January 10, 2004
'Twas the Season in Athens
We spent five days or so in Athens and came to one conclusion: during the off season the entire city either goes to the Acropolis or Ermou Boulevard. The Acropolis, of course, is the old city at the top of the hill that includes the Parthenon. It’s understandable that people would go there seeing as it’s the one reason most people go to Greece. Ermou is where people go once they realize that the Acropolis doesn’t quite fill the time of an entire vacation and as long as the Archaeological Museum is closed, why not go shopping instead?
It’s a long, mostly pedestrian, boulevard that stretches from Syntagma Square to Monasteraki. From the giant Christmas tree that marks the entrance to the richest part of the city to the flea market at the foot of the hill with all the old stuff. Other than the days that were, without a doubt, holidays, each and every afternoon saw the whole of this street packed wall to wall. People were trying to make there way around chestnut stands and Greeks dressed as Native Americans in order to get to the Body Shop, the Marks and Spencer, or whatever store they needed to get to so that they could substantiate their trip to a foreign country.
It was like being on 3rd Street in Santa Monica. Everyone spoke in a foreign accent, people were yelling at you to look at their paintings, and you always needed to get somewhere when it was most crowded. Mimes did their mimey thing, women painted themselves in gold and dressed in period costume from Victorian England, then writhed strangely on top of buckets. Oh, and the human statues. One can’t forget the human statues and the hordes of people that gathered around to take pictures of the people who, mysteriously, don’t move.
There’s nothing like Ermou in Bulgaria. I had forgotten places like it existed and it was a bit strange coming upon it in Greece in the middle of winter. When we first walked along it on Christmas Day, it was deserted but for a few tourists like ourselves. We had eaten at a small diner, the only place open for breakfast, and were thinking about how deserted the city was at that time of year. Little did we know that the next day the mob would come to the street and not leave until New Year’s Day, when everything closed again.
A lot was closed, it turned out, in preparation for the Olympics. And I can say, that as of this moment, if Athens wanted to hold the Olympics next month, it couldn’t. Couldn’t come close, even. The stadium still more closely resembles a hole in the ground than a place for hundreds of thousands of fans. The metro, though completed in sections, drives right by the still uncompleted stations necessary for certain events, like the Opening Ceremony, for instance. And although I’m going to bet public transportation will improve dramatically a month before the games, if the streets were as packed as they were during the off season, I wouldn’t want to step foot anywhere near the city center when it’s over 100 degrees, packed with a few million odd extra people, and everyone is trying to see the Parthenon, the museum, and the Equestrian Competition in the same day.
In my first months here in Bulgaria, I thought it would almost be a waste to not see the Olympics when I was this close. Now I’m happy to have gotten my “Athens 2004” sweatshirt and gotten out of there. Athenians are going to have the craziest summer since Socrates started dating the fun chick. And no, I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.
Museums. They were fun. Well, the two we saw were pretty cool, anyway. I hadn’t expected more out of the Acropolis Museum than a gift shop, but the statues there were impressive. The paint that still remained on some of the statues after thousands of years of abuse baffled and surprised me. I’d always read in my literary analysis and German aesthetics courses (Quit laughing! All of you!) that the idea of paint or detail on the pure white marble statues was a bit shocking to classicists. Ruskin, it has been said, was so surprised at the idea of pubic hair on a real woman that he fled his wedding room. I didn’t quite flip when I saw traces of what looked like mascara on Hercules and other heroes, but it sets you back a bit when you realize that the Greeks weren’t all that gloriously simple.
More surprising still was the National Art Gallery. Greeks, it seems, can paint, and they did it pretty damn well in the 19th century. The most impressive imagery came out of the paintings of the war with the Turks. The Greeks have established something approaching a new mythology about that war, and battles were drawn in nothing but the most heroic way. One ship against a full harbor of Turkish ships, a man and a woman crouching behind a rock and ready to take action, the requisite freedom conference with men swearing freedom or death.
