A brief encounter with a Classical Land in early Spring, 2016
Excerpts from a Journal
Athens
Tourists in Greece, for the most part, are isolated from the reality of the “Crisis” – as the Greeks refer to their current desperate economic situation.
Anne and I didn’t find beggars at your hotel entrance or along the restaurant strip that leads to the Acropolis. We did see Roma selling flowers and balloons and matter-of-factly accosting tourists with no police interference (thankfully), as if this was a local flavor that contributes to the tourist experience. And when we diverged from the usual pathways of commercial tourism, again no obvious signs of the human distress that is so apparent in the States. We know the “crisis” is ongoing. Is it all behind doors? Hidden by shutters?
No, it is in plain view. Stray from the rich commercial areas and it is obvious all around. It doesn’t take the form of street begging. Nor do we see people in tattered clothes, or street urchins skipping along side streets rifling garbage bins. Whichever Dickensian image you can evoke will not be replicated in the streets of Athens we walked. Most commonly in the steets, the “crisis” appears as ghost-buildings, easily recognized by their boarded-up ground floor entrances and windows. Often these were once office complexes, some over four or five stories, sitting in the middle of an otherwise busy street of stores and eateries. The boarding is always decorated with a combination of graffiti and layers of billings – a mixture of political postings and advertising. Nowhere is there evidence of any attempt to remove them; nor to paint over them to create “pop-up murals” that appear in more prosperous European urban environments. Who has money for paint?
But for me, the “crisis” in the streets takes the form, most strikingly, of decaying relics of buildings, veil-shrouded and abandoned in the midst of renovation. Often these mournful structures are beautiful architectural specimens that in any other city would be highly prized commercial real estate. One building that epitomized this situation most starkly was a stately stone three-story structure dominating the crossroads of one of the main tourist routes through trendy Plaka, the oldest section of Athens below the Acropolis. Here amongst the narrow streets and ground-floor emporiums overburdened with Greek souvenirs, “world-class” merchandise, and local crafts and restaurants, sat this dowager waiting patiently for a facelift. Her shrouded scaffolding was supplemented by beamed bracing angled up and out from the sliver of a sidewalk on its two sides. Supported by these beams was a trough, at the second floor level, jutting out over the sidewalk and into the intersection to protect the shoppers below from a collapsing façade.
A local merchant told me the history of the stalled conversion and it came down to a mixture of governmental red tape to preserve the historical character of the building and lack of funds to do a proper job of restoration. This project began years before the “crisis” but got scuttled when loans evaporated for heritage restoration. As I marveled at this building I wished that a Europe-wide agency existed to support projects like this, after all the consequences of abandoning this building to rot increases the expense of its restoration. And here we have the material symbolization of the situation in Greece: the longer the economy trails into the swamps of banker-enforced insolvency the less likely it will emerge from its detour whole, much less to its former level of (corruption-induced) prosperity.
A Surreal Dinner
One of the highpoints of our stay in Athens was our dinner with a former SF worker-cooperative member who returned to his native Greece several years ago. We had a lively discussion over a wonderful assortment of appetizers to sample a wide variety of Greek delicacies. The dinner and discussion topped our second day in Athens, but our excursion to the restaurant was itself memorable. Our guest found us at our hotel in the evening (Greeks eat late) and took us on a 20-minute circuit through the dimly lit maze of Athens’ streets. He had never eaten at this restaurant, but it came highly recommended by his friends and it wasn’t too far from our hotel. He knew it was near a co-op café he knew and he was confident that he could find it. And he had his GPS primed on his phone to guide us there.
We followed after our guide over perforated sidewalks, into narrow streets, twisting and turning at almost each intersection. It was deliciously confusing. The chance and shadowy encounters with cats, or debris in our path, or the occasional lonely dog-walker increased the sense of a dream-like escapade through a city that seemed to switch streets around as we walked.
