← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Oct 1, 2011
00:28:18
An 18-hour train ride to the end of the line brings you to the very edge of Norway.
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on the top of our website. To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well. But now, with the addition Broadcast on Radio 4, here's Kate Ady today.
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Tear gas and despair as Greece waits to see whether it'll be allowed another cash handout. There's a vision of the future. In Japan, a crowded railway station. But where have all the children gone? Europe's largest native mammal tucks into a field of Czech grass 200 years after being hunted to extinction. And we're up in the Arctic Circle finding out why Norwegians say God bless Italian housewives. It's been hard going for the team of auditors who are in Athens trying to discuss conditions for the next international cash bailout for the country. Many Greeks are outraged that their governments agreed to implement further austerity measures. There's been a series of strikes and protests. The investigators from the eu, the European Central bank and the International Monetary Fund have had schedules torn up and meetings postponed. The Greek cabinet's due to meet in emergency session tomorrow. Mark Loewen says there's a gathering sense of crisis in the capital.
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It started as a murmur, a bit of excess noise coming from the street as I sat inside the Greek Finance Ministry, listening to a press conference by the Minister, Evangelos Venizelos. But gradually it grew in volume, rising above the hubbub indoors, it was instantly recognizable. The chanting of protesters. But then it became clear who they were. Employees of the Finance Ministry itself, furious at job counts. And so I found myself in a bizarre situation. The imposing Mr. Venizelos was speaking in strident tones about how his government was confident of success in reducing Greece's debt. That we had to remember how Greece still had a very high standard of living and that we should also praise the country for its economic successes. But all the while, his own workers were gathered outside, shouting about the hardship they're experiencing and the disastrous state of the economy. Perhaps the irony was lost on Mr. Venizelos. He made no reference to the protests. But then he was too busy arguing with a Greek journalist who turned her question into a tirade against his policies. It was in many ways an illustration of the two sides of Greece's debt story. While the government tries to show confidence and unity to the outside world, a commitment to its austerity drive and belief in eventual success. Among ordinary people, confidence is shattered. Members of the Cabinet travel to Washington, Berlin and Paris to announce they will reduce Greece's huge deficit. But at home, the sense of despair is deepening. I tried at the start of my trip to Athens to keep a list of upcoming strikes and protests, to know who was on the streets when. But I quickly lost track. So frequent are the demonstrations now. Every day another group stops work, public transport workers, taxi drivers, rubbish collectors, customs officials. The wave of social unrest has reached new heights. Protests are constant on the famous Syntagma Square in front of Parliament. The stench of tear gas, a now almost permanent feature from riot police, who seem so well versed in crowd control that watching them move, they seem to work on automatic. Listening to the anger and disappointment felt by vast swathes of the population, it is hard to feel optimistic about Greece's immediate future. All generations are on the streets, the young, tired of a crisis not of their making, and the old, bitter about the Greece they knew, appearing to collapse around them. They're trying to sell Greece and the Greek people, cristina, a pensioner, told me at one evening demonstration, and we won't let them. We should be the future of this country, pavlos said, tucking his university books into his bag. But if it goes on like this, I'll leave. The extreme social impact of the austerity drive is worrying to read about in the papers. Suicides up, mental health institutions running out of space, anti immigrant violence growing steadily. But it's the ordinary stories from middle class families that are also painful to hear. Gerasimos Melosaratos works at the Foreign Ministry. Married to a nurse, they have three small children. We talk in his modest apartment near central Athens, soon to be hit by a new property tax that the government wants to add to electricity bills, but the power companies say they'll refuse to collect. He tells me that by the end of the year, his and his wife's combined salaries will have dropped by a half. The effect is dramatic, he says. No more mobile phone use. They'll have to shop at discount stores, and their savings will be totally wiped out. Radio talk shows are full of irate callers, some saying government officials should be hanged on Syntagma Square. The ruling party has just 15% support, polls say when, although the opposition fares little better. Such is the depth of resentment against all politicians here. One MP tells me she never accepts requests for TV interviews because if people recognize her, she won't feel safe walking in Athens. But there is also a harsh reality that Greece is so mired in debt that its situation so grave that extreme measures seem the only way of saving the country from bankruptcy. The government says it is sympathetic to the concerns of ordinary Greeks, but it simply must plough on. Germany, France and others applaud that line, backing the government's approach. It's practically the only support the government can count on for now. But beyond the barricades, those with means still pack the capitals tavernas and nightclubs. Athens Airport is full of businessmen travelling first class, and large Greek companies are still expanding. Those are the Greeks who shout less loudly, the ones who support the slimming down of a bloated public sector and tire of strikes and protests. Who knows how many they number, but they are there, somewhere amidst the cloud of tear gas and despair slowly closing in over this troubled country.
