Back at Roma Termini, we were jogging on the spot to get onto our train. Our imaginations away with us, we imagined a cush ride down into Bari, with a seamless transition and comfortable layover between our train ride and our ferry to Greece. The train rolled in sounding like the cluster of tin cans that are towed behind a car labelled 'just married'. We realized even Trenitalia - EVEN TRENITALIA- had limitations. You know how much it pains me to say something like that. Because it always pains me to part with something that gives me free fizzy alcohol especially when I am tired and/or carrying around a lot of stuff. It's a personal integrity thing.
We claimed our booth, and glanced around the terminal. The last of Rome was available to us here. The last of Roman food, that would live in our memories for years to come, was here for the taking. Bread? Alcohol? Olives? What should we buy? What would properly send us off from the Eternal City? A bag of crispy peanuts, sweet chill heat flavour, and a lemon spritz pop that we grabbed from the vending machine we could see from our window as the whistle was blowing. No prosecco. No toilet paper in the bathrooms. Four hours to Bari.
The Eurail pass that we had purchased had a promotion going with Superfast ferries where you could take a ferry from Italy to Greece for free. By 'free' they meant that you still had to pay taxes, seasonal fees and docking charges. It still only came to $20 per person, which significantly cut our transportation costs. The day we travelled into Greece, the same pass would also get us the coach bus from the port in Patras and to use the suburban rail to get into Athens. Wicked. The ferry itself is resplendent. And it opens two and a half hours before departure time so at the very least you can drop your packs and sit in some air conditioning. Having lived on the West Coast for three years where I got my fair share of ferry rides, I would have said I had a pretty good handle on what to expect with ferries. But the Superfast ferry fleet is beautiful, fully equipped and brand new. You can tell it's brand new because all of the wait staff were really nice. .I will give a piece of advice, and I feel that perhaps this shouldn't bear mentioning but I will say it anyway. If you are planning to embark on a trip for which travel will require more than three hours of your time, eat first. Or else what will likely happen to you will be somewhat similar to what happened to us in that we drank four overpriced beers and a substandard, and similarly overpriced, sandwich before we realized that we were IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN. It was also the middle of the night. As a captive audience, you can't do much at that point but zip yourself into hoodie and watch an episode of Spongebob Squarepants in Greek while you fall asleep sitting up.
But then you wake up and you roll into that Greek coastline. Jellyfish bob beneath the surface of the waves like bulls-eye smarties. Low, rounded hills scallop the horizon line. Fuzzy, sparse, low-lying bushes cover the dry earth and the white wash houses pop against the landscape like polka dots. On the dock, a transit bus rolled in like the A-Team. Gesturing wildly, with frequent jabs towards the back of the bus, the driver packed the seats as quickly as he could. Moozh and I just stared for a moment. No one had mentioned a transfer and we didn't have long to get to our bus to Athens. Customer Service on the ferry had said it was only ten minutes to the bus stop. We glanced at the sun, ceaseless overhead. We glanced once more at the bus driver. He looked very keen. And other passengers from the ferry were getting on.
So we set off on foot.
Armed with a crude map -it seems most customer service booths seem to rely mostly on line drawings as opposed to road maps- we headed in the believed direction of the bus stop. At one point, after my hair was suitably soaked by my own sweat, we stopped an innocent bystander to ask directions. According to him, which turned out to be true, the bus stop was still another half hour away. Greece is hot. Twenty minutes later, we asked another sweet Greek girl who was just trying to enjoy her day and not be assaulted by the smell of two lost backpackers. We were close. A few more blocks and we saw the sign that we had been told to watch out for. Crossing through gridlock, we ran up to the side of the bus just as it was pulling away. Another moment that seems a lot more exciting, a lot more...composed, when you see it on TV. Luckily, the bus was waiting in the same locked traffic that had just allowed us to illegally cross the road. Tapping on the door, I prayed that he would let us on. After that, I figured I should pray that the bus was actually going to Athens. The door swung open. I could already feel the AC.
"Do you go to Athens?"
With merely a thumb jab towards the back from the driver, Moozh and I quickly ditched our packs below with the luggage before collapsing in some seats towards the back.
Back in the weeks before we left, I remember sitting around with Moozh's family, lazily pontificating upon what I believed our trip would be like.
"I hope to be blogging everyday. We've got so much travel time. Between planes, trains, ferries, I have a lot of time on my hand that I can use."
I remember Matt's bro in law laughing a little. "No you'll be sleeping."
I remember thinking he would probably turn out to be right. But then I made some commitment to myself that I would be more disciplined than that. Or something. I thought about that conversation as I was slowly rocked to sleep by the bus climbing over hills and through narrow streets on its way out of Patras. When I finally woke up, I had no idea where we were in time or in Greece. Luckily, we were just rolling into the Kiato, the transfer point onto the Suburban Rail System. A completely empty rail car, with washrooms (with toilet paper) and AC. There was a guy sitting across the aisle from me who legitimately looked like one of the characters from my illustrated bible as a kid. Brillo-pad-esque beard that extended, square, at least a foot off his chin. And then he was wearing skinny jeans and wayfarers.