When we finally arrived, we discovered that the restaurant was next door to the co-op café! This café was the oldest of what now may be nearly half-dozen formed in the last few years in Athens. A more positive sign of the “crisis” I thought. We entered and I noticed immediately what appeared to be small burlap sacks of coffee hanging from the ceiling. I thought nothing more of it until after we ordered our meal and we began surveying our surroundings, I discovered on the wall across from us a quote from Andre Breton. It was not one of his more popular ones about art, or games but a very political one. The Greek translation from Bretonian French had to be an approximation: “When the question of liberty is raised, the answer must always reside with humankind.”
Seeing that quote from Breton sparked a synapse and I recalled the 1938 Surrealist Exhibition that Duchamp designed using 1,200 coal sacks stuffed with paper hanging from the ceiling. Despite the paper stuffing, the real coal bags smelled of the ore and coal dust continued to fall upon the patrons. Duchamp use of these bags was provoked by the fact that a major coal merchant shared Andre Breton’s surname. Since the bags covered the ceiling lights, flashlights were handed to attendees to illuminate the art. I was pleased that our restaurant’s homage to the surrealists was more an allusion than a total reproduction of the 1938 experience complete with smelly bags, coal dust on our food, and flashlights.
Going to Delphi
An indication of benign neglect, not necessarily related to the “crisis,” but indicative of the skewed deployment of public expenditures, was the bus station in Athens where we picked up a bus to Delphi. The stark contrast between this facility of public transportation and the magnificent metro/subway system that we encountered on our arrival at the airport (the terminal was itself built to accommodate the Olympics fifteen years ago) cannot be exaggerated. The underground stations are a brightly painted (color-coded) cavernous system of immaculate polished marble corridors, some of which display, I assume, reproductions of statuary and pottery testifying to the magnificent classical Greek heritage. The bus station on the other hand looks unchanged from the immediate post-war period seventy years ago when I suspect it was built. It resembled a Greyhound station in, say, Butte, Montana, but even worse. The men’s’ restroom I visited still had pit toilets. But, aside from the derelict station, the extensive and efficient bus system throughout Greece was impressive.
Our marvelous three-hour ride to Delphi into the mountains north of Athens exposed us to a sight that astonished me. Just before entering the town of Delphi our bus squeezed through the narrow streets of a ski resort complete with specialty stores, cafes and posh restaurants that could have been a scene from a upscale Swiss Alpine village. Obviously, the elite of Greece still retain their playgrounds, Mercedes, and high-end sports togs. Even in Athens the number of late-model autos took me by surprise, though they were outnumbered on the streets by the ubiquitous scooters of the 99%.
Chania, Crete
We spent half our time in Greece on the island of Crete. We flew from Athens to the former capital of the island, Chania, and then bused up the coast to Heraklion the current capital and main center of commerce and the largest city in Crete. Both are coastal cities that testify to the extensive maritime history of the island extending back, literally, thousands of years. The five thousand year old Minoan civilization formed a kind of historic template for the classic Greek culture just as in turn Greek antiquity serves that function for us. The myth of Atlantis seems to have it origins in Crete with the Minoans.
Chania is a small city that has been the doormat for a series of exploitive expeditions beginning with the Romans, succeeded by the Venetians who in turn were replaced by the Arabs. The architectural traces of these occupations form the basis for Chania’s appeal. In fact our hotel was formerly a 700 hundred year-old Venetian mansion that at one time served as the French embassy for Crete.
The city rises quickly from its harbor to a delightful entanglement of stairway paths and two-yard-wide pedestrian streets. I could have enjoyed our two days simply walking about and exploring the crafts shops. Another attractions of the city is its Archeological Museum housed within a 16th century Venetian church, subsequently transformed into a mosque. Amongst its treasures, ranging from the Neolithic era to the Byzantine period, are two elaborate Roman mosaic floors. The museum’s collection may not be as extensive as others in Greece, but none rival the setting. The massive stone structure of this former church complemented its collection.
