Archaeology and Anarchists

I slept–surprisingly well–in the train station in Skopje, on the train platform two stories above the city. The train to Thessaloniki, as if to provide an accurate parting impression of Eastern Europe, was two hours late, and I got into Thessaloniki around three in the afternoon, passing from the farmlands of Macedonia to the sparser terrain of northern Greece, and the hot sun of the Mediterranean coast.

I called Sophia, my couchsurfing host for Athens, but a recorded message informed me that her phone had been disconnected. Hmmm. An obstacle. To be safe, I booked the overnight train rather than the bus that would get me there an hour before midnight–and only then found a place to check my email, where I found a message from Sophia saying her cell phone was out of commission and providing me with her home phone. I called and let her know the new plan, and settled in to wait.

In the bakery in the Thessaloniki train station I met a couple, Eli and Charlotte, who’d just hitchhiked south through the Balkans. Eli was from Montana as well, and we started talking. He had quite an interesting story to tell: he and Charlotte were on their way to the Greek island of Lesbos to attend Eli’s sister’s wedding there. Apparently she had been working as an English teacher at a school in Istanbul. Most of the English teachers were non-Turkish citizens, and working without work visas thanks to the difficulty of obtaining them in Turkey.

The government had come down on the school and deported all the teachers without valid work visas, which meant Eli’s sister couldn’t come back to Istanbul. So, on short notice, she announced to her family she was marrying her Turkish boyfriend, which would, of course, let her come back to Istanbul to work. Eli even invited me to the wedding–another random Montanan, he said, might as well show up–but I unfortunately wouldn’t be in the island on time.

I said goodbye and boarded my train for yet another uncomfortable attempt to sleep on the train. I arrived in Athens around 7:30 the next morning and called Sophia for directions to her apartment, barely more than a hundred meters from the Athens Archeological museum. We talked for a bit and then she headed to work while I dropped my pack and walked out to get my first taste of the city.

The key point for any tourist activity in Athens is, of course, the Acropolis. Since the first day in a city for me is usually tourist day, I walked from Sophia’s house through the city to get there. I’d underestimated just how dominating the formation is. A great stone mountain rising to some hundred and fifty meters above sea level, the Acropolis is visible from nearly anywhere in the city. Sophia later told me that Athens building codes restricted building anything so high that it would obstruct the view–the city is still justifiably proud of its most significant (and visible) piece of ancient history.

On the way, I explored the Roman agora, the center of commerce in Athens during Roman times, and bought the student ticket packet (six Euro) that would let me into any of the sites in the city. Then, after walking through the old town at the base of the formation, I passed the gates and began the long climb to the top. It was hot, and very crowded, voices chattering in every possible language and people standing in lines to take pictures of themselves and their friends and families in front of the Parthenon. The dominating structure on top of the Acropolis, the Parthenon (from the Greek for “virgin”) was dedicated to the godess Athena, for whom the city is named. Legend has it that the first king of Athens was a half-snake, half-man named Cecrops, who promised to give patronage of the city to the god who could give it the best gift. Poseidon and Athena competed for the privelege: Poseidon struck the earth with his spear and a great spring rose from the ground. But, as he was god of the sea, the spring was salty, and not very useful. Athena struck the ground with hers and an olive tree grew there, to this day a symbol of peace and prosperity. Cecrops liked the olive tree and Athena got the job, and the rest, as they say, is history.

After the Acroplis I walked toward the sea and climbed the adjacent Hill of Muses, where, suddenly, I was alone. The hill is topped with a single ruin, a dedication to the muses, and there is no entrance fee–either way, the tourists seem to stop at the line of refreshment stalls at the bottom of the Acropolis without continuing past to the other side. I walked for some time, on dirt paths through the hill and the two others beside it, before finally cutting back out and heading back toward the city center.

