welcome to athens

February 10, 2007

Athens, Greece

I have not written in the past few days, mostly because several of our days have been free, due to traveling and the places that we have been wanting to visit have been closed. It seems like that happens a lot here, I don’t know if it is bad luck or what, but half of the places we want to go just don’t seem to be open, or seem to have just closed, or are undergoing renovation… anything to prevent us from having the complete experience. However, the fact that the places have been closed has given us to see a lot more of modern Athens, which is something I have really enjoyed. Some of the neighborhoods around here are full of all kinds of crazy clothing and shoe stores, all in very high European fashion. I don’t think some of this stuff could be pulled of in the United States—its just tons of layering—leggings with huge boots and crazy jackets with zippers and fur in angry colors of black and green and grey.

Anyway, to recount the time so far….

Wednesday night we spent on the ferry, which was a cool experience because the ferry we rode on was HUGE. It was like a hotel on a metal hull, and the rooms were incredibly cramped with lofted bunk beds on each side of a tiny desk and the shower was practically located IN the toilet. But it was absolutely thrilling to watch the huge engines roar to life and the boat pull out of the harbor and watch the lights reflecting on the water and eventually fade into the distance. Never having been on a cruise before, I was stunned to see a restaurant and swimming pool and shops on a boat. I am used to ones that actually feel like you are on the water. But the night was fun, we went to the restaurant and ate and drank, and then wandered around the ship. I had half a mind to go to the bow and pull a Titanic “I am the king of the world” shout from the bow but apparently non-crew members are not allowed up there. So we hung out and talked and went to bed with the slow humming of the ship’s engines. At one point late in the night I went onto the deck to see that we were paralleling a smaller ferry, which we were quickly overtaking. It was so strange—just that small island of lights and us in the middle of nothing. We were in the middle of the Mediterranean.

The next morning at 6 am we awoke to some confusion; most of the rooms were already empty and we did not know where to go. We walked up to the deck and found that the boat was already docked at the harbor in Piraeus, and so we hurried downstairs and got our stuff together and met the rest of the crew, which had gotten the picture earlier than we had and had already exited the boat. After that, it was a long walk to the railway, and an early and confusing ride throughout the subway of Athens, until we arrived at Syntagma station, which is the center of the city, and the place of our hotel. There are so many kiosks in this city—they take over the sidewalks and sell all kinds of things from cigarettes to gum to magazines to pretzels. After checking into our hotel, we all slept for a few much needed hours before heading of to the National Gallery.

However, upon arrival at the National Gallery, we realized that our student discounts would not get us into the museum. Jarrett did not have enough money to cover our entrance fees, so he let us go for the afternoon. A whole afternoon in Athens with nothing to do?!!? Ambrice and I and Katie decided to go and see what the famed shopping experience was all about.

The shops are varied and finding correct sizing is kind of a chore, but mostly I just enjoyed getting the opportunity to walk around and see how things work in Europe. In one store, we were not allowed to take the jeans off of the shelves, instead we had to point to the style that we liked and the attendant pulled it for us. And upon trying a pair of jeans that I could barely walk in, I asked the woman for a larger size to which she responded ‘Oh no, its fine, these jeans stretch 40%” Hmmm. We left that store and continued. At some point we stopped for dinner and got some delicious gyros, and on the way of the restaurant I stopped in the middle of the street because I had seen this columned lit thing in the sky. It was the Acropolis! I shouted and everyone on the street turned around to gawk at us obvious tourists who were so excited about the glimpse of those magnificent buildings. We were glad to see it.

The next day we woke up early as usual. However, I should mention that we were missing a man—my friend Chris had come up with a bad illness over the past few days and he had to get his appendix taken out! Ouch! I was so glad that Dr Toumazou spoke the language and that we were in a city like Athens, but having a surgery like that in a foreign country has got to be scary. I could never imagine it. He’s back with us today, a little weak and with a nice set of stitches, but I am sure the experience was scary.

Anyway, we took a train down to Piraeus, which is the ancient port city that was connected to Athens via a series of fortified walls (at the time, the cities did not connect the way they do now). The day was warm and sunny and light bounced off of the boats floating in the harbor, which ranged from little tiny rowboats to huge two masted sailboats, to even larger yachts. Because Toumazou was taking care of Chris, Jarret took us around to the ancient sites, which included:

Some ancient ship sheds, which apparently ringed the harbor at the time. These buildings looked very similar to modern boat slips, except instead of being covered with one large roof there were a bunch of smaller colonnaded slips connected side to side. The interesting thing was that the foundations of these slips were located in the basement of a modern office building. Jarret explained that the commercial value of the land surrounding Piraeus made it difficult to justify dedicating whole tracks of land to archeology, so people compromised by putting windows in their basements and exposing part of an ancient building. The old and the new must coexist here.