Here again, however, we came across a victim of the “crisis” – a new museum was designed over a decade ago only to have the plans relegated to an architectural file cabinet with faint hope that someday it will be built.
Heraklion, Crete
Another three-hour bus route along the coast from Chania north to the much larger city of Heraklion (population, 173,000), today’s capital of Crete, provided a glimpse of the major economic sectors of the island – fishing and agriculture. The mountain range that runs down the spine of Crete, begins at the shore in some places, though most often however there is a more gradual grade that provides land for olive groves, sheep grazing and farming, which forms a carpet of greenery between the water and the mountains.
The city of Heraklion has none of the charms of Chania. It appeared to be a prosperous and fast-paced city, and one that we discovered was very efficient. Our hotel was near the main commercial sector, just off a large pedestrian thoroughfare and near a small park surrounded by restaurants with vast outdoor seating. Crete has a temperature range similar to southern California, which explains the extensive outdoor dining facilities. The park, by the way, was dedicated to El Greco a native of Crete!
Our main intent was not to explore Heraklion, but to ship off to Knossos as soon as we got our bearings. But first we wanted to visit the city’s archeological museum. After breakfast on our first full day, we headed off for the tourist office to arrange our bus ride to Knossos. Our map indicated that the office was near the museum, but when we arrived, we found it closed. A sign directed us to another tourist office and we promptly got lost trying to find it. It turned out to be only a few minutes walk from our hotel, but we ludicrously circled around the area trying to get our bearings.
The second tourist office was maintained by the City of Heraklion and the difference between the two facilities was considerable. Whereas the first state office was in what appeared to be a cramped, squat trailer-like building, the city office was located on the first floor of a renovated centuries-old building off the main Lion Square. The square is named after its Venetian fountain with three lions holding up a large bowl. The square occupied an intersection of several pedestrian only streets, complete with sidewalk cafes and the usual assortment of small shops. The City Hall and Public Library sat on the square also.
At the office, knowledgeable and informative personnel assisted us in planning a trip to Knossos and beyond to Archanes, a mountain village a few minutes up the road from Knossos. Besides a wide assortment of flyers and booklets found in any well-equipped tourist office, it featured a large table-top topographic display and, most unusually, an interactive video display camera/projector system. We had never seen anything as innovative as this before. The wall-size display featured several huge photographs of local sites that sequenced at the touch of computer nearby. As you approached the photo, the camera/projector (positioned up at the ceiling) displayed your image on the photo so that it looked as if you were in the location depicted.
Furthermore, if you wanted, a staff person could take your picture in the scene and then automatically send it to your email. I spent some time describing this set-up and the office because it demonstrated to me that even in a “crisis” a local government had the foresight to allocate funds for what was an obvious generator of tourist dollars.
We encountered a similar experience of enlightened city government in Chania. The owner of a restaurant came to our table to explain why it was unclear the restaurant had a non-smoking area. We had noted to the waitress that we had almost abandoned the idea of eating there – though the menu was attractive – because we were repelled by the smoke-filled bar we had to pass through at the entry. We chatted with him for a while and discovered that he had formerly spent 20 years as an international journalist stationed in NYC and had only recently returned to Chania to open this restaurant/jazz nightspot. (Another journalist victim of the digital economy?) He further said that he was an advisor to the mayor of the town. I couldn’t think of a better mayoral advisor than an experienced journalist and jazz enthusiast!
Knossos and Archanes
Visiting the Minoan site of Knossos is a quick day trip from Heraklion. We bused there in 45 min and spent almost two hours roaming up and down the site. The newly constructed stairs and elevated walkways made it easy to traverse the space without disturbing much of it. There was amble opportunity to access many of the reconstructed buildings and to vicariously imagine the life the Minoans. The enormity of the site and its engineering acumen (indoor plumbing, to name only one aspect) is simply amazing given that it is over four thousand years old. However, in the early 20th century, Evans, the English archeologist who reconstructed huge areas of the site, used reinforced concrete and shaped it to resemble stone (the first use of reinforcing on Crete). He left a dubious legacy with his (semi-informed) fantasies about Knossos.
