Book Release: “Inside the Greek” Documents Immigration to Germany

A Greek- German journalist, Alexandros Stefanidis, decided to write the German history of the last decades from a special view.  He documented its history through the eyes of his family, who are owners of a restaurant in Karlsruhe.

What kind of logical consequences does the Greek immigration in Germany create? Factories, restaurants decorated with meanders, miserable Greek, poor German. And in a deeper level, gnarled hands from work, dirty laps from kitchens, simple people without any great demands, nice people, who have been quiet all their life and never raised their voice among the landslide, during the last 50 years.

But maybe there has come the time to enrich a bit the logical consequences related with Greek immigration. This is what is recommended in a book called “Inside The Greek “, published recently by the pocket press Fischer. The author of the book is the young journalist of Süddeutsche Zeitung, Alexandros Stefanidis.  He was first noticed last year with his articles about the crisis in Greece, which have been explanatory and new, something far from the known “philhellenic” or “anti-Greek” spirit.

In a few words, he narrates the story of his family, a family of Greek immigrants in Karlsruhe. For 40 years they ran a restaurant, under the name “El Greco”, then renamed to “Alexis Zorbas” and finally called “The Greek”, until it closed down in 2009 as a victim of the battle between American and Chinese fast foods.

But the book is neither about the story of the Greek gastronomy trying to survive abroad nor about a family story with a father addicted to card playing, drinking and the mother as the silent stylobate of the family. The book, through the servicing of great patrons of the political and social history of Germany who came as customers in the restaurant, describes the different views of each one about the political and social situation of the country.  It also discusses how they treated foreigners depending on the season they visited the restaurant, when they acted spontaneously and when every movement of theirs was planned for their “vote chasing”. Stefanidis narrates the story without any mercy or without any mood of revenge, but with a mood of trying to make things look simpler, with a great dose of humour. Stefanidis himself, before getting involved with the “cooking” of journalism, was also helping in the restaurant.