Wander About

Category: Greece

  • Athens.

    Athens.

    Myths and Mountains

    I left Thessaloniki for Athens early in the morning by train. The ride would be five hours long and would carry me the length of Greece. I was looking forward to watching the rocky, mountainous landscape unfurl before me. Greece was and is a place of particular fascination for me. I was obsessed with Greek mythology as a child, swept away by the stories of heroes and monsters, gods and chimeric creatures. A world neatly divided and controlled by beings of great power, each with their own domains and responsibilities. As I grew older, I learned of Greece, and Athens in particular, as the birthplace of Western Civilization. The home of the great philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, and my personal favorite, Diogenes, the cynic who lived in a barrel. The backdrop of the great dramas of Euripides, Sophocles and Homer.
    Early along the route to Athens, the train would run parallel to the mighty Olympus, home of the gods of the Greek Pantheon. I had opted not to make a day trip to the massive mountain during my stay in Thessaloniki, settling for a view from the train window. However, I didn’t take into account that the early morning departure would leave the first hour of the journey in darkness. And as luck would have it, it was a foggy morning which would have obscured the view even if there was light to see. So, for now, the throne of Zeus continues to live in my imagination high in clouds where mortals cannot see. As my consolation prize, the ancient city of Athens awaited me.

    Adventuring in Athens

    • I made my arrival in Athens at the city’s main station, which is a fairly diminutive affair compared to some of the grand stations that I’d witnessed in more northern parts of Europe. For reasons that are a mystery to me now, I chose to hoof my way to my hostel a kilometer and a half away, rather than taking the metro that would have carried me there in mere minutes. It was an enlightening experience, foreshadowing much of what I would see throughout Athens. The streets are chaotic, Greek drivers are aggressive and pedestrians have no rights in their eyes. And when faced with a multi-ton vehicle bearing down on me at rapid speeds, I could only agree. But, a walker must not be meek either, not when the only way to cross a street is with confidence and cunning awareness. The streets themselves are tight-webbed grid, densely packed with mid-rise apartment buildings, each balcony sporting an angled sun-shade, protecting from the midday sun even in mid-December. The temperatures here rose another 10 degrees from Thessaloniki, sitting at a balmy 20 degrees in the height of the afternoon. I worked up a solid sweat by the time I arrived at the Hawks Urban Hostel.
    • As a special treat to myself, helped by the fact that prices dropped precipitously as the holidays approached, I booked a private room at the hostel. I literally jumped with joy when I entered the room and saw the amenities offered. Despite being relatively spare, I was overjoyed with the prospect of having my own mini-fridge, a desk, a window with a view and, of course, the privacy of a room to myself, even if I did have to share a bathroom with one other room. After six weeks of shared hostel accommodations, I was now living in real luxury. In fact, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I wouldn’t be sharing a room with anyone else until mid-February.
    • My first day in Athens, as was now my habit, was a undirected wander. I started at the National Gardens, next to the Presidential Palace, near the heart of the city. Along with the exotic trees and flowers of the garden, I found parrots nesting the canopies, ducks swimming in ponds, and cats and tortoises creeping through the underbrush. A good start to any day. The gardens led me to the Panathenaic Stadium, the site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, which in turn offered me my first sight of the Acropolis and the Parthenon surmounting it. The Parthenon was my most anticipated site for my visit, so it was an exciting preview of what was to come. From the Stadium, I worked my way into the heart of the ancient city, and a flurry of sites and ruins hurried by, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Hadrian Arch, the Roman Forum, the Ancient Agora overlooked by the Temple of Hephaestus. By the end of the afternoon, I was climbing my way up to the Acropolis, closer and closer to the Parthenon, though I wouldn’t be visiting that site quite yet. I finished on the Aeropagus, a rocky outcropping of a hill with a tremendous view of Athens stretching in all directions (except those blocked by the summit of the Acropolis). I was even able to see out to the Aegean sea, just barely glinted over the top of Nymph’s Hill. Facing toward the city, a white sea of buildings and roofs spread through the valleys between hills, covering every surface capable of supporting a foundation.