Apparently, the Greeks are very proud of the Attica Rail System and for the life of me I can't figure out why. It took us almost forty-five minutes to figure out how to transfer onto the line that actually went down into Metro Athens because three extremely relevant stops to us weren't even on the map! Luckily, a very kind Greek man seeing our confusion and border-line emotional break, helped us to understand the map and gave us directions as where to go after we got off the Larissa station.The brief walk from Larissa station revealed a very different Athens than the one I was expecting. Everything from the train tracks, and slum beneath the neighbouring bridge, to the roadside and storefronts of Metaxourgio were dirty and painfully run down. Even the Athens that was shown a few years back at the 2004 Olympics seemed a world away from what we were seeing. It felt like the sight of what used to be a great city, or at the very least a city getting along as well as the rest, was now a city without road repair or garbage pickup. It was hard to see how hard the economy had hit.
Our hotel was a clean and quiet hideaway just around the corner from the Metaxourgio metro station. Large white marble steps lead up to dimly lit, cushy carpeted hallways. We were starving and I had been waiting in anticipation for our meet with Greek cuisine.
"Anywhere you'd recommend in the area to eat?"
The hostess marked a couple of markets o the maps but pointed us towards a restaurant right around the corner. This visit would completely ruin our concept of value for our dollar for the rest of our European trip. A small taverna, with a name so Greek it could not be read, occupies the corner spot of a courtyard that wraps around a church; kids run around and play in the fountain while their parents sip ouzo and smoke at one of the many restaurants in the courtyard. Old men play backgammon and gesture towards the talk radio that sits between them, blaring Greek news. We walk through the doors and, after stammering, are handed a bilingual menu. Full lamb heads -replete with eyeballs- turn on a spit alongside pork belly and whole chickens. For 3.60 euros, we walked away with two MASSIVE gyros. Plump wedges of fresh tomatoes and shards with purple onion and lettuce are tucked next to crispy fries and, in moozh's case, thinly shaved slices of pork. The whole lot is slathered with thick, garlicky tzaziki and wrapped a warm, fluffy blanket of pita. Mine, which came without meat, was called the "ecological pita". It made me feel I was doing my part for the planet. Thusly commenced our inaugural routine: inhale food, shower, sleep.
The Central Market is a massive, must-see market in Athens. It is where the locals shop to get everything from entire lamb carcasses to fresh octopus that are still wriggling, olives brined in everything from lemon juice to pure olive oil, glorious lanes of fresh grapes and tubs full of fresh nuts. More nuts than you would readily know what to do with. So many grapes. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. We picked up some sun dried olives in oil and some cerignolas in lemon to snack on as we wandered.
Gyros and/or souvlaki is the de facto street food in Athens and from what we could find there are two Athenian institutions battling for supremacy, and they fight the battle across the street from one another. Located along the Eastern side of Monastiraki Square, we decided to check out O Thanasis first. O Thanasis specializes in the souvlaki brand of pita wrap, souvlaki being the cubed and skewered form of meat while gyro is the thinly sliced meat roasted on a spit. O Thanasis peddles their lamb pita to go for 2 euro, which set us up nicely to wander the Athenian Agora with. The Agora informally bleeds out from Monastiraki Square. Lanes of shops selling jewelry, musical instruments, knock off antiques, paintings, etc, including plenty to help you beat the heat. It was no different than any other marketplace than we had been to in any other European city: aggressive shop owners who call you out and jump on the slightest pause in your step to mean that you want to buy a sculpture of Aphrodite bathing. Wanna buy a sun-dial?
A pass for 12 euro each gets you into the ancient sites. You can pick and choose which ones you want to see. Much of 'seeing' them is made up of just wandering through them, thinking that the stuff you're walking on is thousands of years old. Makes you choose your steps carefully. Wandering through, you realize that all of these ruins survived occupations, world wars, intentional and unintentional destruction. Some of the demarcations of ruins you have to take their word for it. There is nothing left of most of them. The New Bouleuterion is little more than a sign left. But then there's the Stoa building that has been completely restored, to the point that you question what original of it is actually left. The Temple of Hephaestus is remarkably well preserved. What is amazing about the Agora is to see that nearly all of Athenian life was centred there. People would make their way to the Agora every day. Their lives were connected by a place, unified, in a way that ours aren't any longer.
Up past the early Christian Byzantine church, you enter the Areo Pagus, or the Field of Ares. This is rumoured to be where criminals would hide out to avoid trial. Also known as Mars Hill, the large rock face is where Paul gave his address to the Athenians after his conversion. You slowly wind up the Panathenaic Way -my Greek history classes very much came in handy for my role as tour guide during this portion of our sightseeing- to the Acropolis. The Acropolis rises high above the Piraeus region, the buildings of Attica spilling out like white mosaic tiles as far as you can see. The Parthenon is dedicated to Athena. Athena was believed to be the patron goddess of Athens. As the myth goes, Athena -the goddess of wisdom, justice, law, civilization, strength, math and arts and crafts- and Poseidon, the god of the ocean, requested patronage of the city. The deck was already pretty stacked in my opinion. Athena is friggin bad ass. Each bestowed a gift upon the city, the winner being whoever's gift was accepted. Poseidon, in a very Moses-esque fashion, struck a rock to produced a salt spring, which was meant to symbolize naval power. Athena produced an olive tree to symbolize peace and prosperity. The Athenians accepted Athena's gift because aside from the navy, they couldn't use salt water for anything. The olive tree became central to their food source and to their exports. So Athena it was.
