Greek updates

Couple weeks of preparations passed again so here we are with some fresh news...

Thanks to Efi Maniatti and her "Greek crash course" some of us know slightly more Greek vocabularies than "gyros" or "ouzo". That, of course doesn't apply for the natives or students from our group who went through this with Mrs. Maniatti during her Greek language classes. Besides her work at our Faculty of Social Sciences, she also co-operate on our narrators' list and generously offered her help with the interviews. And she is not the only one.

Another valuable member of the team – Ms. Georgia Sarikoudi who has experience with similar research on Greek repatriates presented us her thesis on “Repatriation of the political refugees that lived between 1949 and 1990 in Czechoslovakia”. This was a complicated and stressful process experienced by many of the 12.000 Greeks that came to our county after the civil war. List of troubles they had to face could begin with difficulties to recognize their “home” as a place of origin to which one yearns to return. Emotional problems that these refugees had to confront with after their repatriation should be also included, followed by hostile environment and feeling they are unwanted in their own country, isolated because of their special identity. Lack of communication with family members who became strangers after so many years couldn't hurt any less. It was definitely an interesting topic to discuss. So interesting that we continued to discuss it in a beerhouse until the late night!

By now, not only that we are almost done with the theoretical part of our project but we are finishing with other arrangements as well. All of the digital recorders were already delivered and the contact list is ready. Using common sense, this could mean just one single thing – it's time for the interviews. Each of us is expected to make about 6 of them, hopefully with many first-generation Greeks, that way we could gain as much authenticity as possible. Most of the refugees are settled in Moravia or Eastern Bohemia, so we are going to be out of Prague for quite a lot of time and travel cross the country, visiting narrators in their hometowns. Since we've already drew lots with the first narrator name and even begun with the interviews, it won't take long and we'll be back with first background.

Marketa Sostakova