It seems that everyone knows someone, Greek or non-Greek, who is retiring in Ellada – or is thinking about it. The author of this piece is one of them, having moved from New York more than eight years ago, though he’s not yet retired.
Also among them is entrepreneur-theater director-playwright Yoel Wulfhart. When he made the decision three years ago, he had an apartment waiting for him – he bought one in Athens’ Exarchia district 10 years ago – as well as new kinds of adventures.
And he is not really retired, he just slammed the brakes on his open Jeep Wrangler – actually, he left it in Kuala Lumpur – and then flew to Greece. He still writes and directs, but on the entrepreneurial front, he has shifted gears from for-profit to nonprofit speed.
Yoel Wulfhart is as pensive a man as you will find in Athens – and gregarious, too. Back in the day, he and Socrates would have hit it off. (Photo: Courtesy of Yoel Wulfhart)
Yoel is the founder of the Theatre of the NO, in Athens Center, the first English-language theater in the Greek capital – and almost by accident, it has become a music hotspot – especially for jazz.
He loves music of all kinds, but theater is magic for Yoel. “I’m a theater guy,” he said before expounding – he is one of modern Athens’ great conversationalists.
“Theater is about ideas – yes, it is storytelling but it’s storytelling involving ideas. I was always interested in ideas.” Athens’ fame as the birthplace of theater and a hotspot of ancient philosophy might have been a subconscious magnet for him. “I began with philosophy, psychology, and wound up studying business,” he said in an earlier TNH interview. Then he landed in theater.
His pitch for Theatre of the NO is blunt: “If you want entertainment,” he tells people, “stay home and watch Netflix. If you want to think and talk about ideas you didn’t think about before, and broaden your horizons, here is the place to come.”
Yoel is a gregarious thinker. Inspired by the Tapas bar scene, where people stand up and have snacks and drinks and start talking to strangers, he invites people to come one hour before performances and asks them to introduce themselves to five other people.
While many parts of Greece, especially the islands, strongly draw people, Athens is now more than just one of 200 national capitals on the map, having become a more livable but also a fun city in the past 30 years. Foreigners or Diaspora Hellenes used to just pass through Athens on their way to islands or villages, now, many now look forward to plugging into the vibrant cultural scene that has emerged, and Wulfhart is one of the builders of Athens as a ‘City Break’ destination.
“Share with us the moment when you thought to yourself, ‘OK, I’m going to give Greece a shot,’ TNH asked him.
“I traveled around the world in a car for 18 years” – he left Philadelphia in 2005 and bought the first of his four black open Jeep Wranglers (Yoel knows what he likes). “Some years ago, as I drove through Greece, I said to myself ‘you know what – one day I’ll get tired of traveling and I will stay here.’”
“Until then, it was work, work, work, reading, reading, reading, travel, travel, travel, all over the U.S. and Latin America – that was wonderful. All over Europe, Central Asia – and Africa too.”
And then three years ago, he arrived at… that day.
If you are wondering where the journey began, he was born and raised in Israel in a small community near Tel Aviv. “My grandfather came in 1924 from Latvia, where there was strong German influence,” hence his last name. He delights in, telling audiences at the NO “my name is Wulfhart – the heart of a wolf.”
Yoel shared his first encounter with Ellada about 28 years ago. “I came here with my daughter – she was 18 and was into the history of Greece – and did all the Greek things and we loved it, Greek salads, tzatziki every day.”
Theatre of the NO has become a wonderful place to enjoy literature, conversation, and music. The famous Barakos Orchestra – featuring saxophonist Gilad Atzmon – fourth from right – performs often. (Photo: Courtesy of Yoel Wulfhart)
Then he said something you hear often: “The vegetables in Greece are outstanding – there are no better vegetables anywhere in the world!” He likes the gamut of Greek food offerings, but he is always on the lookout for other cuisine, and Athens tries to accommodate.
“There was something about Greece that was very appealing,” he continued. “I must have been to 150, 160 countries, but something about Greece absolutely works for me. A combination of things in the culture – by culture I mean the people – their attitudes about life as well as the historical background of the country. The weather, the food – practically everything fit my personality.”
The inevitable question about his encounters with Greek bureaucracy followed. “The bureaucracy here is unbelievable” he said. He noted that in the U.S. “if you want to open up a business, if you want to buy a building, if you want to want to do something, in the U.S. – it’s really easy.”
He gave as an example of a Greek experience his purchase of the theater. “The difference between the actual plans and the physical structure was about nine millimeters (about 1/3 of an inch) – but that took months to resolve. They had to pass a new law in Parliament! Every property has some sort of issue here.”
Actually, “the fact that there are a lot of rules, but nobody follows them – I love the fact that nobody follows any rules here,” fascinates him.
Regarding obstacles of all kinds and the culture, he adjusted. Yoel explained that “in the U.S., when I was running companies there, you come up with an idea, people say ‘yes, it’s a good idea – let’s try it.’” In Greece, he said, “first of all… it’s never a good idea. It’s always a bad idea. ‘It’s not gonna work, it’s never gonna happen’ – there’s this problem and that problem and this problem. You’ll never be able to do what you are trying to do – even if you do have a good chance of succeeding.”
Indomitable, Yoel succeeded in setting up Theatre of the NO, however. The ‘no’ he battled everywhere is not what inspired the name – but he quickly realized its appropriateness.
Nevertheless, when he hears from people – mostly Israelis– that they are thinking of moving to Greece, he tells them: ‘In capital letters: ‘COME!’”
Yoel elaborated: “There is an aspect of humanity here that you don’t have in the U.S. There’s a nice balance, and people are friendly – they are welcoming,” even though Athens is a big city. “If you live in a big city like New York, you are a stranger and you will always be a stranger – when you approach someone their first thought is ‘what does this weirdo want from me?’ Here, I can talk to anybody. They will respond and you can have a conversation.”
He summed it up: “Look, if you are looking for a change, Greece is a good place to be.”
