15 May 2009
Athens

This our last day in Athens before heading off to Spetses island on the Saturday morning hydrofoil. Last night, Manny and Jonathan visited with Thanasi and Koula and Dionysia in Kaisariani, taking the twenty-minute walk through the Pangrati, past the outdoor cafes that were chock full with young people, negotiating Athens deadly array of motorbikes, cabs, and hazardous pedestrian walkways.

Earlier in the day we accompanied Ann, Lucia, and Evyenia to the airport. We convinced an accommodating cab driver to break the law (taking more than the maximum of four passengers) and load ten pieces of luggage in his capacious trunk—which was held down with several bungie cords. Remarkably all ten pieces where there when we arrived. Nia was urged to duck low at a police checkpoint near the airport entrance.

Their flight was delayed, which gaves us time to wander the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport, one of the world’s largest, which was built specifically for the 2004 Olympics. Constructed beyond the mountain called Hymettos, which marks the eastern flank of the Athens basin, during construction the archaeologists discovered an inconveniently large Neolithic settlement; a twelfth-century Byzantine chapel (moved during construction) and several dozens demes, Archaic and Classical period villages. There was hurried excavation before the miles of olive trees were mowed down and replaced with asphalt. A selection of the excavation finds are housed in a small airport museum.




We bid a final goodbye to mom and the girls at 2 p.m. and returned to the apartment and then to the College Year in Athens library, where Jonathan copyedited articles for Oxford’s Ancient Greece and Rome for the balance of the afternoon.

This morning, while Manny slept—we didn’t get to bed until 1 a.m., admittedly an early night—Jonathan ran around the nearby Panathenaic Stadium. Known by locals as the “marble stadium,” it was built for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, and is one of the few running “sanctuaries” in Athens…perhaps the only city in Europe where one does not see runners.

Running in Athens

Jonathan shared the track with several dozen Evzones, the hand-picked Parliament guards who wear traditional dress and are the objects of tourist photos: the changing of the guards is a colorful exercise. One of the prerequisites for selection to this elite force is height (over 6 foot 5 inches) and girth—and apparently extreme ego: this small army of giants refused to budge when Jonathan ran in their direction, doing their best to take up every possible lane of the track, which is a horse-shoe configuration necessitating running against oncoming traffic. After several frustrating laps, the grey-haired, middle-aged American had had enough and steeled himself for a direct hit, rather than jumping out of the way, and accomplished a strong-arm collision in the spirit of Walter Payton (the NFL’s greatest running back: Jonathan's opinion) or of an elderly Greek woman vying to board an Athens bus. Despite a significant weight differential (165 pounds versus 275 pounds) the big man who became Jonathan’s unlikely target hit the cinder the truck, proof of the power of gravity—much to the amusement of his colleagues. Jonathan offered a sincere if ever fleeting signome (“sorry”) and then begged a speedy retreat into the forested trails above the stadium.


Our agenda for today: shopping in Athens (to replace Manny’s lost worry beads…which he needs now more than ever), window-shopping for motorcycles (to satisy Manny’s latest obsession), and finding out the ferry schedules for tomorrow’s journey. Some copyediting in the early morning and the late afternoon. And then dinner with our American friends in Ano Pevki.