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And that was Mark Loewen. It's been reported this week that some 50 million pounds in cash has been handed in since the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan earlier this year. The money in envelopes and safes and wallets and purses was lost by people who had to leave their homes. It was returned by their neighbours. A testament, it seems, to the extraordinary public spiritedness of the Japanese. Justin Webb, our colleague on the Today programme, was in the country recently and was struck by the following Japan benefits enormously from its cultural insularity and yet faces economic decline if it doesn't open up.
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She was the sweetest little girl, probably about six years old. Skipping cheerily along, I found myself drawn to her, her presence oddly captivating in the bustle of Sendai railway station. Then, when she had gone and I had found my seat for Tokyo, the reason she had fascinated me so much hit me with the impact of a bullet train itself. She was alone, not unaccompanied. Mum and dad had been there, but alone. There were in this big and bustling place, no other children. If you've read P.D. james book or seen the film Children of Men, you'll get the picture. Her story is about a world in which no one can have any children anymore. The psychological torment of humanity dying. A melodramatic comparison. Well, the facts are Japanese people are among the healthiest and longest living on earth. But they have for many years not been having many children. And the trend is accelerating. The population is falling and those who are alive are older. Every week, the median age of the Japanese nation goes up by two days. By 2040, according to current projections, around a third of Japanese people will be over 65 and a good proportion of them over 80. Now you might think that this is not entirely a bad thing. In a place that is very crowded, I took a journey on the Tokyo underground. The map is a work of wonderful post modern art. Think Rothko with coloured noodles. If you venture on board, the experience is deeply confusing. Electronic voices shout robotically at you in Japanese and crowds come and go. Then suddenly an English translation will boom out, apparently at random. Please don't use mobile phones as it annoys the neighbours. Or on my last journey, flashed onto an electronic screen above the door, bear impact, whatever that meant. Anyway, there's no shortage in Tokyo of people or the frenzy of humanity living cheek by jowl. Could they make do with less sprawl? Grow trees on the deserted overground lines that snake on giant steel frames around the city? Well, no. If Japan continues to age as forecast, it will probably have little impact on Tokyo, which is where the money and jobs will continue to be. It's the countryside and smaller cities that will empty the that could mean fewer people outside Tokyo than at any time since the 1800s. You can see it already in the earthquake hit north, a sense of resignation among shopkeepers I met in the city of Ashinomaki. That meant their little shopping parade would not be rebuilt because really it wasn't much needed anymore. So what to do? Well, there's an obvious answer, isn't there? Immigration pull in from China or South Korea or all the young people you need to keep industry going and the care homes paid for. There are some Japanese people who seriously believe that this is the way to go. But it's a huge cultural hurdle to cross. 2% of Japan's population is foreign. The fact is that the Japanese people do not have the best reputation in the neighborhood of East Asia. After a recent history littered with bloody conflict. A mid level executive in a Japanese company was telling me he'd been based for a bit in China but had not seen a lot of the place because of course he couldn't drive there. Of course. Why not? Well, because if a Japanese person has an accident, there is a chance he could be lynched. So there are some relationships to be improved before immigration could happen. But even if they wanted to come, would the Japanese have them? In a hotel in Tokyo, I witnessed a Chinese businessman trying to get some help. He spoke neither Japanese nor English. The staff ignored him. No speak China, they said. It's tempting to treat this insularity as dated and wrong, tempted to demand better English and Chinese signage, more openness. But here's a thought and it follows on from the extraordinary statistics for returned cash after the earthquake. When you catch the bullet train at Tokyo Station, you cue neatly on the platform and the cleaners who've been on board come out in a row and bow deeply to the passengers. I would wager that in no other country in the world does that happen. And if the cleaners were not Japanese, I wonder if it would happen for long in Japan. Japan has a terrible history of chauvinism and aggression, but it also has traditions, its soothing and life enhancing cohesion and sense of order that seem worthy of respect in a world in which people have been pushed in a transnational direction a little further than they seem to want to go. Perhaps growing old gracefully and alone is the best option for Japan.