    • My visit to the Parthenon would be spread over two separate days. I chose first to visit the Acropolis museum, not intending to spend an entire day exploring the history and artifacts held within, but content to do so. The museum is overflowing with the remains of civilization that the Acropolis has witnessed over thousands of years. It excellently details the history of the Acropolis through various eras, iterative cycles of construction, worship, sackings and destruction. Ascending each floor of the museum brings you closer and closer to the present. The top floor details the Parthenon and particularly the marvelous statues of the pediments of the temple. These statues are famously no longer in Athens, the Elgin marbles were removed in the mid-1800s and carried away to London, where I’d seen them in the British museum some fifteen years earlier. The Acropolis museum presents replicas of these statues,as well as the frieze and metopes that run around the length of the Parthenon, laid out in the same dimensions and position as they would have stood in the temple, but brought down to eye-level instead of soaring 40 feet overhead.
      The museum was a wonderful primer for my actual visit to the Acropolis slopes and the temples atop the following day. The slopes of the Acropolis hosts the ancient amphitheatre of Dionysus Elethereus, said to be the first theatre and the birth place of the Greek tragedy, where Sophocles and Euripides were crowned with wreathes of ivy. Further along, beyond a series of small shrines and temples, is the even more impressive Odeon of Herodes Atticus, another ancient theatre with a three story building backing the stage. Now the stage building is just a wall, with an excellent view of the city beyond. Finally, the top of the Acropolis holds three main temples, the largest of which being the Parthenon, dedicated to Athena, the patron goddess of Athens.
      Despite being in the doldrums of December, the top of the Parthenon was crawling with hundreds of tourists, though I’m sure it was nothing compared to the thousands of visitors omnipresent during the high season. The temples, of course, are largely ruins now, though significant preservation efforts are ongoing to slow or even reverse the degradation. Between, the other tourists and the scaffolding, it was hard to truly imagine the Parthenon at the height of its splendor. Though, the scale of it definitely made a significant impression on me. Towering columns of marble holding up a gargantuan roof, large enough to be the home of a goddess.
    • During my downtime in Athens, I started replaying a favorite computer game from my childhood, Zeus: Master of Olympus. It’s a city-building game where you design and manage a Greek city during the age of myth, ensuring your citizens have enough food, oil and wine to thrive, while also fighting off attacks from mythical monsters aided by gods and heroes, whose help is contingent on building them temples and providing the correct offerings. I spent hours and hours playing this game through my adolescent and teenage years, and it felt like returning to an old friend. I remember when I first got the game, along with SimCity 4, for Christmas when I was about 10. Our computer at the time wasn’t powerful enough to run either game, so I waited a couple of years before we upgraded our PC and as soon as we did, I was playing Zeus. These days, it ran pretty easily on my laptop and I was able to kill a few hours, relaxing while I sent Herakles to deal with my Hydra infestation.
    • Outside of the main sites that I wanted to see, Athens was not a particularly nice city to be in. The city has dealt with decades of struggle, seeing massive growth as the rural population gravitated to the city while enduring severe government mismanagement and corruption. Away from the tourist areas, buildings crumbled, garbage piled up in empty lots, things looked rough. I encountered at least one protest near the presidential palace, but on a couple of separate days, I came across police decked out in riot gear.
      But, I don’t want to paint a completely bleak picture of Athens either, the troubled areas I encountered were not the entirety of the city either. The area around my hostel was surrounded by families that would fill the streets in the evenings, walking to get groceries or dropping kids off at the martial arts studio across the street. Despite some unfortunate circumstances, people were still out, living their lives, making the best of what they can, appreciating what they have.
    • By this point in my travels, I was exhausted. Worn out. I was ready to take a break and I knew that I had one coming when I made it to my next destination, Bangkok. The slowness of the season seemed to mirror my internal feelings. The hostel was largely empty, a few people would venture through the common area now and again, but we all mostly kept to ourselves. On top of the fact that I wasn’t really gelling with Athens, I ended up retreating to my room, savoring the solitude that I’d been craving for the past couple of months.
    • The remainder of my time in Athens was largely uneventful. I made a couple more outings, one to walk along the sea and one to climb Lycabettus Hill. The sea walk ended up being a bit of a misfire, as the area I chose turned out not to be particularly scenic or enjoyable to walk. The hike up Lycabettus however was quite rewarding, as it offered an excellent view of the Acropolis hill with the sun setting behind it.
    • As with Thessaloniki, Athens is populated by plenty of feline friends. However, I wasn’t quite as ardent about capturing their portraits as I was in Thessaloniki. Nonetheless, I got some.
  • Thessaloniki.

