{"id":512,"date":"2008-03-24T00:28:48","date_gmt":"2008-03-23T22:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/en\/?p=512"},"modified":"2014-03-12T16:41:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:41:16","slug":"memories-from-cannes-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/2008\/03\/24\/memories-from-cannes-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Memories from Cannes (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today it is the last day that I will refer to MIPIM exhibition and Cannes. After I presented to you last week the news of the market worldwide and the situation regarding the Romanian Real Estate market, it is time now for my personal memories, as this week, from 10 to 15th of March, it was one of the most interesting ones in my life.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Did you meet the legendary Aristotelis Onasis? I guess not, neither did I. This is why I was really surprised when I realized that the gentleman who was sitting in front of me could really apply as his \u201cresurrection\u201d. Same face, glasses and style. I guess the voice has to be different, like the smart Greek eyes, which were replaced with smart eyes probably German by nationality. His age and nationality unidentified, around 55 I could guess. He was feeling really comfortable \u201cattacking\u201d at me every 2 minutes, testing my knowledge, evaluating my answers, crosschecking the information I was providing him.<\/li>\n<li>With a big experience in Real Estate business and an impressive track record of acquisitions, he was really enjoying the whole situation. This is why after one hour of \u201cpure interrogation\u201d, I felt proud to receive from him the approval, so as to start discussing seriously about some projects. Maybe it mattered that I know quite well the market and my job, maybe the fact that I was replying to his \u201cattacks\u201d by looking straight at his eyes, as he did too while he was asking. In the next months I will find out how seriously he considers an investment in Romania. But his words are really a \u201cmedal of honour\u201d for me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>It was 1959. My family was the biggest trader of Northern Greece in meat, sending every week to Athens thousands of lambs (one of our business in the past was meat trading). It was the period before Easter and they had collected around 10.000 lambs to send to Athens. My father was just 29 years old. On the way to Athens, all the (primitive at that period) trucks stopped working, one after the other. That time the telephones in the villages of Greece were as rare as they are now in Sahara desert, this is why it was too late when my family was informed and when they went to find out how the problem could be solved. The trucks arrived in Athens with delay, just few hours before Easter parties. The disaster was complete. We are talking for today\u2019s few millions of euro, but in a market that these millions represented a big part of the local GDP, 50 years ago\u2026<\/li>\n<li>That time in Greece cash was something that you could not get. Poverty was extremely high, especially out of the capital, where we had our business. Most of the agreements were established verbally and in this way there were also the agreements with the villagers who had animals for sale. So, that Easter of 1959, my family needed to decide upon something really critical: What should we do? Pay the villagers, although we lost all the money? Or should we inform them that their animals were not sold, that we lost the money and simply tell them to wait for better days in the future? At the end of the day, there was no paper signed with anyone, it was just the word of my grand father (also Ilias Papageorgiadis). My family decided to pay everyone, up to the last cent. For this reason we took a loan that we paid back after 29 years, in 1988! (Don\u2019t ask me how many times more we paid the original capital\u2026)<\/li>\n<li>An old gentleman reached the stand of my company in Cannes, asking me in Greek from where I come from, where I was born. I informed him that I come from Katerini and then he asked my name \u201cbecause my face was familiar to him\u201d. After he asked who was my grandfather and my father, their names. He also asked me some questions, but he had already tears in his eyes. I invited him to sit on a table and to relax, without to understand what was the problem. Then he told me: In 1959, with the money that my family paid to his family for the animals they had given us, they bought tickets and they left to Germany. Nowadays, they run a big and wealthy business in Real Estate. They knew that we could easily refuse paying, but we did. The old gentleman was crying and I could not keep some tears too. AFTER 49 YEARS, HE CAME TO THANK ME FOR THE HELP OF MY FATHER AND GRAND FATHER DID TO HIS FAMILY. Needless to say that we will do business together.<\/li>\n<li>Many times people smile or laugh when I mention that my family is doing business since 1761 and that we have really strong ethics and principals in work. Well, allow me to be proud of this and to share with you the feeling of pleasure when I discover once more how important is the name and the tradition that you carry. I am sorry for not being very modest, I hope you will forgive me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(tomorrow the second part of my memories from Cannes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today it is the last day that I will refer to MIPIM exhibition and Cannes. After I presented to you last week the news of the market worldwide and the situation regarding the Romanian Real Estate market, it is time now for my personal memories, as this week, from 10 to 15th of March, it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[215,240],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}