The Temple of Athena Nike, goddess of victory, and the Athena Parthenos statue were part of the Parthenon temple as well. The Temple of AThena Nike, like the Parthenon, is being slowly restored by archeologists. There are ancient replicas of the Athena Parthenos statue in the National Archeological Museum in Athens, one at the Louvre, one at the Museo Nazionale in Rome and one replica, standing 41 ft tall, stands in the reproduction of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. Unfortunately, as we've said with most of Europe, the first thing you notice about the Parthenon is that you can't see past the scaffolding. Any photos you've seen of the Acropolis without any scaffolding or cranes, and I've seen them too, I'm not entirely sure how they got that photo. Photoshop, I guess.
Athens is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a recorded history of almost 3400 years. Understandably, there are going to be some necessary touchups that may be needed. The Parthenon specifically suffered extensive damage in 1687. AThens was at one time occupied by the Ottoman Turks, who used the Parthenon to house their explosives. A Venetian expedition tried to invade Athens and the long and short of it, the explosives went off inside the Parthenon. It's surprising there is as much left of it as there is considering the kind of blast it would have suffered. Apparently back in the 60's the Greek government decided to start 'fixing up' the Parthenon, not to it's state before the explosion but kind of as a facelift for the four hundred years following the explosion, which haven't exactly been bereft of their own physical damage, world war considering. It's a project. All the restoration feels like a slippery slope after a while. As with the Stoa, there's the risk of the building becoming more 'restoration' and less 'antique' if things aren't kept in check. Everyone we saw working at the restoration looked like they were working with a makeup brush so their methods don't seem that aggressive and the progress seems slow going. It just at times seems hard to see the Parthenon for what it is through all the construction equipment. At dusk, however, when light up from the floor, the scaffolding seems to fade away and you get a glimpse of what you've seen in pictures.
Descending down the south side of the Acropolis, you wander past the new and shiny Acropolis Museum, new enough it's not included in the Agora pass, towards the Temple of Zeus. There is something cool and distinctive about the ruins of Athens. You really do wander past a Gucci boutique and a Spar market and then all of a sudden you're standing in a gravel pit staring at Hadrian's Arch. Just like in Rome, some of the most resilient ruins seem to be Hadrian's. Hadrian's Arch, rising up alongside a busy roadside, kitty corner from the National Gardens, is a triumphal arch apparently installed to make Emperor Hadrian's presence felt in Athens, a symbol of all the good he had done in the city. He really meant it because the arch is in remarkable repair. In contrast, the Temple of Zeus which sits behind it has very little left to it. Their ages differ by hundreds of years to be fair to Zeus. The photo of it in the guidebooks and signs, suggests that it is a massive pile of ruins, a truly expansive temple dedicated to Zeus. Some pillars still stand, but one pillar is fanned out beautifully along the ground. If you're gonna fall, fall with panache I suppose.
Next to it, the National Gardens stretch out for 38 acres in the centre of the city. Previously the Royal Gardens, it is now a free garden adjacent to the Greek Parliament. With a petting zoo, lakes, numerous playgrounds and a botanical garden, it is apparently a hot spot in the summer for families. The fact that we were there during the first week of September, that kids were all back at school was the only reason we could come up to explain why we had the whole thing nearly to ourselves.
Popping out the other side, we struck up a conversation with a passerby as we cooled down with a beer just down the block from the Parliament. He gave us some good advice for our visit to the beach the next day and asked us if we knew his cousin in Montreal, since we were from Canada. Strangely enough, we didn't know him. We sauntered past two large police transport vans of Hellenic Police just waiting for shit to happen. Anti-Austerity protests are common place in Greece right now as in other cities in Europe and we narrowly missed a violent protest that broke out in Syntagma Square not long after we left. Protests turned violent have continued to happen because people are angry, people are disappointed but no one knows what else to do.
We wandered down to Syntagma Square to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Each country we've been to seems to handle the tomb very differently. In France, many people swarmed it, took lots of pictures. In Athens, you could take goony pictures with the guards stationed in front of the tomb but you couldn't go up on the platform to take a picture of the slab yourself. To each their own.
Though their suburban rail system was brutally neglected, Athen's underground metro is gorgeous. A byproduct of the preparations for the 2004 Olympics, the new metro boasts archeological installations, shiny new marble flooring and escalators that go UP AND DOWN. And we didn't encounter a map that wasn't up to date not to mention that all of the metro stations had maps in them. The trains were prompt and comfortably air conditioned. I will consider it a win. The next day was merely a beach day. We saw the 'historic' Piraeus port, which doesn't look much like anything historical anymore. Monstrous cruise liners, including some Superfast Ferries, rise above the water like their very own skyscrapers. I don't why I expected to see the set design of Troy given that Greece is a developed nation. It's my romanticism I guess. We caught the tram to Alimos beach, a beach lined with hotels, topless moms and beefcake beach bodies. I could have laid there for hours, just people watching and dipping in the cool water, feeling the pebbly sand beneath my toes.
