Globalization

I have always prided myself as being someone who is savvy with the new globalized world that we all live in. However, it wasn’t until a recent trip to Europe that the effects of our globalized world began to truly transcend upon me.

I was sitting at Heathrow Airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Athens. There I used my Apple laptop to connect to paytrust.com, a website that allows you to manage amd pay your bills online. One by one, I paid my mortgage, credit cards and car lease. While I was there, sitting next to me was a German woman sipping Italian coffee, eating a ham, cheese, and tomato croisant while talking on her Samsung cellular phone. The era of globalization was running around me at light speed, and it seemed that I was finally starting to get it.

Three hours later it felt good to be back in Athens. It had been almost a year since my last visit, and it was clear that the Olympics had been a positive influence for the city. Despite leaving an enormous debt on the economy, the infrascture had improved, the metro system was clean and fast, and modern architectural improvements made to the airport gave you the feeling that you were in Singapore or Munich.

For me, these trips have always been twofold – an opportunity to see friends and family, but more importantly it give me an opportunity to revaluate my point of view. In the United States we take for granted, oftentimes, our wealth. As a country, our prosperity trumps developing nations in Eastern Europe by a freighting level. In the day to day grind, it is easy to get locked into what I call the CNN version of the world; leaving the United States helps to put everything in place for me. The rest of the world has a different lens from which they view current events. No single perspective is entirely right or wrong, but seeing the full spectrum has always helped to focus me.

While Greece has remained an anomaly of sorts – a country that has sucessfully left one foot stuck in the past, keeping close at hand the traditions and culture that has come from its rich history, and yet still striding forward with one leg trying to grab hold of the new, fast-paced globalized world. Greece is very much a dichotmy of culture; old versus new; macro versus micro.

Sitting at the Monistiraki, where once the ancient Greeks traded their crafts, you can’t help but look around and notice changes. Now the area is lined with restuarants, tourists, shops, and peddlers selling bootleg cd’s. The smell of Americana and old europe combine together and travel throughout the district.

Spending the day with my aunt, we were sitting at a Turkish bistro, eating Kabob and catching up with family news. Then it hit me.....Globalization is now here too.

I was sitting in Downtown Athens, in a Turkish resturant, eating and drinking with a 72-year-old Greek woman who was sending a text message to her son asking if he wanted to join us for lunch. Over the radio blarred Madonna, as waiters quickly ran between tables trying to handle the overflowing dinning area. One of the bus boys had Nike tennis shoes. The owner was sporting a new blackberry. Globalization Greek-style.

Later that evening, I was meeting my youngest cousin for dinner at Cafe Zoe inside the Intercontinental Hotel. From the moment you walk in you are almost thrown off guard – The massive hotel lobby is more like a Vegas-style Casino than a hotel in Greece. English, Turkish, Farsci and Mandarin can all be heard as we made our way through the smokey seating area where hotel guests were sipping on Russian Vodka, Greek Wine and American Beer. When Tom Friedman wrote in his book, “The World is flat” I had my doubts – but not now. The world is not only flat, but it is now shrinking.

It seems that no matter where you go – there is a global culture – one single global brand. While this may be a bit of exaggeration, you wouldn’t know it by spending some time at the Athens Intercontinental Hotel. We sat down to dinner, and the waitress very promptly came over and asked if we wanted to have anything to drink. She didn’t ask us in Greek, she asked us in English! We responded in Greek, and the waitress seemingly had to fight for words to reply. She admitted to us later that she was not Greek, but Bulgarian, working in Greece for a short time to earn extra money. She spoke Greek, but said she spent so much time speaking English at the hotel that it had become second nature.

Two days later I was on the road again. This time headed to Faraklada – a small village in the Peloponnese nearly three hours by car from Athens. Here my mother was born and raised before she came to the United States. The town of maybe fifty families is sterotypical of most villages throughout the country. The homes, many of them built in the late 1800s are made of stone, and have not seen significant improvements since that time. Walking up the stairs of my mother’s home always had a familiar feeling. The concrete steps have seen many years of family reunions, birthdays, and weddings. At the top of the stairs my uncle was waiting for me with open arms, his mustache and beard just as I remember. His pants and shirts torn, his hands rough from the day’s work in the field, and his deep laughter that bellowed throughout the house. It was good to be home.

Later that afternoon, we went out to olive orchard to inspect this year’s crop. Things had not changed since I last visited two years ago. The old, worn tractor still sat in its place next to the work shed, the concrete road still not finished ran along our property before turning into a dirt path. In the distance, the corn slalks were larger than ever.

The weather was chilly. The clouds began to creep though the valley. My uncle looked at the sky in digust, hoping that the weather would hold for another week or so. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, and began typing. I was shocked. “What are you doing,” I asked. He indicated that he was sending a text message to a farming collegue in the village approximately ten miles away to see if the rain had come there. In what he called a growing competitve market for olives, he had to stay ontop of the weather patterns more precisley in order to make sure that weather didn’t negatively influence his crop. He said that within twenty five minutes he could text 13 workers from the village to come to the orchard if he needed help to protect the crop from the storm.

On my way back home, again I was sitting at Heathrow. This time my lens was altered. I didn’t have to look for signs of globalization. It had been cemented in my head that everyone and everything around us is a part of the new world order. There are some in this world that fight change, and see Globalization as a way for the rich to get richer and the poor to stay poor. It is true that this point of view has validity, but if there was one thing I learned on my trip it was that if we embrace this new found connectabilty, even the most unlikely of people can impress you with their ability to navigate this new world.