Archanes was our next stop, a short bus ride up a winding road to a “typical mountain village” that in no way resembled the alpine tourist trap I described earlier. The center of Archanes features a beautiful tree-lined plaza, again surrounded by restaurants and the ubiquitous outdoor seating. We sat there and had a late lunch and watched as a local school let out and kids and parents streamed by. We could imagine that during the height of the summer this place – cooler than lower elevations – would be an attractive spot for tourists, but that day we had the whole place to ourselves. After lunch we roamed up the narrow streets and marveled at the refurbished ancient dwellings. The newly whitewashed homes, rising quickly up the hillside from the plaza, featured brightly painted shutters and window trim, all of this offset by the plant-filled terraces. Like in Athens, but on a smaller scale, we found ruins slowly crumbling on some of the narrow passageways abutting newly painted remodeled residences.
Return to Athens
After three days in Heraklion, we flew back to Athens and the hotel we originally booked and had time to visit the large Archeological Museum. We were on the verge of antiquities-overdose after almost two weeks and so we decided to traverse the entire museum and head for the room with their glass collection. The specimens of glass we had seen in other museums fascinated us and here was a whole room filled with the stuff!
Almost an hour later – we could not rush through the rooms, especially those with pottery, despite our sated condition – we arrived at the glass room only to find it closed! In despair, we came upon two museum attendants engrossed in conversation and asked why the room was closed. We discovered that no one had been hired to oversee that room, but that some one would be there in about a week. Our despair only deepened and since the attendants had an excellent command of English, we pursued our conversation. It seems that both attendants were only hired that day. It was their first day on the job and – no coincidence – it was April 1st the official beginning of the Tourist Season (our hotel rate had jumped accordingly). So to save funds the museums in Greece partially closed down during the off-season. This was not the only museum we had encountered with portions closed off.
We shared, with the newly hired staff, our sense that the museum entry fees were below fees in other parts of Europe and the attendants readily agreed. One had experienced museum charges in Italy many times those of Greece. For example, the entry to this large museum with a collection unprecedented in the world was 5€ for seniors and 8€ for a regular ticket. It could be at least twice that or even more for EU and non-EU tourists. The Greek fee should remain the same, or maybe reduced.
Reflections
In every large museum we visited we encountered school kids on a field trip. At the new Acropolis museum, the first one we visited, I was resting on a bench as some children trooped through following a docent. These kids were maybe nine to eleven years old. Unlike American kids they were quiet and mostly attentive to the lecture, as much as kids that age can be. As I watched them proceed from sculpture to sculpture, I tried to imagine what it must be like for them to internalize their heritage. These visits, which must happen more than once in the pursuit of their education (I also saw high schoolers file though the museum earlier), must have some effect on them.
I was reminded of a group of Navaho school children we saw visiting Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona, and being led by a Navaho Park Ranger. He spoke to them in Navaho and you couldn’t help but see in their eyes the respect that they had for him. The cookie-cutter, faux heritage that American school kids receive – that I received – in no way resembles what those Greek and Navaho children experience studying their history.
If I were Greek, I thought as I sat there watching those children in Athens, would I grow up outraged that the descendents of nomadic hunters, clad in animal skins, held a sword of Damocles (so to speak) over the sovereignty of my nation?
Oh, why the strange title to this entry? Well, it seems that no matter where in Greece we ventured we encountered these rather large, shaggy dogs resembling in size and shape, but not color, Golden Retrievers, sleeping all over sidewalks, crossing streets oblivious of cars and generally being ornamental and not intrusive. Their ubiquitous, but unobtrusive presence reflected an easy-going, slower pace that seemed to suffuse society despite the “crisis.”
Bernard
April 2016