Reality of austerity as seen from the Athens Metro sheds light on recent elections in Greece

Many travelers still seek solitude among the tourists, the luxury to communicate personally with the ruins. They long to leave their minds on idle, while they enter the vista before them, undisturbed by the other souls striving for the same illusion. I often feel this contradiction of being alone with others when I travel.

Nothing illustrates better the anti-democratic politics of austerity in Europe today than the fact that the prime ministers of both Italy and Greece have been appointed by Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble, the Federal Minister of Finance, and Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank.