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Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Greeks delivered a clear message to the rest of Europe, and then many partied into the night.

As banks remain shut and European leaders prepare to respond to their vote against more austerity, the morning hangover also brings the harsh reality: the country may end up going down fighting, clinging to the euro while refusing the conditions attached to keeping it.

‘The government can go to Brussels on Monday and say we have a mandate’

Even as economists and European officials warned that the country would move closer to severing ties with the euro area, Greeks celebrated what they see as a better future. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who called for a “no” vote in Sunday’s referendum, said he will restart talks with creditors immediately and use the victory as a bargaining chip.

Nikos Panos, 55, a “no” voter in Athens, said the 61-to-39 percent result would give Greece a stronger bargaining position. “The government can go to Brussels on Monday and say we have a mandate,” he said.

Greeks from all walks of life and political beliefs gave a resounding “no” to austerity in return for aid that keeps their country afloat with many casting their vote as a choice for hope and pride rather than a step out of the euro.

'No' supporters in Athens turned Syntagma Square into a party zone Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Better Future

With Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left holding a little more than 36 percent in polls since the Jan. 25 election, his call for a “no” vote found broader support.

“I’m not against Europe,” said Evangelia Kouroupi, 33, as she pushed a stroller with her eight-month-old baby outside a polling station in Corinth, 60 miles south of Athens. “I just want a better future and that’s why I voted ‘no.’”

Tsipras’s message of defiance against what he described as the creditors “blackmailing ultimatum” resonated.

A “yes” vote was “seen as a vote of confidence for Europe and the euro, and ‘no’ was seen as a vote of national pride and insubordination to the demands of the creditors,” said Nikos Marantzidis, a pollster and professor of political science at the University of Macedonia in northern Greece.

While in the last 30 years Greece has mainly prospered, the country has had its fair share of hardship.

Many Greeks in the north of the country still have living relatives who arrived on boats or by foot from what’s now Turkey in a population swap in the 1920s. Then there was the Nazi occupation during World War II.

Marantzidis said that “no” voters were evenly represented among men and women and those age between 18 and 55, while “yes” was preferred by those older than 65.

What Now?

In the small hours of Monday morning, most people were too busy waving flags and taking selfies to bother about the response of euro-region leaders, who are scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss Greece. Those who didn’t line up in front of filled cash machines, celebrated next to the empty ones.

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem gave them a taste of the morning after with a statement issued at almost 1 a.m. Athens time. “Difficult measures and reforms are inevitable,” Dijsselbloem, who chairs the group of euro-area finance chiefs said.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis drew a crowd as he left his department Photographer: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images

A small crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Finance in central Athens broke to applause and cheers as Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis left the building. Varoufakis said in a televised address that the government will now extend a hand to international creditors, but won’t negotiate for new loans before Greece’s existing debt is restructured.

Others were already looking toward the dawn. Maria Vlachou, 35, a small business entrepreneur who exports snails to Europe’s restaurants, said she feared the vote result would bring “a domino effect” for Greece and for Europe.

“What now? ’ she said. ‘‘What’s the next move?”

(Updates to add finance ministers’ comment in final section. For more news and data on Greece, click here.)