Contrasting all this with Bulgaria’s own war for freedom would take more time and space than I want to devote to this. But, put simply, it was fascinating to look at the Greeks’ interpretation of their triumph through action and counter it with the Bulgarians’ triumph through a tragedy few nations have ever faced. The Greeks’ images of victorious men looking off into the middle distance, the classic hero pose, opposite the Bulgarians’ image of Levski, Botev, and the population of Batak. Proud men and women martyred for a great cause. Both nations have had to struggle with their own demons since their occupations, and the more vicious hold the Turks had on Bulgaria has altered this country’s present more than even most Bulgarians realize. They’ll point to the 500 years of the “Turkish yoke” as reason to keep the Turks in their own villages and quarters, but I think it’s rarely understood how that very discrimination is evidence that the Turks still get at them, still hold those 500 years over them.
But I told myself I wouldn’t get into all that. Anyway, if you want my opinion, and if you’re reading this I imagine you do, I would visit the Art Gallery in Athens. Make it a priority. As much as the Archaeological Museum will help you understand ancient Greece, the Art Gallery will give you an understanding of modern Greece. It really completed the trip when we visited it on our day-long layover on the way back.
The rest of the time in Athens was spent walking, mostly, and it’s a fine city for it. The only hills are in Kolonaki, really, and those are relatively easy hikes, with nice views. It’s also, incidentally, a great place to catch a movie. While Kate and Ryan shopped, Jeff and I watched “Return of the King” and “The Human Stain,” and never have two movies contrasted so wildly.
“Return of the King” was shown in one of the nicer theaters ever, and is just as exciting as the gushing critics promise. Many people and orcs die in many fun ways, and Legolas, the elf, does something absolutely incredible to a giant elephant and its crew. It’s tremendous entertainment, and probably wins best picture in my Bulgaria-limited book, but the usual length and book-related criticisms apply. Why in all hell does Aragorn go for the dull, wishy-washy Arwen when he has the bellicose yet kind, and gorgeous Eowyn willing to die for him? The book doesn’t explain it and the movie didn’t really help. Before I saw it, I thought “Finding Nemo” had kept me the most entertained and satisfied, but the poor genii at Pixar, who may never win a major award for their ridiculously consistent greatness, are now only second for the year.
“The Human Stain” was best summarized by our immediate reaction to it. We both walked out of the theater and moved silently for maybe a block. Then I said “Not a whole lot of point to that movie, was there?” and Jeff replied quickly “That movie sucked!”
I wouldn’t go that far. Neither of us have read the book, and I think the movie was hampered by too many people who had. It was like a collection of the best scenes from a book, all tied together, and mostly rendered meaningless by a failure to string together character development along with the rest. Characters seem to drop dead at random in the movie and for the sole purpose of having a death for the remaining characters to emotionally toy with. I believe, and I could be wrong, that seven individual deaths are dealt with in the movie at some point or another, and by the second heart attack you begin to wonder when the carnage will end. Gary Sinise, who gets far less screen time than he needs to develop his character, seems to have the right expression at the end of the movie. Maybe I was just projecting, but it seemed to desperately ask if it was all finally over.
We also get a voiceover from Sinise that’s out of place until the very end of the movie when it’s revealed why his character has some kind of right to do a narration in the first place. And his poor character never gets a chance to come out of his shell, as the movie clearly intends him to. Anthony Hopkins’ role has been pissed on enough without me doing it here. And if I ever meet a suicidal janitoress/milkmaid that looks like Nicole Kidman does in this movie, I’ll have seen all I need to in life. She looks like a superstar playing a milkmaid, and was almost (almost) as unconvincing as Denise Richards playing a nuclear scientist. Or Nicole Kidman playing a brain surgeon, for that matter. The only character that really got the job done was the young version of Hopkins’ character. He had enough scenes on his own to let the character grow, and the part was also acted incredibly well.
We saw “The Human Stain” the night before we left for Crete, and I can’t say it changed the trip for better or worse. It was just one of those movies that happened. You go in, watch it, pass two hours or so, and think about how it might have been okay if you’d passed those two hours three years down the line when HBO would show the movie 5 times a day. That kind of movie.
We had spent about three hours or so walking around, trying to find the theater for the movie, and the next day we left Athens exhausted from almost a week spent walking. Really the only way to spend a vacation though. If you walk, you rarely miss a thing.
Posted by Rob at January 10, 2004 07:05 PM