Farewell to Athens

On my last day in Athens, I had to send out all my postcards. The stamps were so beautiful, I bought some extra and addressed a postcard to myself so I could have the cancelled stamp. I collect postcards from places I've been or from friends who sent them. This would be the first time I sent myself one. This way I'd know when everybody else got theirs. It gave me an odd sense of accomplishment. Then I was determined to find the Herakleidon Museum which had an exhibit of Degas sculptures. It was difficult to find, tucked away on a little side street near the Thissio metro station, but it was worth it. The Herakleidon is a small gem of a museum, a former private home, very intimate. There were over 70 gorgeous Degas sculptures including the famous one of the young ballet dancer. I'm not sure if it's the same one as in the Clark Institute in Williamstown. Beautiful music from the period played.

After lunch, I strolled around the Thissio square, near Monasteriki. Street vendors were selling stamps, coins, old watches, binoculars, pins from the Olympics, and various bric-a-brac. There were hordes of black men with huge bundles running from place to place from the police. They would drop their burdens which contained what appeared to be knockoffs of designer bags until they got a signal that the cops were nearby. Then they'd pick up and run off.

I wandered to the Royal Gardens and found a gallery which sported an exhibition of movie posters from various eras and countries. That was a lot of fun. Back in the hotel, I watched TV til Jerry got back from Turkey--interesting how the news media in Europe is totally to the left, there was a commentator on RT, the Russian network who suggested the Obama administration bribed the Nobel committee to get the president the Peace Prize--and then we all went out to celebrate our last night. We ate at a very good place with a view of the Acropolis. I told Jerry and his colleagues if I needed to write a doctoral thesis it would be on The Cult of the Virgin: Athena, Mary, Elizabeth I, and Doris Day. Prior to this trip, I hadn't known Athena was a virgin goddess.

The flight back to NYC was about ten hours, but I had my anti-jet pills. They showed four movies--all garbage. Four Christmases, The Time Traveller's Wife, Land of the Lost, and Post Graduate. I didn't watch any of them--that is I didn't listen to the sound on the headphones. The images were enough to tell me how stupid they were. All I could think of the films were "Wow, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, and Sissy Spacek must need money." Then they showed TV episodes and it was the same episode of The Simpsons I saw on the last Delta flight I took which was about a year ago!

More Photos from Greece

In the previous post, the stupid thing uploaded the photo of the fisherman rather than the temple. So here's the temple and a shot of Hydra, my favorite of the three ports. Besides, I hear blog posts should be shorter anyway.

Mini-Cruise of the Islands

(ATHENS, GREECE) On Thursday, Dec. 17, Jerry went on to Istanbul for another conference, while I stayed behind in Athens. Thurs. morning we both went to the Byzantine Museum and during lunch in Syntagma Square we watched the general strikers--Mike told us the day before in Delphi that they have these strikes about twice a month, just for the unions to make a point. Note: They also had a small Andy warhol exhibit since it was also about icons. Then Jerry left to catch his plane and I took one of the City Tours. I had seen a lot of what was covered including the Acropolis and the Agora, but it was good to get a feel for the whole city. I also got a much better look at the Academy of Arts and Scienes which was decorated with beautiful statues of Athena and Apollo. Someone had spray painted the word RESIST on the columns.

The next day, I was up at 6 a.m. for a very touristy cruise to three Greek islands--Agina, Poros and Hydra. The passengers were about 20 percent American and European and the rest were Asian, but overwhelmingly Japanese. We basically had about an hour in each port to stroll around the picturesque waterfront area.In Agina, for an extra 25 Euros, we could take a tour of the temple to Apheia, the river goddess (pictured).

I latched onto an older American couple from Florida and by coincidence, the husband had his wallet stolen at the same metro as Jerry. So here's another travel tip--when in Athens avoid the Monasteriki station. By another coincidence, the husband was a classmate of Gore Vidal at Philip Exeter and I was reading Hollywood by Vidal at the time.

Of the three islands, I liked Hydra (pronounced HEE-dra) best. The waterfront was full of stray dogs and cats and donkeys--there are no cars allowed because the streets are so narrow, so the donkeys are the main means of transportation. I wandered around and took shots of fishermen, donkeys, churches, brightly painted windows, old men and little boys pushing carts--there are no cars, remember.

