Αθήνα, Ελλάδα

Athens, Greece

21. Feb - 24. Feb

 

Well, it's been about a month or so, but here's a post about my trip to Athens, Greece.  (Seriously, I'm going to try to post more often come next semester.)  Anyway, Athens was a great city in so many ways (and not good in one larger way).

First up, there was the journey to the airport.  Our plane left around 10:00 AM or so, which meant getting up really early to make the 2h 30m train ride from Eichstätt to the Munich airport.  Woohoo.  Now, in Germany, there is something called a Bayern-Ticket, which allows up to five people to travel anywhere in Bayern (Bavaria) for 29€.  Great.  Cody and I can just use that and only pay 14.50€ each.  That works for me.  Well, as it turns out, the Bayern-Ticket is only valid after 9:00 AM, and we were 'caught' on the train without a ticket.  Thankfully, the guy didn't make us pay the fine and had us purchase new tickets, but this mix up resulted in us paying 40€ in all instead of something smaller.

Despite this frustration, we arrived at the airport without any issue.  Our flight to Athens was equally uneventful, and we arrived without any problem.  We chatted with a Greek and two English on the way to the city proper from the airport.  The Greek had some interesting things to say about the EU; and they weren't nice things.  He believed it wasn't a good thing for Greece (or for the other economically weaker members).  He was particularly not fond of the German offer to buy some of Greece's islands.  Nice guy, though.

Our first hostel was not in a nice area, so we quickly switched to another, much better hostel: Athens Backpackers.  If you're ever looking for a place to stay in Greece, you can't do much better than this place (at least in terms of hostels).  Just check out this elevator.  It had a fantastic atmosphere, and the various other residents were great, too.  We met people from Australia, the U.S., and Canada.  All were really cool.

We took a free tour on the first day with a great tour guide, whose name is something along the lines of Evangilismos.  Yeah.  Something like that.  Regardless, it was a great tour.  Our guide knew a ton about the history of the city, both ancient and modern.  Apparently, ancient and modern Greek are relatively similar.  However, this does not mean the average modern Greek can read ancient Greek.

old gate thing dating to the Roman occupation of Athens

Anyone, it was really cool walking around the city and seeing the mix of modern and ancient.  It had a different feel that Rome.  The structures in Athens were smaller, but were more frequently scattered throughout the city, like the Roman archway on the left.  There was nothing as dominating as the Roman Colosseum, however.  (The Athenian Acropolis is an imposing structure, but it's up on a hill, set apart from the rest of the city.)

The weather during the tour was pretty dreary, and it wasn't great for very long, but there were plenty of times when it was decent.  (It wasn't nearly as bad as the weather in Israel, which I'll get to later.)  Unfortunately, dreary weather meant lots of time just hanging out in the hostel; way more time than I would have otherwise enjoyed spending in museums or walking about.

Statue of a guy breaking wood like a boss.
Maybe it's Xenophon, who, in order to inspire his
men, hiking through massive snow drifts to cut
wood naked.  Epic.

Hellenic Parliament

One of the issues with visiting Athens for only a few days, is that many of the things one can visit from Athens are a daytrip away.  Four hours isn't that big of a deal, but it is when you only have a few days in a city.  Next time I visit Greece (I definitely want to visit again), it will have to be for longer, to allow for trips to stuff like the Temple of Poseiden or the Greek islands (or soon-to-be, I suppose, the German islands).

Here are some scenes around Athens:

ruins beneath the streets of Athens

 

This church was built out of stones collected from all over
Athens.  This creates the interesting scenario of a church
covered in pagan paraphernalia.  The Christian builders fixed
this problem by carving crosses all over it.  That makes the pagan
imagery less pagan...I guess.

I have no recollection of what this building it.

This is the Roman marketplace.  Crap...or the Greek marketplace.
One of those two.  Regardless, this was a central place in
ancient Athens

An old church located in the aforementioned marketplace.

The temple of Hephaestus

The Acropolis of Athens, as seen from nearby Areopagus Hill.

Athens as seen from the Areopagus Hill.

plaza outside old Athenian theater

an old theater in Athens which was restored and is used
for concerts, etc.

The Athenian Acropolis as seen from our room in Athens Backpackers.

Athenian Acropolis (without scaffolding!)

The Athenian Acropolis is the most iconic ruin in ancient Athens (possibly the whole of Greece), and it was pretty awesome to behold.  Of course, in keeping with what has happened with every place I have visited in Europe, it was being renovated and was covered in scaffolding.  It had a great view of all of Athens.  Apparently, much of the art work is missing from the Acropolis, because some British guy back in the day bribed a bunch of people and stole all of the tiles to decorate his house with back in England.  Eventually, he died bankrupt and alone, and the tiles ended up in the possession of the British Museum.  Greece frequently demands the tiles be returned, but the museum refuses, because, you know, they totally rightfully belong to the British Museum.  Our tour guide believes Greece should sign a document saying they will return the tiles after displaying them in a Greek museum for a while, and then simply not return them.  Solid plan.

My posing was too dull for the people we were with, so
someone requested I be a tiger.  Grr...

The last night in Athens was spent hanging out with a group from the hostel at a bar which was doing karaoke.  Needless to say, Ice Ice Baby made an appearance.  It was a great group, and many of them were widely traveled.  One was flew to Europe from the U.S. with the plan to work until he had enough money to buy a plane ticket home.  By the time I met him, he had been in Europe for about three months and had acquired enough money to make it home.  However, he wasn't sure if he wanted to leave or not.

sluvoki (delicious)

All-in-all, Athens was a great trip.  The sites were awesome.  The food was great.The Greeks are some of the nicest, most helpful people I have ever met.  Our hostel was one of the best we've ever stayed in.  Interestingly enough, however, I was not very fond of the city itself.  I didn't find Athens to be a very nice city, despite the awesomeness of its people, food, and sites.  Regardless, I regret not having enough time to visit the sites in the city as well as those nearby.

~+~+~

Yay! for forgetting to adjust settings on your camera
from when you were taking pictures at night.