Back in the Hood

 

Outside the National Gardens, Athens

While this has not been my longest-ever absence from Greece—even though twenty-three months sure seemed like a lifetime—the wait has been excruciating. And clearly worth every moment of anticipation.

Now we’re here, at long last, fully ensconced in the old hood.

I lived in Athens for a little more than a year in 1980 (as an American student abroad) and then returned to live and work after college graduation, as a newly minted book editor for a small English-language publisher.

That second extended residence gave birth to a beautiful obsession—finding a way to visit Greece at least every other year, achieve fluency, obtain dual citizenship, and introduce my wife and children to the land of my heritage. And someday, through hook or crook, finding an old house in need of loving restoration. These were the aspirations of a twenty-two-year-old kid from the leafy suburbs.

Happily, my obsession bore fruit and forever remains central to my existence.

 

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Last night we enjoyed the company of three dear friends who I have known since my college days—forty years of long-distance friendship, almost yearly visits, and frequent communication have been enriching in so many ways.

Changing of the Evzone Guards

Athens itself, an old friend in her own right, retains many of the same joys, pleasures, and surprises, and the kind of controlled mayhem that is both endearing and exasperating.

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This morning, Nia and I wound our way past the Acropolis and into the maze of streets that make up the Plaka, the area under the west side of Athena’s bastion. In many ways, so little has changed: the hustle, the bustle, the careening taxis, the death-defying motorcyclists, the riot police (and of course the demonstrators), the sights, smells, and magical aura of a civilization built on so many layers of culture, both physical and metaphysical.

Meandering below the Acropolis

Streets of Plaka

Tower of the Winds

Tomorrow we drive south in our rental buggy—past the mysteries of Eleusis, then over the Corinth Canal, and through the massive mountain ranges of the central Peloponnese. Our destination is a mountaintop village in Messinia, Greece’s southwesternmost province, with its mind-numbing view of the Mediterranean.

And, finally, to a tiny house in an olive orchard, illuminated by oil lanterns.