We also saw the arsenal of Philo, which apparently was a gigantic building for weapons storage and boat repair. Like the boat slips, only a corner of the foundation has been exposed, and shows up in a random atrium in an office building, which is viewed, contained, behind glass windows. Its kind of difficult to visualize the whole building when only a small segment of it is visible, but I saw enough to be impressed at its sheer size.

Finally, we walked around the harbor, stopping at the remains of the ancient walls, which were half buried under parts of the interstate, and to the Maritime Museum, which had models of ancient greek ships. Triremes they were called and had three rows of oars on each side, with a single mast and a sail that was attached by a slanted boom across the mast (Dad, you would know the name of the type of sail, I don’t ) and a large battering ram that was used to fight with. Maritime military strategy at the time seemed pretty simple: just move so that you expose your opponent’s flank, and then ram him really hard. I would imagine that the maneuvering with the hundreds of rowers you needed was the hardest part. The museum also contained a map with the journey of Odysseus, which we are currently reading, so it gave us the opportunity to visualize what we had been reading.

In addition, the museum contained models of all kinds and types of ships from many different times and places. There was even a model of the Titanic there. After wandering around for a bit, it was lunch and then a walk back to the hotel, because the other museum that we were going to visit that day was…. Closed. Big surprise.

Once again, with way too much of an afternoon on our hands, Toumazou took us to an excellent souvlaki place (souvlaki is meat on a stick, seasoned with oregano and served with fries and bread and this sauce named Tzaziki which is made with plain yogurt, cucumbers and garlic). After doing some reading and some more window browsing, a group of us went out to dinner in a part of Athens called Kolonaki square, which is a very high end place with lots of expensive shops and luckily a place that had cheap souvlaki. Although the menu was entirely in Greek, I ordered a Greek Salad which came served on a shishkebab stick, and some of the people with us ordered eggplant. ON the way home, we went past the shopping district, Plaka, that we had visited the day before and witnessed a strange sight—for the amusement of the crowd, some people had dressed up as American Indians in full feather headdresses and were dancing to a techno-modified song. We all giggled—what were Indians doing in Athens?!!? But they attracted a fair crowd and I am sure not many of the Greeks would have picked up on the oddity….

However, the most interesting part of the evening was when Ambrice and I decided to go people watching. I grabbed my sketchbook and she grabbed some reading and we headed toward a coffee shop/bar that we had seen in Syntagma Square. I started sketching this pair of guys across from us and we were looking so frequently that they noticed and gestured to us. So we went over and talked to them and turns out they only speak a few words of English, and we of course know no Greek, but we managed to get across that we were from the US and that they were from Athens, and that we were students staying in a hotel. One of the guys asked to see my sketches and I was really embarrassed but I showed it to him, and we all had a good laugh because I had also drawn this fat guy sitting next to me. Every bit of our conversation required wild gesticulating resulting in MAYBE a single word or phrase, but the opportunity to mingle with the locals instead of just being immersed in our Davidson bubble was really nice. I just love experiences like that it makes the whole trip worthwhile. Me and Ambrice giggled the whole way home.

So that brings us up to speed as far as yesterday.

Today we went and saw the ACROPOLIS! We did not go there right away, however. First we walked through Plaka around the side of the acropolis hill to see the monument of Philopappos, erected in the second century AD by a former prince of an independent state that was later incorporated into the Roman empire. This is an important piece because it is one of the only ones to contain a burial that was actually located within the city walls. The monument contains some statuary and some inscriptions, mostly in honor of Philoppapos himself. It seems like he was a pretty big deal, and was not afraid to proclaim it as loudly as he could. Perhaps the best part of seeing this monument, however, was the amazing panoramic view that we got of the city—from the acropolis, around to the port of Piraeus, down to the mountains and around to the monument itself. The city with its white buildings crawled up the hills and we could see its exact perimeter from where we stood.

Next, we went to another hill close to the acropolis called Pnyx hill, where the huge assembly of Athenians met to conduct their democratic meetings. Set into the hillside here was a bowl, from which some politicians would deliver their speeches. Originally the meeting spot was set so that the spectators sat on the hill looking down upon the speaker at the bottom, but at some point the Athenians decided, for better or for worse, to reverse the direction of the speaking platform. The audience sat downhill from the speaker, and to compensate for this slope a huge mound of earth and stones was made to counteract the natural inclination of the hill. Why they would do this when they had a perfectly serviceable hill facing the other way I do not know, but the retaining walls are still there in order that the Athenians might hold their sessions.

We visited the third of the hills surrounding the acropolis also- the hill of Areopaugus, which in ancient times was the site of a relatively posh neighborhood and the site of a few temples. Essentially all that is left now is a rocky cliff face, which retains some cuttings where the foundations of the homes used to be. Here we sat and listened to Jarett explain the landscape below us- the apse of an early Christian church, the reconstructed Stoa of Attalus, and in the distance the Hiphaesteion. We also read some of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata here. A number of us picked parts and discussed the ways in which to save the city of Athens from warfare against the Spartans (Aristophanes was writing in the middle of the Peloponnesian war) and Lysistrata, the woman in the city, had devised the plan that the women would simply withhold sex from the men until they decided to make peace. Not a bad plan, and in the play it worked, although in reality the battles with the Spartans would last at least 3 decades.