Now here is where I would mention the old adage, curiosity killed the cat. I was curious to try Greek wine while we were in Athens. Having been in the wine making business for thousands of years, I figured they must have gotten pretty good at it. I came across an intriguing article from the magazine Toronto Life about quality wines coming out of Greece. A local variety of wine that had led people to believe that Greek wine is shit is called retsina and it is understandably an 'acquired taste'. The wine is aged in barrels that are coated with resin, giving the wine a distinctive, and polarizing, "piney" taste, apparently somewhat similar to drinking Pine Sol. That didn't appeal to me though I wasn't opposed to trying some as part of a "Greek experience". We weren't able to find any of the Toronto Life wine's in any liquor stores in Metaxourgio but I did get a Greek wine experience. I'm not sure what we expected for a litre at 2 euros. I'm not sure if I will ever be able to focus properly again and I now walk with a discernible lilt. When I drank it I felt a part of my brain die. I can't say I've ever actually consumed gasoline but if I had to imagine what it would taste like if you mixed it with thin grape juice, I expect it would taste something like Poze. In all honesty, it tasted like cheap brandy, big on fumes, definitely boozy with a slight hairspray aftertaste.
We decided to sit down at our favourite taverna and stray from our old faithful gyros. As I have said before, in Prague, there are very few things in life that I love more than fried cheese. My husband, Jesus, probably watching Who's Line is it Anyway? The list is short in any way and so any time I see the Greek fried cheese, Saganaki, on a menu, I will order and devour without shame. I am truly destined to keel over one day from congestive heart failure. Somewhat detracted from the Greek wine escapade that was Poze, I hesitantly ordered the house white wine at the Taverna. It was an average wine but citrusy and definitely refreshing. And it tasted like wine. Greece and Rome are similar in their approaches to House Wine. It doesn't have to be fantastic but make it drinkable and make it cheap, people WILL buy. Moozh, taunting me with the potential of ordering one of the lamb heads spiralling on the spit inside, instead ordered pork belly. The sun set over the square. The meal was good but the gyros were by far better. When you find a good thing, don't stray from it unless you have a very good reason. Like fried cheese.
Our last day in Athens, we tried the reigning gyro king, Bairaktaris, right across the lane from O Thanasis. Though I prefer gyro over souvlaki, I would choose O Thanasis and their lamb souvlaki over Bairaktaris simply because of delivery. Slightly softer pita, slightly fresher veggies. The way it all shakes down, the difference is nominal. If you're in Athens, you've got to check them both out. And for roughly 2 euros per pita to go, you can't go wrong. The foodie highlight of the day for me was the Frozen Greek yogurt, or Yiourta (Yeow-ur-tah), at a place called Yiaourtaki on the fringe of Monastiraki Square. Greek yogurt is put in everything from smoothies, as a dip for pita, to on the top of coffee drinks and frappuchinos. Yiaourtaki specialized in fresh frozen Greek yogurt, with both conventional 'ice cream toppings' as well as traditional Greek toppings, which included tomatoes, eggplant, honey, rose, fig, among others all cured in a simple sugar syrup. I got mine with tangerine, which more than delivered with whole tangerines -seeds, rind and all- cured in a syrup. The texture was fantastic and the citrusy rind, with the sweetness of the syrup and the tang of the yogurt was fantastic. Moozh chose pistachios for his. The curing process transformed them from hard nuts to sweet, soft, almost seed-like. They had a 'crush' similar to a passionfruit seed or cucumber seed. I wish we had tried them earlier because I would have wanted to sample every topping they had. Sweet eggplant on frozen yogurt? Why not? Or at the very least, prove to me why I should have that on my fro-yo. Good, tangy fro-yo is on my list for pastry escapades.
Armed with our camera and our fro-yo, we again climbed the areo pagus to watch the sun dip down behind the hills and the sky light up, painted in swathes of colour, the Acropolis in spotlight and the streets of the city lit up in lights like veins. Being in Athens at the same time as it's wrestling with all of its financial woes and frustration felt like being in a city that wasn't itself. Like being in a city going through puberty. Awkward and uncomfortable, but formative and necessary, in a way that an onlooker, a tourist can't understand or appreciate.
Fry some cheese. Grab some pita. Thank yourself. Think of sun and white washed buildings along the coast. DO NOT sing ANYTHING from Mamma Mia. This is Greece, not Broadway.
Things I learned in Athens:
There is something infinitely satisfying about a proper pita.
There is something strangely exciting about a bus load of cops, waiting for something to happen.
Even great cities fall. Hopefully they can pick themselves up again.
Quote:
Me: this is what happens when an economy fails. Public services are the first thing to go.