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Justin Webb the Americans have moved their consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi to a new location. The building was the target of a bomb attack nine years ago and was repeatedly threatened in following years. As a result, a main road was closed to public transport and a historic park shut its gates to the public. Mohammed Haneef's been to Abdullah Haroun Road, the former site of the US Diplomatic mission, to find out what happens when the Americans leave.
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They may have taken the security cameras with them, but the coils of barbed wire covering the high walls are still there, and so are the deserted bunkers. And after nine years, the park across the road from the old consulate is finally open again. Some Karachiites can suddenly taste what it's like not living next door to Americans. A pickup truck packed with explosives drove into the consulate building in 2002, killing 12 people. For the next nine years, the road was closed to public transport. Private cars were allowed, but no taxis, no autorickshaws, no buses. Motorbikes, the working man's transport were also banned. A series of concrete bunkers was built and fortified by sandbags. Paramilitary troops stood behind their machine guns and searched cars at random. Not knowing that the road was closed to pedestrians, I wandered onto it a few years ago. Within moments, I found three different types of guns pointed at me. Someone shouted, halt. Then I was ordered to retrace my steps. I was scared for myself. But as the soldiers relaxed behind their guns, I was scared for them too. What kind of bad luck lottery do you need to win to stand guard on the very dangerous outer periphery of an American establishment? All 12 people who died in the 2002 attack were Pakistanis. When the consulate finally moved, one of central Karachi's main parks, it's called Freyr hall, reopened for nine years. The Frere hall library and art gallery were shut. Driving by in a car you could see the lush manicured lawns around the 150-year-old Frere hall, but nobody was allowed to step onto them. I went for a stroll. When the park reopened, there were a dozen simultaneous cricket matches going on. A group of children chased a football. Couples sat in the shade contemplating each other. An old man was taking a nap. The old Books Bazaar, a Sunday fixture here for years, had returned. You could buy Russian classics as well as pirated editions of Paulo Cohelo and the latest vampire blockbusters. An impromptu literary festival had started. On the sidelines of the book bazaar, I sat and listened as a middle aged man recited a poem in English full of anguish and mixed metaphors. A young man sat ahead of me, quietly reading and re reading a piece of paper, not sure whether his offering was worthy of the audience. A wiry old man in a funky T shirt read a humorous essay in which a pair of feuding women kept offering each other sweets laced with weapons grade uranium. A man in Pakistan's cricket kit riding a bicycle stopped by and announced that he was biking through the country to spread the message of peace as local and global wars raise and revolutions erupt in unlikely places. The resurrection of Frere hall park might not seem much, but it's the return of the ordinary life and disappearance of machine guns that were significant. It was important the children had reclaimed the freedom to hang upside down from the trees. It's important that auto rickshaws can now run alongside private cars. Over the last nine years, I had heard arguments against the ban. Was any auto rickshaw involved in the attacks on Americans? A rickshaw driver had asked me. Has an autorickshaw been involved in an attack on anyone, anywhere in the world? Taxi drivers were no happier. Have you ever heard of taxi drivers getting involved in this kind of business? They asked. When I saw life returning to Frere Howell park, my first reaction was joy. Then the reckless hope that maybe this is the mini model for the future, that when Americans leave we can start to play again. I visited Fairhall again on a recent Sunday. Usually it's the busiest day. The old booksellers were there, but there were hardly any buyers. The park was so deserted that for a moment I felt that the ban had been reimposed. But no. At the time, Karachi was going through one of its regular bouts of intercommunal violence. The book lovers had decided to stay home. And this time nobody was blaming the Americans. Then I saw a gang of teenagers practicing their breakdance moves. One of them did a perfect somersault in the air, another one balanced himself on one hand and rotated like a spinning top. Then a boy sprinted in and ran up the trunk of a tree. For a moment he was parallel to the ground, and it seemed as if he'd run up all the way to the treetop. Then he did a back flip in the air and landed safely on his feet.
