Rick's athens

Well this entry in the blob sees a change in authorship, with the web princess having returned to the land of oz for family reasons, and the abandoned husband unleashed on the interweb with the world as his oyster. Ah the power of the pen. The freedom to be able to use ‘our’ computer.
Having been with the child bride 24/7 for previous 2 months and now having farewelled her at the airport, returning to Athens city alone was a strange experience. It was also the first time I have been overseas by myself. Freedom at last. Just what I have always wanted. What the hell happens now. I had two nights accommodation booked, 2 credit cards, a case full of stuff and pretty much no idea how to spend the next 8 days.
Now looking back on the last 8 days I have no idea how I spent them. I visited a few museums which was very interesting. I managed to stay at the National Archaeological Museum for well over three and half hours and only left because it was closing time. The Benaki museum which evolved from a private collection also consumed a lot of time on a subsequent day and was likewise very interesting. Last and not least was a visit to the Goulandris Museum of Cycladic & Ancient Grrek Art; also very interesting but by this time I was getting a little tired of seeing lots of old broken stuff.
I did however leave these splendid establishments a little wiser. For instance I learnt that in ancient Greece young men used to gather for a “symposium” which was essentially a male bonding session where they drank wine, ate food, told stories and were entertained by young females. It seems that some things have not changed. Might by an idea if next year the NSW State of Origin side refers to their bonding session an Ancient Greek Cultural Event.
Much of the remainder of the time was spent wandering the streets of Athens like a lost soul; except far from being lost I actually knew where I was for much of the time ( Sue is finding it very difficult to believe that without her, or tom tom, or a map and compass, that I would not be lost for ever, never to be found). This was a significant achievement for me as I do have a tendancy to be directionally dysfunctional. I was feeling particularly confident when another foreign tourist approached me and asked if I knew where the temple of Zeus might be. So I very proudly pointed him in the right direction and then extracted my map to show him where we were, and where the temple of Zeus was. I took the opportunity to show him where all of the other major sites were relative to our position. And then in triumph I offered him my map. He was shocked and said “your joking”. No said I: “I know exactly where I am going I don’t need it” He greatfully accepted, and we went our separate ways. Within 5 minutes I was thinking it might have been a little premature to depart with the map and was wondering if I actually did know where I was and where I was going. Of equal concern I was wondering exactly where I might have sent the other tourist. Time to reach for tom tom just to check. Before tom tom had time to establish satellite connection, I had established where I was and continued on my merry way. Whilst I wasn’t exactly where I thought I was; I was in the general vicinity. And I am reasonably confident that my directions to the other tourist were indicatively accurate.
One of the less attractive sides of Athens is the stray dogs. They number many and they are generally big, ugly and mean. I assume that all the little nice dogs have been eaten by the big mean ugly dogs. These things are pretty intimidating. Whilst I didn’t see anyone bitten there were a number of instances where people were challenged aggressively for no apparent reason. In one instance a dog pretty much cleared a large platform seating approximately 40 people; everyone just bolted.
The police presence for the bulk of the week has been incredible; I have never seen anything like it. I assume that it is in anticipation of riots associated with the austerity budget and I am not sure if threats against specific target have been made. For instance on one day there were large numbers of police near banks, and a couple of days later they seemed to me near all the train stations. Some of them were riot police, but most were motorcycle police. Or maybe that should be motor scooter police. Ok maybe they were motor bikes but they are about 150cc and they carry two cops. And typically they ride around in a little gang of 4 or 5 bikes. They also feed the police out on the street in large police buses ; on a number of occasions I have seen police buses with twenty or so police having lunch. Apart from riding around, standing around and harassing illegal immigrants these guys didn’t seem to be doing too much.
They do seem to like their uniform and anything military here. Everyone seems to be in a uniform and it is difficult sometimes to pick the municipal police (traffic warden) from the riot police. One group however that are very easy to identify are the palace guards. Here they choose from their elite soldiers the biggest, strongest, meanest, ugliest of them all; then they give them a big gun together with pretty white tights and a matching white skirt. And you still wouldn’t mess with them.
Traffic in central Athens is absolute madness and often seems to be in a state of gridlock. The standard driver response here is to belt on the horn. I guess I have always associated using the horn with anger and frustration however I observed one guy in a Mercedes playing a merry tune on the horn and when he saw a couple of young pedestrian mimicking him he broke out in a massive grin and just kept hitting the horn. He didn’t seem to upset at all; he was just sitting there smiling in the traffic belting the hell out of the horn.
Crossing the roads in this sort of traffic presents its own special challenges. Drivers usually don’t stop at pedestrian crossings. They usually do stop if you have a green walk signal; but not always. And they sometimes stop and let you cross even if there is no pedestrian crossing or green signal. If there are enough pedestrians wanting to cross the road then typically a few will actually wait a step or so on the road; then some others will wait a step or two ahead of those. This will typically slow the traffic as lanes try to merge. At this point the pedestrian have claimed one lane with a second all but bought to a stop; it is claimed within seconds. There is a six lane round about in central Athens that can be bought to a stop using this method; but don’t take the lead and don’t bring up the rear. And don’t worry about being booked for jay walking cause the cops will just watch you do it.
So with traffic as it is, many Athenians take to the metro system to get from point to point. Whilst no where near as extensive as London or Paris it seems to have a reasonable amount of coverage. So it was to the metro that I ventured when I decided to visit the Athens port of Piraeus. Only about half an hour away, I planned on spending a leisurely half a day or so wandering the port city at my leisure. As the train headed out of Monstiraki station I could not but help but notice the incredible amount of graffiti. It was pretty much everywhere. On bridges, walls, fences, houses, security shutters and pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down, there was an array of graffiti. Some of it could be described as art but most of it was just destructive. I tried to see if there were any unique tags but the only one I could pick up was a ‘graffiti team a; I never got to see team b c or d. At one point I was thinking that they had pretty much gratified everything apart from people, dogs and vehicles; and then I saw the graftitied trucks. I assumed that they were stationary when they were done; but done they were. Interestingly the one thing that was not grafitied was the inside of the trains and the train stations themselves. The train stations appear newish and they were immaculate. I assume that they may have been built for the Olympics and they appeared to be patrolled by security guards. There appeared to be very little rubbish and I saw no graffiti.