Heartbreaking stories in Greece - HOPE

I spent time recently with a group of elderly ladies at a day centre on the outskirts of the capital. They had gone there since retirement. The exercises and strong Greek coffee had remained the same, the talk had not.

With pensions cut and set to be reduced yet further, conversation is crisis-filled.

"I can no longer afford to buy chocolate for my grandchild," 82-year-old Maria told me, as her kindly eyes glazed over with tears. "If they cut my monthly pension even more, I'll be left with 100 euros (£80) with which to live. Am I not human?"

I could not help but think of my own late grandmothers, as I sat listening to these women who have lived through so much - wars, dictatorship - and now simply long for a comfortable old age.

But they, like so many here, are facing further savage spending cuts.

Ermioni, 84 years old and with few teeth remaining, was keen to speak.

"My son asked to borrow two euros (£1.50) from me he was so desperate", she said, crying. "It was like a dagger through my heart. I can't afford to live any more. All I want is to close my eyes and never wake up."

After leaving the day centre, I went to meet an elderly man, Kostas Kokotsis, who depends on the box of free food he receives

His home in the western suburb of Perama was like something out of Dracula - cobwebs in all corners, the sound of rats inside walls, old belongings piled everywhere, sheets soiled and unchanged.

On the table lay his mounting electricity bill that he cannot pay alongside his pension slip of 340 euros per month - a little over £250. It barely covers his rent.

In fact the tragic stories are everywhere. There is a foster-care home south of Athens that is now taking in more and more children whose parents can no longer afford to keep them.

A mother I met had given up her 10-year-old daughter last year and now comes just once a week for a snatched moment together. "It's hard not having her alongside me when I sleep or seeing her growing up," she said. "But there's no other option any more."

This is happening in a European Union country - a place of unparalleled cultural richness, of beauty, of history. How has it come to this?

You can read the theories, study the statistics and yet it still seems incomprehensible that a country can fall so far, so fast.

Those are the different faces of fascinating Greece - one sun-kissed, sophisticated, joyous, the other suffering in ways that still stun me with every tale.

It makes for a place that defies the expectations of my summer visitors and which is at once enchanting, baffling and heart-breaking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19519908

http://gu.com/p/36fxy

http://www.tutorpool.gr/

http://www.tem-magnisia.gr/

http://www.boroume.gr/

Boroume! / Mπορούμε! from Eirini Vianelli on Vimeo.

Jon Henley returns to Greece for a second series of his Twitter-led #EuroDebtTales and discovers some Greeks are moving beyond anger and finding innovative ways of helping each other, from tutor pools to food pools

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/greece-on-the-breadline