    Thessaloniki.

    Time Traveling in Thessaloniki

    • Thessaloniki was my escape from the dark, wet and cold of central Europe. Seated high on the neck of the Greek peninsula, looking out on the Aegean sea, Thessaloniki was exactly what I was looking for. The temperature bumped up ten degrees from Austria and Czechia, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it based on the clothing of the locals. I often found myself in a t-shirt while the Greeks around me were decked out in sweaters and puffer jackets. I guess winter is more relative to your experience than I’d realized.
    • The city centre of Thessaloniki stretches along a narrow stretch of land where the hills dip down to meet the coastline. It’s a relatively compact city, rich with a history belonging to a number of different empires. Founded during the reign of Alexander the Great, conquered by Rome a hundred and fifty years later, ascending to a key economic hub during the post-Roman Byzantine Empire, conquered again by the Ottomans in the 1400s. These remains of these various empires are found littered throughout the city. Excavations for the newly installed subway system uncovered a variety of previously unknown ruins, to accompany the more obvious Roman palaces and arches, Byzantine walls and Ottoman fortresses.
    • I really enjoyed my hostel in Thessaloniki. The cutely named Zeus is Loose is situated overlooking a large public square, which was filled with a Christmas market during my stay. This square is sandwiched between the busy main road through the city and the ruins of the Roman Forum. From the common room of the hostel on the fifth floor, there was a tremendous view over these sights. The common room itself is was generously appointed with a number of seating options, a big screen, a huge, well stocked kitchen, and wall to wall windows. The perfect place for enjoying a coffee in the morning sunlight. A rooftop bar and restaurant added even more appeal to the hostel. I was incredibly grateful for these comfortable public spaces, because my room had some more of the less appealing aspects of communal living that I’d become accustomed to.
      Upon first entering the room, I was smacked in the face with some serious foot stink. By now, I was inured to the social embarrassment of needing to ask someone to wash their feet, and brought it up nearly immediately with the young man responsible. He took the note well and immediately washed his feet and even went so far as to try to deodorize his shoes, though his method was a little questionable. If you’re wondering whether spraying half a can of Axe body-spray into your shoes will remove pesky foot odor, no, no it will not. In fact, at that point, now you will have two problems on your hands. But, we found a somewhat amenable solution by storing his shoes in the water closet of the room, which thankfully had a door and a fan.
      This same roommate, nice enough in nature, would prove to be a continued annoyance due to his willingness to live in squalor and a propensity for drinking in excess. Each night he would leave in the early evening, only to reappear an hour or so later with a bag laden with beer cans. He would then slowly work his way through his stash for the rest of the night. A new can hissing open once every forty-five minutes or so. And then at some point in the early morning, he would make his way to the toilet to pray to the porcelein gods. Though, whether that was due to the beer or the concentrated foot-Axe odor, who’s to say?
    • My first outing into Thessaloniki was a restorative walk along the seawall that runs the length of the city. The day was clear and full of sunlight. The air was warm, with a bit of autumn crisp to it. I spent plenty of time sitting on a bench, soaking up sun, people watching and taking photos of anything that caught my interest. After a month under the clouds, I felt like I was in a brand new world. It was gorgeous, a lovely day. I didn’t get too hung up on sight-seeing anything specific, just walked along the water and enjoyed the time.