Bohemian Recommends:
Athens Lotus Hotel - Affordable luxury.
Acropolis, Parthenon, Agora and Mount Olympus - Archaeological heaven.
Mars Hill - For it's romantic views of the sunset.
Central Market - A top seafood market in Europe!
We claimed our booth, and glanced around the terminal. The last of Rome was available to us here. The last of Roman food, that would live in our memories for years to come, was here for the taking. Bread? Alcohol? Olives? What should we buy? What would properly send us off from the Eternal City? A bag of crispy peanuts, sweet chill heat flavour, and a lemon spritz pop that we grabbed from the vending machine we could see from our window as the whistle was blowing. No prosecco. No toilet paper in the bathrooms. Four hours to Bari.
The Eurail pass that we had purchased had a promotion going with Superfast ferries where you could take a ferry from Italy to Greece for free. By 'free' they meant that you still had to pay taxes, seasonal fees and docking charges. It still only came to $20 per person, which significantly cut our transportation costs. The day we travelled into Greece, the same pass would also get us the coach bus from the port in Patras and to use the suburban rail to get into Athens. Wicked. The ferry itself is resplendent. And it opens two and a half hours before departure time so at the very least you can drop your packs and sit in some air conditioning. Having lived on the West Coast for three years where I got my fair share of ferry rides, I would have said I had a pretty good handle on what to expect with ferries. But the Superfast ferry fleet is beautiful, fully equipped and brand new. You can tell it's brand new because all of the wait staff were really nice. .I will give a piece of advice, and I feel that perhaps this shouldn't bear mentioning but I will say it anyway. If you are planning to embark on a trip for which travel will require more than three hours of your time, eat first. Or else what will likely happen to you will be somewhat similar to what happened to us in that we drank four overpriced beers and a substandard, and similarly overpriced, sandwich before we realized that we were IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN. It was also the middle of the night. As a captive audience, you can't do much at that point but zip yourself into hoodie and watch an episode of Spongebob Squarepants in Greek while you fall asleep sitting up.
But then you wake up and you roll into that Greek coastline. Jellyfish bob beneath the surface of the waves like bulls-eye smarties. Low, rounded hills scallop the horizon line. Fuzzy, sparse, low-lying bushes cover the dry earth and the white wash houses pop against the landscape like polka dots. On the dock, a transit bus rolled in like the A-Team. Gesturing wildly, with frequent jabs towards the back of the bus, the driver packed the seats as quickly as he could. Moozh and I just stared for a moment. No one had mentioned a transfer and we didn't have long to get to our bus to Athens. Customer Service on the ferry had said it was only ten minutes to the bus stop. We glanced at the sun, ceaseless overhead. We glanced once more at the bus driver. He looked very keen. And other passengers from the ferry were getting on.
So we set off on foot.
Armed with a crude map -it seems most customer service booths seem to rely mostly on line drawings as opposed to road maps- we headed in the believed direction of the bus stop. At one point, after my hair was suitably soaked by my own sweat, we stopped an innocent bystander to ask directions. According to him, which turned out to be true, the bus stop was still another half hour away. Greece is hot. Twenty minutes later, we asked another sweet Greek girl who was just trying to enjoy her day and not be assaulted by the smell of two lost backpackers. We were close. A few more blocks and we saw the sign that we had been told to watch out for. Crossing through gridlock, we ran up to the side of the bus just as it was pulling away. Another moment that seems a lot more exciting, a lot more...composed, when you see it on TV. Luckily, the bus was waiting in the same locked traffic that had just allowed us to illegally cross the road. Tapping on the door, I prayed that he would let us on. After that, I figured I should pray that the bus was actually going to Athens. The door swung open. I could already feel the AC.
"Do you go to Athens?"
With merely a thumb jab towards the back from the driver, Moozh and I quickly ditched our packs below with the luggage before collapsing in some seats towards the back.
Back in the weeks before we left, I remember sitting around with Moozh's family, lazily pontificating upon what I believed our trip would be like.
"I hope to be blogging everyday. We've got so much travel time. Between planes, trains, ferries, I have a lot of time on my hand that I can use."
I remember Matt's bro in law laughing a little. "No you'll be sleeping."
I remember thinking he would probably turn out to be right. But then I made some commitment to myself that I would be more disciplined than that. Or something. I thought about that conversation as I was slowly rocked to sleep by the bus climbing over hills and through narrow streets on its way out of Patras. When I finally woke up, I had no idea where we were in time or in Greece. Luckily, we were just rolling into the Kiato, the transfer point onto the Suburban Rail System. A completely empty rail car, with washrooms (with toilet paper) and AC. There was a guy sitting across the aisle from me who legitimately looked like one of the characters from my illustrated bible as a kid. Brillo-pad-esque beard that extended, square, at least a foot off his chin. And then he was wearing skinny jeans and wayfarers.