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Mohammad Hanif In Karachi not so long ago, you'd have to go to America's Great Plains to see the mighty bison. Those who have to deal with them are told they may seem lazy, peaceful beasts, but beware, they can attack at any time, and often without good reason. Today the bison's back in Europe. After a successful breeding program in Poland, a small herd's now been returned to the wild in a nature reserve in the Czech Republic. It's the latest chapter in what's an amazing reversal of fortune for Europe's largest mammal. Rob Cameron has been off to see them on what used to be a military training ground used by the Russian army.
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I don't think the man from the Ministry liked journalists very much. Certainly he seemed less than impressed with us. As we clambered from the sweaty confines of our car, I suddenly felt ridiculous in my shorts and sandals, appropriate for a blistering afternoon in Prague, but hardly suitable for a bison hunt. Jiji Yanota, the head of the Military Forests and Farmland Department of the Czech Defence Ministry, took one look at us and checked his watch. All right, then, he said, I guess you'd better follow me. And with that he jumped into his 4x4 and sped off. We struggled to keep his Jeep in sight as he barrelled down a metalled road into a wilderness of thick forest which gradually gave way to sun drenched grassy plains. This was the Rascal Nature Reserve, formerly the Rauskol military training ground, and for decades it was off limits to mere mortals like us. After 15 minutes or so, Jerzy's vehicle lurched off to the right and skidded down a gravel track which ended abruptly in front of a large wooden gate. At this point, he decided my humble Koda Fabia could go no further. I'd already heard several ominous clunks and wasn't about to argue, so we climbed into his car. The 4x4 crept into the sloping meadow, rolling silently through the grass. You might think a 2 metre high creature that can weigh almost a ton would be hard to miss, but we drove round and round that field, the car dipping into little hollows and cresting gentle peaks before Yizzy decided the bison were hiding in the forest. And indeed There they were, their brown shaggy coats almost indistinguishable from the trees around them. Yiji managed to coax them out into the open, and they stood staring dumbly at us. The previous day, I'd had one of those pointless telephone conversations which radio journalists often have to make before embarking on a story. I'd called Jizzi to ask him if his bison made any noises I might be able to record for use in my report. For a minute, he was silent. They graze, he answered. In the event, even the sound of bison munching grass would prove impossible to capture, as, in addition to being very big animals, they're also rather shy and tend to run away when they see humans. This is perhaps understandable, as we spent several millennia running after them with spears. The spears were replaced by arrows and finally by guns. In 1919, a Polish poacher shot Europe's last wild bison, and that should have been the end. It wasn't. Thankfully. Ten years later, a bison restitution centre opened in Poland, using some of the few dozen animals still surviving in zoos. A breeding program followed, protected by everyone from the Nazis to the Soviets. Poaching the animals was at one time punishable by death. In 1951, the first bison were reintroduced to the wild at the Bielowica forest, which straddles Poland and Belarus, and today that population has grown to 800. The animals have been reintroduced all over central Europe, and Bison bonassus has been taken off the endangered species list. But back to our bison, who were themselves brought here from Poland, distant descendants of the original breeding pair. At present, under Jerzy's watchful eye, they're getting used to the taste of Czech grass, 200 years after they were hunted to extinction in this land. They seem to like it. The bull and five cows have since produced too young. And soon, perhaps next year, the herd will be freed from the confines of two meadows and a patch of forest and allowed to roam freely throughout the roscol Reserve, all 100 square miles of it. It's certainly an odd twist of fate, both for an animal that virtually died out thanks to man's rapacious greed, and for that, for several centuries, has been pummeled by artillery shells and torn up by tank tracks. Now, 20 years since the last Red army troops loaded their tanks onto trains for the long ride back to Russia, this wild, undulating land, cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance, will once again become home to Europe's largest native mammal. Americans get a lot of stick for having slaughtered, impossibly large numbers of bison in their drive to conquer the West. But we Europe Morgans weren't much better, cutting down these massive gentle beasts for their hides and meat and turning their horns into novelty drinking vessels. They'll never again roam Czech forests in the same huge numbers, but eight of them return to the wild is, I suppose, a start.