    • My second outing, I turned my sights away from the sea and up to the hills. The city is built on a terraced hillside, rising steeply up the slopes. My goal was the Byzantine fortress overlooking the city, the Heptapyrgion. A ten towered citadel that had served as a fortress and a prison during Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Setting out from the hostel, I almost immediately came across a very busy street market. Set in a narrow roadway, vegetable sellers set out their produce to be inspected by the discerning eyes of their customers. Making my way further up the hill, through tight and steeps alleys, I eventually came to the Byzantine walls that ringed the old city. And even further up the hill, with a majestic view of the entire coastline and the city spread along it, the Heptapyrgion waited for me. Apparently, mid-December is not exactly the high season for tourist traffic to the fortress as I had the place basically to myself. I walked through the courtyard that holds the remains fo the prison that was the last function for the old fort, explored the solitary confinement wing where the cells received no light and the thick walls allowed no sound, before climbing and walking the walls of the fortress touring the towers dotted along their length. It was fairly bare-bones as tourist attractions go, a few placards here and there explaining the construction, function and archaeology of the place, but not much more than that.
      By now, it was only about midday and I still had some energy to spare. So, I set out to climb even further up the hills to the very top of the hill that backed Thessaloniki, to a spot marked Observatory on Google Maps. The streets of the city gave way to parkland as the hill continued to rise. I hiked along for another hour or so before I finally surmounted the hilltop, where it eased into a flat plateau, lightly forested between patches of grassland. I didn’t see a single person for my entire time in the park. After a leisurely lunch, I made my way to the observatory, which turned out to be a wooden observation tower alongside a weather station. This offered a great view of the opposite side of the city where it wrapped along the hill and up to a large marble quarry where a mountain across the valley was slowly being harvested.
      Finding my way off the hill turned out to be more trouble than I’d realized it would be. I wanted to descend the backside of the slope, but this must not have been a very popular route because it took a couple of missteps and backtracking before I found a path that led to the city below without being blocked by fences, barbed wire or sheer drops. And even once I found my way down to the roadside, I ran into another problem of old Greek cities. Sidewalks are very optional. So for a couple of kilometers, I walked along a very busy, rush-hour, road with not much more than a shoulder keeping me out of traffic. I was pretty confident with navigating busy European streets by this point, but this was an extra level of nerve-wracking. Even so, I eventually made it back to the safety of sidewalked streets and quickly turned into quieter side streets for reprieve. All in all, it was a pretty memorable day.
    • There are street cats everywhere in Thessaloniki. It was more rare to turn down a street and not see a cat, than the opposite. At first, I had a goal to photograph as many as I could, but, I quickly realized that would be an all-consuming task. Nonetheless, I got plenty of kitty photos.
    • I ended up staying in Thessaloniki a couple of days longer than I planned, though not quite by choice. My original plan was to travel to Athens by train after five nights. However, I didn’t realize that this wasn’t like north-western Europe, where I could get a train every hour that would take me where I wanted to go. So, by the time I went to book tickets, seats were already sold out and the next available train wasn’t for two days. It was a minor oversight, and thankfully, I was enjoying Thessaloniki so it wasn’t any chore to have to stay a couple of days longer.
    • One peculiarity of Greek hospitality took me by surprise the first couple of times that I ordered coffee. Alongside my double espresso, the barista handed me a bottle of water. At first I thought that maybe he thought that I would want to make my own Americano, like I could handle the espresso directly. But, it turns out that’s just the way they do things here. Coffee comes with water, whether as a counter to supposed diuretic effect of the coffee (pedant alert: coffee is a minor diuretic but contains more water than would be lost from drinking it) or just as a way to rinse the strong taste, I’m not sure, but it was nice either way.