Apparently, the Greeks are very proud of the Attica Rail System and for the life of me I can't figure out why. It took us almost forty-five minutes to figure out how to transfer onto the line that actually went down into Metro Athens because three extremely relevant stops to us weren't even on the map! Luckily, a very kind Greek man seeing our confusion and border-line emotional break, helped us to understand the map and gave us directions as where to go after we got off the Larissa station.The brief walk from Larissa station revealed a very different Athens than the one I was expecting. Everything from the train tracks, and slum beneath the neighbouring bridge, to the roadside and storefronts of Metaxourgio were dirty and painfully run down. Even the Athens that was shown a few years back at the 2004 Olympics seemed a world away from what we were seeing. It felt like the sight of what used to be a great city, or at the very least a city getting along as well as the rest, was now a city without road repair or garbage pickup. It was hard to see how hard the economy had hit.
Our hotel was a clean and quiet hideaway just around the corner from the Metaxourgio metro station. Large white marble steps lead up to dimly lit, cushy carpeted hallways. We were starving and I had been waiting in anticipation for our meet with Greek cuisine.
"Anywhere you'd recommend in the area to eat?"
The hostess marked a couple of markets o the maps but pointed us towards a restaurant right around the corner. This visit would completely ruin our concept of value for our dollar for the rest of our European trip. A small taverna, with a name so Greek it could not be read, occupies the corner spot of a courtyard that wraps around a church; kids run around and play in the fountain while their parents sip ouzo and smoke at one of the many restaurants in the courtyard. Old men play backgammon and gesture towards the talk radio that sits between them, blaring Greek news. We walk through the doors and, after stammering, are handed a bilingual menu. Full lamb heads -replete with eyeballs- turn on a spit alongside pork belly and whole chickens. For 3.60 euros, we walked away with two MASSIVE gyros. Plump wedges of fresh tomatoes and shards with purple onion and lettuce are tucked next to crispy fries and, in moozh's case, thinly shaved slices of pork. The whole lot is slathered with thick, garlicky tzaziki and wrapped a warm, fluffy blanket of pita. Mine, which came without meat, was called the "ecological pita". It made me feel I was doing my part for the planet. Thusly commenced our inaugural routine: inhale food, shower, sleep.
The Central Market is a massive, must-see market in Athens. It is where the locals shop to get everything from entire lamb carcasses to fresh octopus that are still wriggling, olives brined in everything from lemon juice to pure olive oil, glorious lanes of fresh grapes and tubs full of fresh nuts. More nuts than you would readily know what to do with. So many grapes. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. We picked up some sun dried olives in oil and some cerignolas in lemon to snack on as we wandered.
Gyros and/or souvlaki is the de facto street food in Athens and from what we could find there are two Athenian institutions battling for supremacy, and they fight the battle across the street from one another. Located along the Eastern side of Monastiraki Square, we decided to check out O Thanasis first. O Thanasis specializes in the souvlaki brand of pita wrap, souvlaki being the cubed and skewered form of meat while gyro is the thinly sliced meat roasted on a spit. O Thanasis peddles their lamb pita to go for 2 euro, which set us up nicely to wander the Athenian Agora with. The Agora informally bleeds out from Monastiraki Square. Lanes of shops selling jewelry, musical instruments, knock off antiques, paintings, etc, including plenty to help you beat the heat. It was no different than any other marketplace than we had been to in any other European city: aggressive shop owners who call you out and jump on the slightest pause in your step to mean that you want to buy a sculpture of Aphrodite bathing. Wanna buy a sun-dial?
A pass for 12 euro each gets you into the ancient sites. You can pick and choose which ones you want to see. Much of 'seeing' them is made up of just wandering through them, thinking that the stuff you're walking on is thousands of years old. Makes you choose your steps carefully. Wandering through, you realize that all of these ruins survived occupations, world wars, intentional and unintentional destruction. Some of the demarcations of ruins you have to take their word for it. There is nothing left of most of them. The New Bouleuterion is little more than a sign left. But then there's the Stoa building that has been completely restored, to the point that you question what original of it is actually left. The Temple of Hephaestus is remarkably well preserved. What is amazing about the Agora is to see that nearly all of Athenian life was centred there. People would make their way to the Agora every day. Their lives were connected by a place, unified, in a way that ours aren't any longer.
Up past the early Christian Byzantine church, you enter the Areo Pagus, or the Field of Ares. This is rumoured to be where criminals would hide out to avoid trial. Also known as Mars Hill, the large rock face is where Paul gave his address to the Athenians after his conversion. You slowly wind up the Panathenaic Way -my Greek history classes very much came in handy for my role as tour guide during this portion of our sightseeing- to the Acropolis. The Acropolis rises high above the Piraeus region, the buildings of Attica spilling out like white mosaic tiles as far as you can see. The Parthenon is dedicated to Athena. Athena was believed to be the patron goddess of Athens. As the myth goes, Athena -the goddess of wisdom, justice, law, civilization, strength, math and arts and crafts- and Poseidon, the god of the ocean, requested patronage of the city. The deck was already pretty stacked in my opinion. Athena is friggin bad ass. Each bestowed a gift upon the city, the winner being whoever's gift was accepted. Poseidon, in a very Moses-esque fashion, struck a rock to produced a salt spring, which was meant to symbolize naval power. Athena produced an olive tree to symbolize peace and prosperity. The Athenians accepted Athena's gift because aside from the navy, they couldn't use salt water for anything. The olive tree became central to their food source and to their exports. So Athena it was.
