Yanis Varoufakis’s father may be 90 years old, but he continues to lead a very active life.
“Every day I go to the office, swimming pool, I give talks and follow what James Dean once said: dream as if you are immortal. And so I still dream,” Giorgos Varoufakis says.
Well educated, the father of the current Finance Minister had a rich career of his own, having once been president of the major Greek steel producer, Halyvourgiki.
The elder Varoufakis spoke to the newspaper Ethnos on Sunday about his son on the same day that it was announced that Yanis was to take a less prominent role in Greece negotiations with the country's lenders following Riga’s fractious Eurogroup meeting. The interview was frequently interrupted by callers expressing their support for the Finance Minister.
“I will disown my son just so the phone stops ringing,” he joked.
Giorgos Varoufakis has lived alone since 2008 ever since Eleni, the love of his life as he describes her, passed away.
“With my Eleni we met in university, when I was released from [the jail for political prisoners] in Makronisos. We studied chemistry in Athens. We graduated and were married in ’54. Our life was very beautiful,” he says.
He describes himself as a revolutionary, a lifelong leftist who never compromised his ideals.
About his son he says, “Yanis was a very difficult child. It was his character. In the fourth grade he dropped one of the ‘n’s from his name. His teacher thought it was a spelling mistake and marked him down two points out of ten. When I asked him ‘Why Yanis?’ he answered, ‘Is there any rule that says Yanis has to have two ‘n’s?”
However he describes his relationship with his son as being very close even now that the latter is caught in a whirlwind on European debt negotiations.
“Dad it is very difficult, I am very tired. He called me on my name day from Latvia and said, ‘I wanted to know how you are dad.' He moved me. He adores me. He would call me from America when he taught to tell me that he needed to hear my voice.”
Source: Ethnos on Sunday
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