that was very interesting.”
“Ah, yes?”
“Do you know about that case?”
“A little.”
“So... are there any good parties on the university this weekend?”
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