The Temple of Athena Nike, goddess of victory, and the Athena Parthenos statue were part of the Parthenon temple as well. The Temple of AThena Nike, like the Parthenon, is being slowly restored by archeologists. There are ancient replicas of the Athena Parthenos statue in the National Archeological Museum in Athens, one at the Louvre, one at the Museo Nazionale in Rome and one replica, standing 41 ft tall, stands in the reproduction of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. Unfortunately, as we've said with most of Europe, the first thing you notice about the Parthenon is that you can't see past the scaffolding. Any photos you've seen of the Acropolis without any scaffolding or cranes, and I've seen them too, I'm not entirely sure how they got that photo. Photoshop, I guess.
Athens is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a recorded history of almost 3400 years. Understandably, there are going to be some necessary touchups that may be needed. The Parthenon specifically suffered extensive damage in 1687. AThens was at one time occupied by the Ottoman Turks, who used the Parthenon to house their explosives. A Venetian expedition tried to invade Athens and the long and short of it, the explosives went off inside the Parthenon. It's surprising there is as much left of it as there is considering the kind of blast it would have suffered. Apparently back in the 60's the Greek government decided to start 'fixing up' the Parthenon, not to it's state before the explosion but kind of as a facelift for the four hundred years following the explosion, which haven't exactly been bereft of their own physical damage, world war considering. It's a project. All the restoration feels like a slippery slope after a while. As with the Stoa, there's the risk of the building becoming more 'restoration' and less 'antique' if things aren't kept in check. Everyone we saw working at the restoration looked like they were working with a makeup brush so their methods don't seem that aggressive and the progress seems slow going. It just at times seems hard to see the Parthenon for what it is through all the construction equipment. At dusk, however, when light up from the floor, the scaffolding seems to fade away and you get a glimpse of what you've seen in pictures.
Descending down the south side of the Acropolis, you wander past the new and shiny Acropolis Museum, new enough it's not included in the Agora pass, towards the Temple of Zeus. There is something cool and distinctive about the ruins of Athens. You really do wander past a Gucci boutique and a Spar market and then all of a sudden you're standing in a gravel pit staring at Hadrian's Arch. Just like in Rome, some of the most resilient ruins seem to be Hadrian's. Hadrian's Arch, rising up alongside a busy roadside, kitty corner from the National Gardens, is a triumphal arch apparently installed to make Emperor Hadrian's presence felt in Athens, a symbol of all the good he had done in the city. He really meant it because the arch is in remarkable repair. In contrast, the Temple of Zeus which sits behind it has very little left to it. Their ages differ by hundreds of years to be fair to Zeus. The photo of it in the guidebooks and signs, suggests that it is a massive pile of ruins, a truly expansive temple dedicated to Zeus. Some pillars still stand, but one pillar is fanned out beautifully along the ground. If you're gonna fall, fall with panache I suppose.
Next to it, the National Gardens stretch out for 38 acres in the centre of the city. Previously the Royal Gardens, it is now a free garden adjacent to the Greek Parliament. With a petting zoo, lakes, numerous playgrounds and a botanical garden, it is apparently a hot spot in the summer for families. The fact that we were there during the first week of September, that kids were all back at school was the only reason we could come up to explain why we had the whole thing nearly to ourselves.
Popping out the other side, we struck up a conversation with a passerby as we cooled down with a beer just down the block from the Parliament. He gave us some good advice for our visit to the beach the next day and asked us if we knew his cousin in Montreal, since we were from Canada. Strangely enough, we didn't know him. We sauntered past two large police transport vans of Hellenic Police just waiting for shit to happen. Anti-Austerity protests are common place in Greece right now as in other cities in Europe and we narrowly missed a violent protest that broke out in Syntagma Square not long after we left. Protests turned violent have continued to happen because people are angry, people are disappointed but no one knows what else to do.
We wandered down to Syntagma Square to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Each country we've been to seems to handle the tomb very differently. In France, many people swarmed it, took lots of pictures. In Athens, you could take goony pictures with the guards stationed in front of the tomb but you couldn't go up on the platform to take a picture of the slab yourself. To each their own.
Though their suburban rail system was brutally neglected, Athen's underground metro is gorgeous. A byproduct of the preparations for the 2004 Olympics, the new metro boasts archeological installations, shiny new marble flooring and escalators that go UP AND DOWN. And we didn't encounter a map that wasn't up to date not to mention that all of the metro stations had maps in them. The trains were prompt and comfortably air conditioned. I will consider it a win. The next day was merely a beach day. We saw the 'historic' Piraeus port, which doesn't look much like anything historical anymore. Monstrous cruise liners, including some Superfast Ferries, rise above the water like their very own skyscrapers. I don't why I expected to see the set design of Troy given that Greece is a developed nation. It's my romanticism I guess. We caught the tram to Alimos beach, a beach lined with hotels, topless moms and beefcake beach bodies. I could have laid there for hours, just people watching and dipping in the cool water, feeling the pebbly sand beneath my toes.
