All things will pass: Greece will recover

Patision is now home to mainly Pakistanis, Africans, Russians and Iraqis.

Greek restaurants and cafes have been replaced by kebab shops with names like “The Green Crescent” and teahouses called “Moldova”.

Antonis reflects on older Athenians' fear of “foreigners”.

Greece is a staging post for hundreds of thousands of undocumented refugees from the third world, looking to find a way into more affluent nations of the EU, but who end up living in the shadows of the Greek economy.

My family and I are staying in an elegant renovated apartment across from Koumoundourou Square next to the trendy area of Psiri and 500 metres from the Monastiraki Flea Market.

The view from the balcony of the Parthenon is awe-inspiring, but it comes into sharp relief as itinerant young Pakistani men bed down in the park below. The police are a regular feature as the Pakistanis play cricket during the sweltering heat of the night, before they bed down on cardboard mattresses.

The apartments around the park, once representative of the 1960s middle class, have been abandoned to old people, like Antonis, by the new middle classes who left the city for the new outer suburbs of Athens in the 1980s.

Yet, some apartments show signs of renovation and the square reveals nascent gentrification.

While there is discomfort walking around Koumoundourou at night there is little real danger.

"Poverty, aimlessness and homelessness breed danger" says James, the Australian Greek tour operator. "What you see here, is no different to other parts of Europe, it's just that the Greeks are not used to it."

However, James is an optimist.

"We'll get though the crisis."