After Hyrda, we had lunch on board. The American couple and I sat with three people from Egpyt. Poros was next and not as cute as Hydra, but I got a great shot of a fisherman mending his net. I just tried to upload it and stupid Blogger erased everything I had written since the last upload. So I'll put that in a separate post.

Then in Agina, we took a bus out to the mountain to see the temple of the river goddess. We were on the bus with the Chinese people. Our guide from the boat--a cigarette-voiced woman who sounded like Melina Mercouri, it seems all Greek women sound like that--would tell us about the pistachio nut trees and the legend of the island, then hand the microphone to the Chinese guide.

We had 20 minutes at the temple and it was very tourist-y with four busloads of people from the boat taking pictures. But it was worth the trip because it was sunset and the effect was quite dramatic against the ancient columns. Of course, there was a souvenir stand where we were sold pistachio nut ice cream--a huge slab of it with goat cheese for four Euros.

Back in the town I walked around and almost missed the boat. They had pulled the gangplank back and the sea was incredibly choppy. I had to run all the way back from the dock. "Can you swim?" asked a crew member, but then he put the gangplank back. I was the last one on board. On the cruise back, we were given a "Greek folklore show" with two dancers in traditional costumes and a comic who did impressions of Elvis Presley, cats from different countries (saying meow in various accents), and dressed in drag as frumpy cleaning woman.

Back in Athens, I had the bus drop me off near the Plaka and I found a nice restautant where I had lamb wrapped in grape leaves. At the next table two flight attendants bitched about their jobs and it was more entertaining than the folklore show. Then back to the hotel and I watched Al Jazeera and BBC. The next day Jerry would return from Turkey and it would be the last full day in Greece.

Stopolis at the Acropolis or It's Just a Big Pile of Rocks

(ATHENS, GREECE) I arrived here in Athens Sunday morning after a flight which left JFK on Saturday afternoon. I took some anti-jet lag pills and felt fine. (Delta is pretty cheap by the way, they don't even have those TV sets in the back of the seats.) Jerry and his colleagues were off to their conference, so I looked in the guide book and discovered the guard was changed in front of the Parliment building at 11AM every Sunday. If I hurried I would just make it. I found the metro (notice that only in America is it called the subway) and saw the elaborate ceremony with the soliders in their traditional uniforms with the white skirts, tasselled slippers, and funny hats. There are 400 pleats in each skirt for the 400 years of Turkish occupation.

Then I walked to the flea market and from there to the Acropolis area. It was a long walk, but I finally found it. Across the street was Hadrian's Gate and the remains of the temple of Olympian Zeus which is a series of huge columns and a pile of rocks as a result of earthquakes. I then walked up the hill to the Acropolis--steep and tiring. It was actually warm, a shock considering how cold it was in NYC. The Acropolis is a series of temples erected to the gods. The main one is the Parthenon, built to honor Athena, goddess of wisdom and the protector of the city. The pediments--which are reconstructed in the new Acropolis museum--depict the birth of Athena and her contest with Poseidon, her uncle, for the right to be patron of the new city later called Athens in her honor.

The legend goes that Zeus, king of the gods, had a terrible headache. Hepheseus, god of fire and the forge, split his head open with an axe to relieve the pain (they obviously didn't have a public option) and out sprang Athena, fully grown in armor and full of her father's wisdom. I'm sure Zeus said, "What the hell was that?" The other pediment depicts Athena's contest with her uncle Poseidon, Zeus's brother, for control of the city. Poseidon struck the earth and produced a sword. Athena did the same and out sprang an olive tree-symbol of peace. Athena won!

My quesion is how does this jibe with all those Hercules movies starring dreamy Steeve Reeves? And does it overlap with the Thor comics where Hercules fights Thor and somehow Asgard and Mount Olympus both exist in the modern world? Jack Kirby later offers a different explanation in his The Eternals.