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Rob Cameron in Prague. The islands in Norway's far north have much to commend them. Many are famous for their natural beauty and the jaw dropping views of the midnight sun and the northern lights. There have been settlements in these parts for more than a thousand years. As you'd expect, their northerly latitude means the weather can be somewhat extreme. But Christine Finn has discovered that one set of islands in particular has an unexpected link with rather warmer climes.
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An 18 hour train ride to the end of the line fetched me up inside the Arctic Circle with a tantalising view of spiky glacial peaks far across the sea. The Lofoten Islands. And there was even a bus. Since 2007, King Olaf's Road has linked Norway's mainland with the archipelago via a necklace of bridges, tunnels and spectacular views. Journey's End was an international youth hostel where the north wind whipped around the nearby rhubor or fishing cabins. Muffling myself against a chilly morning. I found my fellow hostellers were much more appropriately dressed for the Arctic and many had travelled there on the outside deck of the Hude Grutten ferry, which calls at the Lofotens on its journey to the far north of Norway and on to the Russian border at Kirkines. I'd been hoping to head to the frontier region too, but had to admit I was inadequately prepared for wild camping. The Lofotens, warmed by the Gulf Stream, seemed a much better option. But even so, that day I was wearing every scrap of fabric in my rucksack, even the grey blanket doled out to overnight train passengers. By some miracle, in a place of hardly any commerce and eye watering Norwegian prices, there was a junk shop there. Amongst the tired chairs and old plates, I found a cream tweed jacket of surprising smartness, which I snapped up for an un Norwegian price of just 20 krona, around 2 pound. It was perfect and impressively well cut. And then I saw the label. Made in Italy. But how did it happen to end up here? Doubtless it had more than a little to do with Cod's Italian connection. Back in the hostel, there was a chatter of Italian students flirting with three French boys. The next day, a couple and two young lads arrived, all Italian. One teenager had worked in a Roman pizza joint. So he made everyone pizza from scratch. And over my first cod free supper in days, I asked why the Lofotens held such a fascination for Italians. The answer lay in the empty wooden frames I'd seen all over the islands and the odd white forms with a pungent tang which flapped about like kites outside the Rubera. Further down the archipelago, the fishing village of O welcomes visitors with an array of dried cod heads, huge jaws agape and a museum dedicated to dried cod, which they call it. Stockfish is the Lofoten's unique food product. Signposts to the museum all seem to be in Italian. And although Lofoten exports its stockfish all over the world, the biggest importer by far is Italy. It all began in 1432, when Piero Carini, an Italian nobleman and Venetian merchant, was left stranded on an uninhabited Lofoten island. He and his men spent months with the Norwegian fishermen here, observing the island's annual ritual in which continues today. Cod is fished from the Barents Sea in vast quantities from January to April. It's then dried entirely naturally in the wind and sun, and as Querini wrote, the fish contains little moisture or fat and it becomes dry as wood. It is in fact more palatable when soaked in water or flavoured with butter and spices. But even today, Norwegians tuck into little packets of chewy stockfish as the rest of us dip into packets of crisps. The long lasting fish is a literal stock in trade, like a currency dating back to Viking times. Quarini eventually returned to Italy with 50 barrels of stockfish and found a keen appetite for it. These days, many thousand tons are transported to Italy each year. The trade has made the island's fortune. That and the Italians visiting on the stockfish trail. No wonder the cry goes up in the Lofantans. God bless Italian housewives and their kitchens. Long live Italian cuisine. And each September it is answered back in Italy when the entire village of Babalucco, near Genoa, celebrates its Festa del Paese with feasting and a march in honour of stockfish, all to a rousing rendition of the Norwegian national anthem. For a day and a night, the Arctic meets the Mediterranean in the passionate cry Viva Lofoten.
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Christine Finn on the Italian connection north of the Arctic Circle. And bringing this edition to a close. Two editions of the program next week on both Thursday and Saturday mornings. Do join us. Goodbye.