I stopped briefly at the temple of Zeus. Though all that remains is a dozen or so massive pillars, it’s still quite an impressive sight, towering above the few people walking below. When it was finished, by the Roman emperor Hadrian (an impressive number of the giant ancient buildings I’ve seen so far bear the attribute of “finished by Hadrian”), it had well over fifty of these towering columns, no doubt instigating in its attendees the sort of religious awe that can still be felt in the Catholic cathedrals of today.

By now Sophia was off work, and we met so she could show me around the city. I was fortunate: she translates Greek travel material into English for a living and just finished a piece about a walk around Athens, so she took me on it and narrated, with detail to the point that we both started laughing at how much like a professional tour guide she sounded.

Then we went for a couple of drinks into the Exarchia district of Athens, which was an experience entirely unlike my ruin and tourist filled day. Exarchia is the meeting place of activists, young intellectuals, edgy musicians, and anarchists, and the air itself seemed charged. Young people were seated everywhere, drinking coffee or wine, with tattoos, dreadlocks, and the fashions of Greek alternative culture. The walls were covered in political grafitti of significantly higher intellectual content than your average city block: lines of poetry, political slogans, and the ever popular circled A of the anarchist. One street corner in the center of the district was the site of the infamous police killing of a sixteen year old boy last december, which sparked the riots that reached national television around the world. The corner is covered in memorial grafitti and tacked up pictures of the boy. Sophia was near one of the protests with a friend when the police came down on them, and was afraid to try to get home for fear of being arrested. The conflict is still very current, and as an outsider it’s difficult to say who is at fault: Sophia told me the (government-friendly) media spoke only of the rioting actions of the anarchists, while independent videos were released on the internet and in some private publications revealing police actually inciting protestors to violence and starting some of the fires themselves. Either way, it’s a tragic situation, and one that will happen again–both here in Athens, and around the world.

The next day was back to tourism again, and I spent most of it exploring the Archaeological Museum of Athens, two expansive floors of artifacts from around Greece from the neolithic period up through Roman rule. I had also visited the Acropolis museum the day before, and had noticed something interesting: many of the main pieces, such as the statues from the Parthenon, were plaster casts rather than the original stone. I overheard a tour guide talking about how the pieces were looted during past wars. “These are only the plaster-cast miniatures,” she says. Pause. “The originals are in the British museum.” One can almost hear her teeth grinding.

One thing I have to comment on is the Athens metro system. It is by far the cleanest I’ve seen anywhere, and is especially interesting because of all of the layers of history beneath the city: a fair percentage of the metro stops have glass floors opening to archaeological excavations going on beneath their floors, uncovered during the construction of the metro system. You’ll be walking through a steel and glass corridor full of modern art and look down and see, beneath your feet, the labyrinthine stone streets and architecture of ancient Athens. As I was walking into one of them with Sophia, she nodded and said, “They are the best thing about Athens.” Pause. “And the Acropolis.”

Sophia is fairly well connected with the rest of the couchsurfing community in Athens, and we went out that night with a French expat named Cedric who lives here in Athens and two American girls, Cate and Linda, who he was hosting for the night. The place was a bar on a rooftop, unmarked from the street, with a perfect view of the Acropolis, grandly lit up and towering against the dark and glittering lights of the city below.

I spent the next day “soul catching,” or walking around the city taking pictures of people–if the old tribes are right, that taking someone’s picture entitles you to his or her soul, I’m amassing quite a spiritual army. Then it was more couchsurfer meetings, for the next couple of nights–I can’t honestly say much happened during the days, as it was the weekend and we were generally out until between five and eight in the morning (Greeks, apparently, are nocturnal). One of the best things about Couchsurfing, I think, is that it creates a truly international community–the long discussions on everything from politics to film to religion and philosophy, with people from all over the world, will be some of my best memories of Athens. I even made a friend from Chihuahua, Mexico, which is the starting point for exploring one of the biggest canyons in the world–look forward to a few such Good and Lost episodes in the next few years!

Tomorrow, hopefully, I catch a ferry on to either Folegandros or Santorini, to experience a few of the Greek islands. I’ve got a place to stay in Istanbul lined up, again through couchsurfing, though I have a feeling that, as usual, I may be a few days late.