Finally, after much anticipation, we were able to ascend the acropolis. The day was getting windier and colder, and instead of sweating as I had ascending the hill of the monument of Philopappos, I but all of my jackets on and huddled against the wind. To make matters worse, dark clouds were converging on the horizon.
We ascended the slope to reach the Propylaia, the grand entrance to the acropolis. This building had to accommodate a number of difficulties—a sloping irregular site, the need to create a sense of the symmetrical, and the problems of accommodating a centuries old mycenean wall into the building. The architect solved the problem of height by using both Doric and Ionic Columns—for where he neede more height, the natural slenderness of the Ionic was used, and for the front entranceway which was closer to the ground, a collonade of Doric were used. This building had the least scaffolding upon it, and we were really able to appreciate how it reached out and drew you up the steps and into the main part of the acropolis. The arms on each side of the building reach out, and the differentiated columns in the center aisles draw your eyes inward and upward to where it opens back out into the arena of the acropolis.

Upon entering we were confronted with the most complete portion of the Parthenon—the western end, which rises up in thick columns of marble. To the right, the reconstructed parts of my favorite temple, the Temple of Athena Nike, stood scattered about like so many lego blocks. I was kind of sad not to be able to see it in all of its glory—what remained of the cella was completely covered with scaffolding. However, there were plenty of other sites to be seen.

We saw the Parthenon next—a building that has absolutely no right angles and is built an a massive scale—with 8 columns on the front end and 17 on the sides, and incorporates an unusual number of optical refinements to lend it grace, beauty, and elegance. I could not believe I was actually there! And to step inside of the great temple would have been amazing, but unfortunately I think that would be too dangerous—the structure has undergone far too much damage throughout the years, so we simply had to content ourselves with peering in from the outside. Sadly, most of the metope sculpture was destroyed, first by the passage of time, and later by the Christians who were offended by the scenes of centaurs and amazons, who proceeded to chisel them out of existence. Then the building was bombed, resulting in further damage to one of the long sides, and most of the pedimental sculpture on one end was lost when a group of people tried to cart them off to display somewhere else. The ropes slipped—and BAM! Priceless artwork gone. It really was quite tragic, because this building did not end up the way it appears because of neglect—its location on top of the acropolis is too prominent. Instead, groups of people who thought they knew better decided to mess with the building, and even use it as a storage shed for GUNPOWDER… the way people fail to use their brains sometimes simply amazes me.

Anyway, I was quite impressed with what remained of the Parthenon—it really looks quite magnificent even in its heavily scaffolded state and I was happy to see it. However, the day had been growing increasingly cold, so that by the time we had gotten to the eastern side of the building, I was freezing and more than ready to go inside. Luckily on top of the acropolis is a museum that contains much of the statuary that has been recovered from the acropolis. In addition to being immeasurably greatful to be out of the terrible blowing wind, I got to see one of my favorite pieces of Greek sculpture. This relief originally rested on the parapet of the bastion that supported the temple of Athena Nike, and shows a goddess adjusting the strap of her sandal. Absolutely breathtaking. I stood there for several minutes just trying to take it all in—I had seen this piece in almost every single art history textbook I owned, and now I was standing in front of it in person. Same with the Kritios Boy, another hallmark sculpture that resided in the museum. He was much smaller than I imagined him to be, but no less stunning.

After the brief respite from the cold, we went and walked around the Erechtheum, another acropolis temple. This one was built to serve multiple purposes—it housed sanctuaries to many divinities besides Athena, and had to accommodate a sloping site. As a result, the building is somewhat of an architectural oddity—it contains porches on the sides, not the front and back, one of which is marked with columns in the shape of women. The rest of the building is ionic, with long tapering columns, and is in much better shape than the Parthenon. It lacked the stately elegance and the symmetry that are the hallmarks of typical greek temples, but I enjoyed being able to see a building that contained a bit of oddity. Its not every day you see a building in which one of the coffers in the ceiling is deliberately removed because Zeus struck the ground there to resolve an argument between Athena and Poseidon. So you just have to appreciate the building for what it is.

On the way home, Dr Toumazou we went to this awesome souvlaki place in Omonia, where we absolutely gorged ourselves on the bread, meat, and tatziki, and started for home. On the way, Toumazou started joking about the lateness of the hour, singing “Mikey, its siesta, your pillow is calling you….” We all laughed, which distracted our attention from the fact that we were all still VERY cold. After a long and very cold walk home, I was very grateful to be able to grab some hot chocolate, fortified with Bailey’s and sip and walk and finally get back and take the hottest shower of my life. I have never been more happy to be inside and out of the cold and the wind.