So what? That is irrelevant to the popular opinion.

I don't understand how they can claim to not be Europeans while they're part of the European Union.

Why do you assume people are realistic by default? People in the Balkans don't have touch with reality! Trust me, I live here.

The Greeks don't care they are in the EU. In their heads they are not Europeans. And that is that. How is that hard to understand?

They can't all be like that.


Because it just don't make no sense! Why would they join an organization of European nations if they don't consider themselves European?

The Europeans consider them Europeans. Look, there is a void between any government and the general population. The government will say: "We are in the EU since we are part of Europe". This goes down into all the records. But the general population does not really care on a certain level. They see other Europeans as foreigners and they see the EU as the evil responsible for all their problems, since their own government is elected by them it cannot be responsible since they, Greeks, don't make mistakes, so someone else is to blame. Imagine it this way: you walk down the street and ask a random Greek person what they think of the EU. Most likely they will speak of it as a foreign land and will tell you little or nothing good about it. In their heads they are Greeks, not Europeans.

Similar situation you can find in post-war Serbia, not long after the bombing of 1999. The Serbs did not consider themselves Europeans despite living on the continent of Europe and being one of its historic nations. The terms Europe was and is to this day equated with Western Europe. The rest of Europe is just "the rest".

Greeks consider themselves Europeans only on paper, not in their own reality.

And you asked why Greeks hate Americans. One of the answers is that the USA is on good terms with Turkey and it was the West which allowed Turkey to enter the NATO. Greeks as you may know hate Turks beyond reason. Unlike other Balkan countries which already forgot and forgave the rule of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Wars, Greeks still live in the past and see the Turks as their mortal enemies. Turks however seem indifferent.

How can Greeks be anything but European? What else are they, Asians? The Balkans are part of Europe too.

More importantly, what are you basing this statement on? Did you read a survey on the opinions of Greeks and whether they consider themselves part of Europe?

No, they are Greeks. Europe is outside of Greece.

I'm finding it really hard to understand how can you not understand this. Reality is irrelevant. Truth, correctness, factuality, etc. these are all irrelevant. What you personally think is the most important things of all. That is how we see things here in the Balkans and that is the world I grew up in. If you cannot understand that, and I cannot explain it to you any more clearly, you can only come here and experience it yourself.

And I thought you guys travelled the world and saw all kind of things. I'm surprised that there are no people anywhere else in the world like there are in the Balkans.


I posted this link before:
http://www.ndimou.gr/index_en.asp
You should check it out.

I'm finding it hard to understand how Greeks can deny they're Europeans considering the role they played in founding European civilization.

The Japanese could argue they're not Asians but that strikes me as rather self-defeating. Geographically, culturally, linguistically they're in Asia.

That would be the Ancient Greeks. Modern Greeks have little to do with them. In fact, in the last two hundred years Greeks have not contributed in anything. When the Greek War of Independence took place there was almost no native in Greece who knew a thing about the Ancients. Everything Modern Greeks know about the Ancient Greeks they learned through the Western education, which now today they despise.

Look for the book by Tom Winnifrith and Penelope Murray: Greece - Old and New.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s43/ ... ew/goa.jpg
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s43/ ... goa161.jpg
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s43/ ... gon162.jpg
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s43/ ... gon163.jpg