Anyway, we all got together and had drinks at the Hotel Bretany. On Monday, we visited the Archaeological Museum with plenty of hot male statues. Tuesday, we went back to the Acropolis--I was the only one who had already been. We--myself, Jerry and two colleagues--hired a guide named Athena who explained quite a bit while the winds howled and dogs followed us barking and humping each other. There are a lot of stray dogs and cats around the Acropolis, but not as many as in Istanbul. I was surprised there was no audio guide you could rent. After all, this is one of the most famous--if not THE most famous--spots in the world. Probably guides like Athena who are unionized fought tooth and nail to prevent this potential dent in their income.

After the Acropolis, we walked through the Agora, the ancient marketplace where most of the Athenians did their daily thing. The most interesting site was the prison where Socrates was executed for thinking a bit too freely. He drank hemlock. There was nothing left of the site. But it was moving to think a philosopher could be killed for exercising freedom of thought--and it still happens today.

The next day we took a day trip to Delphi which I will detail in the next post.

Barefoot in Athens

(ATHENS, GREECE) Here's another travel tip for you. If you happen to be in Athens and you have to ride the metro, avoid crowds and keep your wallet in your inside shirt pocket with your jacket zipped up. Yesterday, my partner Jerry was rushing onto the metro in a vey big crowd--Athens is terribly crowded--I got into the car ahead of him. There was a bunch of young men pushing and shoving. Jerry got into the car and the young men got out, acting as if they were on the wrong train. We looked down and saw a wallet on the floor. At first we thought it belonged to somebody else, but then Jerry reached into his pants and realized it was his. I suddenly said, "Check to make sure you haven't been robbed." He opened the wallet and all the cash--Euros and dollars-- were gone. The young men had distracted him so he didn't even feel the wallet had been lifted.

Well, what can you do? We had enough money elsewhere and we managed to get some cash from a Greek ATM. Strangely enough, I was reading an interview with Diane von Furstenberg in the Delta magazine on the plane coming over and she was pickpocketed on a recent European trip. Other than that we've had fun--the Acropolis, Agora, Plaka, wonderful food. More from Greece later.

Pre-Greece Jitters

Here's a travel tip for you: If you want to check-in online the night before your international flight, make sure your passport isn't going to expire in less than three months. I'm leaving for Athens tomorrow and I received an email from Delta inviting me to check in online. I go to the website, punch in my passport number and expiration date which is next Feb. and I get one of the little red lines saying "You cannot check in if your passport expires within three months. You must see an agent at the airport." My heart stopped. I have visions of having to go the Greek embassy or winding up like Zev and Justin of The Amazing Race when they lost their passports in Cambodia and losing first place. So I called Delta and was on hold for 20 minutes--don't worry I amused myself by watching Jonny Quest--it was the one set in Norway with the acrobatic dwarf disguised as a gargoyle in order to steal the anti-gravity device.

Finally a human got on the line and explained when your passport is within three months of expiring you're not allowed to check in on line. They have to make sure you won't stay past your expiration date--they think of you like a quart of milk. But I said I'm returning in a week, it's even on my return ticket. For some reason, they need a human agent to verify you won't get stuck in Athens for three months.

Oh well, it's off to the airport tomorrow. I'm taking the E train all the way to nearly the last stop and getting on the airtrain to JFK. This is the first time I've done it going to the airport, I've done it coming back. I was tempted to go a comic book sale in the morning, but it's deep in Brooklyn and with this new wrinkle, I want to get to the airport in plenty of time. I'll have to skip it.

I do like travelling in spite of these little hiccups. I love my little blue bag of toiletries I can hang on the towel rack in the hotel. I love sitting in the airport terminal reading a left-over copy of USA Today. There's a travel store on 12th St. where I bought some anti-jetlag pills. They had two fascinating books--one with transit maps from all over the world and another filled with pictures of tickets--from airlines, trains, theatres again from all over the world. There is some fascinating about these little souvenirs and scraps of paper giving glimpses of yours or other people's lives. I bought a Thor comic at Time Machine the other day. (It was #128 with Thor and Hercules fighting the forces of Pluto, the god of hell.) Inside the plastic bag containing it was a credit card receipt dated 2000 from a comic book store in Scranton, PA. I wondered who bought it there and how it wound up in New York. Will someone look at my boarding pass and think "That idiot should have renewed his passport sooner."?