Further adding to the problem, the facility lacked both medical personnel and interpreters,54 thus creating important risks to detainees who, not only did not benefit from effective access to healthcare, but were ultimately unable to make their needs adequately known to the mainly Greek-speaking personnel. It goes without saying that, in terms of access to services, the situation was the same at the Evros Pre-Removal detention Center, which similarly had no doctors and/or interpreters. In contrast to the Kos Pre-Removal Center, however, the Pre-Removal Center at Fylakio, Evros, is much more characteristic of detention conditions throughout Greece. The Pre-Removal Center at Fylakio, Evros, –a gloomy facility formerly used as a factory– is composed of a desolated yard and a main building accommodating personnel and detainees. The detention wing has a designated capacity of 374 places, divided alongside five medium sized cells, and a sixth cell which was designated as the Center’s infirmary. Overall, the Center was clean but amenities were clearly inadequate to cover even the most basic of hygiene needs (e.g. 4 showers and toilets/ 50+ capacity cells). This was further aggravated by the scarce –if existent– provision of sanitary kits (e.g. toothbrushes), which, as is the case with most material provisions for asylum seekers and refugees throughout Greece, is ever dependent on private donations. The detention wing was dimly lit, and no visibility existed towards applicants, as both inadequate lighting, and the thick blankets covering-surrounding their two-story beds from top to bottom, made any refugee inmate virtually hidden out of sight.55 The building, in general, was in clear need of renovation, though this necessity was nowhere near more evident than in the so-called “infirmary”; a cell whose marked walls (inconsequential drawings, amongst others), exhumed a highly concerning atmosphere of despair, making what was supposed to function as a healing/resting place resemble more of an unsupervised asylum for the mentally troubled. As per the officers we interviewed,56 applicants were regularly provided access to fresh air. Based on GCR’s observations on the matter, however (e.g. frequent applicant complaints on the contrary), this was, at best, debatable. The fact that during our three-day visit we saw no one (not even the gate guards, who were entrenched inside the gate’s guard post to avoid the chilling cold) even remotely strolling through its yard –the facility’s sole open space, lying just in front of its ever open gates57– further raises questions on the matter. “Detained applicants shall have access to open-air spaces” (article 10(2) of Directive 2013/33/EU of the European Parliament and Council of 26 June 2013 laying down standards for the reception of applicants for international protection (recast)) This, –as well as the Pre-Removal Center of Kos– to be reminded, is a facility were newcomers are detained both prior to and during the examination of their asylum claims for periods which, as we were informed by the local officers, may extend up to six 19