Now here is where I would mention the old adage, curiosity killed the cat. I was curious to try Greek wine while we were in Athens. Having been in the wine making business for thousands of years, I figured they must have gotten pretty good at it. I came across an intriguing article from the magazine Toronto Life about quality wines coming out of Greece. A local variety of wine that had led people to believe that Greek wine is shit is called retsina and it is understandably an 'acquired taste'. The wine is aged in barrels that are coated with resin, giving the wine a distinctive, and polarizing, "piney" taste, apparently somewhat similar to drinking Pine Sol. That didn't appeal to me though I wasn't opposed to trying some as part of a "Greek experience". We weren't able to find any of the Toronto Life wine's in any liquor stores in Metaxourgio but I did get a Greek wine experience. I'm not sure what we expected for a litre at 2 euros. I'm not sure if I will ever be able to focus properly again and I now walk with a discernible lilt. When I drank it I felt a part of my brain die. I can't say I've ever actually consumed gasoline but if I had to imagine what it would taste like if you mixed it with thin grape juice, I expect it would taste something like Poze. In all honesty, it tasted like cheap brandy, big on fumes, definitely boozy with a slight hairspray aftertaste.
We decided to sit down at our favourite taverna and stray from our old faithful gyros. As I have said before, in Prague, there are very few things in life that I love more than fried cheese. My husband, Jesus, probably watching Who's Line is it Anyway? The list is short in any way and so any time I see the Greek fried cheese, Saganaki, on a menu, I will order and devour without shame. I am truly destined to keel over one day from congestive heart failure. Somewhat detracted from the Greek wine escapade that was Poze, I hesitantly ordered the house white wine at the Taverna. It was an average wine but citrusy and definitely refreshing. And it tasted like wine. Greece and Rome are similar in their approaches to House Wine. It doesn't have to be fantastic but make it drinkable and make it cheap, people WILL buy. Moozh, taunting me with the potential of ordering one of the lamb heads spiralling on the spit inside, instead ordered pork belly. The sun set over the square. The meal was good but the gyros were by far better. When you find a good thing, don't stray from it unless you have a very good reason. Like fried cheese.
Our last day in Athens, we tried the reigning gyro king, Bairaktaris, right across the lane from O Thanasis. Though I prefer gyro over souvlaki, I would choose O Thanasis and their lamb souvlaki over Bairaktaris simply because of delivery. Slightly softer pita, slightly fresher veggies. The way it all shakes down, the difference is nominal. If you're in Athens, you've got to check them both out. And for roughly 2 euros per pita to go, you can't go wrong. The foodie highlight of the day for me was the Frozen Greek yogurt, or Yiourta (Yeow-ur-tah), at a place called Yiaourtaki on the fringe of Monastiraki Square. Greek yogurt is put in everything from smoothies, as a dip for pita, to on the top of coffee drinks and frappuchinos. Yiaourtaki specialized in fresh frozen Greek yogurt, with both conventional 'ice cream toppings' as well as traditional Greek toppings, which included tomatoes, eggplant, honey, rose, fig, among others all cured in a simple sugar syrup. I got mine with tangerine, which more than delivered with whole tangerines -seeds, rind and all- cured in a syrup. The texture was fantastic and the citrusy rind, with the sweetness of the syrup and the tang of the yogurt was fantastic. Moozh chose pistachios for his. The curing process transformed them from hard nuts to sweet, soft, almost seed-like. They had a 'crush' similar to a passionfruit seed or cucumber seed. I wish we had tried them earlier because I would have wanted to sample every topping they had. Sweet eggplant on frozen yogurt? Why not? Or at the very least, prove to me why I should have that on my fro-yo. Good, tangy fro-yo is on my list for pastry escapades.
Armed with our camera and our fro-yo, we again climbed the areo pagus to watch the sun dip down behind the hills and the sky light up, painted in swathes of colour, the Acropolis in spotlight and the streets of the city lit up in lights like veins. Being in Athens at the same time as it's wrestling with all of its financial woes and frustration felt like being in a city that wasn't itself. Like being in a city going through puberty. Awkward and uncomfortable, but formative and necessary, in a way that an onlooker, a tourist can't understand or appreciate.
Fry some cheese. Grab some pita. Thank yourself. Think of sun and white washed buildings along the coast. DO NOT sing ANYTHING from Mamma Mia. This is Greece, not Broadway.
Things I learned in Athens:
There is something infinitely satisfying about a proper pita.
There is something strangely exciting about a bus load of cops, waiting for something to happen.
Even great cities fall. Hopefully they can pick themselves up again.
Quote:
Me: this is what happens when an economy fails. Public services are the first thing to go.
Bohemian Recommends:
Athens Lotus Hotel - Affordable luxury.
Acropolis, Parthenon, Agora and Mount Olympus - Archaeological heaven.
Mars Hill - For it's romantic views of the sunset.
Central Market - A top seafood market in Europe!