Greek Protests

One of the central metro stations in Athens comes out directly in front of the Greek Parliament building.  The night we arrived and went looking for dinner, there was a large crowd gathered there with quite an obvious police presence.  The next day when we returned for sight seeing, the crowd and police presence had grown.  There were multiple police buses parked for blocks around the site of the demonstrations, police in riot gear (canisters of tear gas, large plastic shields and helmets), street police with body armour, and even some in military fatigues.  They were not particularly uptight or nervous, but made their presence known.  There were also a lot of camera crews, but all of the nightly news that we found was in Greek.  This New York Times article explains that Greek politicians were meeting to try to agree on new austerity measures in order to meet IMF demands to reduce the deficit. NYT article  Greece faces high unemployment, decreasing social services, and the prospect of higher taxes.  The past few days have been peaceful, but several weeks ago the demonstrations turned violent and several police and several demonstrators were injured.