El Quinto

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We went to Greece this last weekend! It was a great experience.

We started off by taking a commuter train that is included in our metro passes rather than a taxi or bus. It was interesting, they use electric trains everywhere, not just for the metro, and it is astonishing how many tunnels they have built under this city. They use the rails they have built soo much also.

Christina is already tired of how many times I have expressed my love of this airport, BUT I will tell you. It is the most amazing airport I have ever been to, it is difficult not to be happy inside of it. It is kind of like DIA in the way that they have a big tent like structure built, but its different in scale, material, and that instead of many peaks, it has one, which the slope flows downward thought the rest of the airport. It feels like a massive open air building where you cannot tell where the light comes from; it is a mix of discreet skylights and lights projected upwards from all of the individual cube buildings built out of blue green glass which contain the shops, ticket counters, and such. Okay, for everyone’s sake I will try to leave the beauties of the BCN El Prat airport behind now, just if you come though, I think you will see my appreciation.

So, on to the best airline in the world! Swiss Air is incredible, we packed sandwiches because we knew we would be hungry and we were being economical. Apparently there was no need to be so. Swiss Air gave us as many freshly baked croissants as you would like for breakfast, followed by your treat of Swiss chocolate. Our hub was Geneva, which is not quite in the Swiss alps, but is in the transition between the French countryside and the Alps. They had snow, and surprisingly like imagined, most of the houses are tiny, but more sprawled out through the country side rather than the relative concentration we have seen in Spain and France (our Understanding the EU professor shared that the Spanish coast line has been over developed and a environmental ruling by the EU has been handed down to stop/slow it down. What is interesting is that we didn’t think the coast was all that developed, it has miles of nothing on the coast, and then small towns that don’t necessarily spread out along the coast like you would expect).

We had a quick layover then boarded our plane, and guess what, we were on the same plane as before with the same flight attendants. The meal on this flight was even better! It was hot pasta along with a little desert and again, Swiss chocolate! And perhaps the cherry on top of the experience: the Swiss Alps were very impressive.

We arrived in Athens and got our first experience with the protests. The public unions were on strike, therefore all public transportation had shut down. So we caught a cab and were off. Our cab driver was the most crazy thus far in my life, he had a quick temper (demonstrated once we left the curb when the two cars in front of us were not going fast enough for him so we followed a foot behind them, horn blaring). Once we were free on the open high way as a rule of thumb he liked to go about twice what ever the speed limit was (160Km/h when it is 80Km/h). Fortunately after some questionable turning lane use and yellow (red) lights we arrived safely to our hotel. In addition to his driving, we were a bit spooked because as we passed by the parliament building, there were members of the Greek army and policemen with riot shields along with armored busses everywhere.

Our hotel was a pleasant surprise, we decided on staying at a Best Western because it would be more likely have an English speaking front desk (which during total chaos was priceless). Our room was small, but very nice, excellent shower (unlimited amounts of warm water!). After settling in, we went for a walk up the Acropolis. The Acropolis refers to the entire mountain (or hill), which was sacred to the ancient Greeks. The Parthenon, and most of the other Greek temples of Athens were built on it. We walked up and climbed on a big rocky fortress, which overlooked the city and many of the Greek sites. We looked around and took a few pictures, and most amazingly, two people came up that we recognized, our flight attendants from our flights! Unfortunately, they were very quick and we could only get pictures of them as they were fleeing the scene.

After that, we proceeded around the other side of the acropolis and found a good place to eat dinner. We had a nice dinner and afterwards wound our way thought the ancient and confusing streets to our hotel for the night.

The next morning, we set out bright and early for the Parthenon. SURPRISE! It was closed due to the public union strike (as were all other major Greek ruins). Therefore, we used the morning to hike up the hill opposite the Acropolis where there were views of Athens, the Parthenon, and other, less well known, but interesting ruins which were free and open to the public all the time. For the afternoon we visited the Acropolis museum, which was very interesting. It contained so much history and we spent a good part of the day reading most all of the information plaques and looking at the artifacts.

Sunday the Parathion was open, but SURPRISE! The light trickle of rain we experienced leaving the hotel quickly turned to a downpour as we reached the summit of the Acropolis. We pressed on and explored as well as we could and after an hour or two decided it was time to return to the hotel and attempt to dry out.

After drying out, of course the clouds were clearing and it was time to get back out there and explore (the publicly run sites close at 3). We actually agreed though with reviews of ancient Angola (which is on the hills below the Accropolis) that they were more interesting than the Parthenon. This is where they have ruins of the ancient city of Athens, rather than the few temples of the Partonon, Nike, and Propylaea. It was rich with ruins, including the best preserved temple of Thission which is almost completely intact. Also in Ancient Angola is a reconstructed building. John D. Rockefeller funded the re-construction of a ancient building. They used original pieces of marble recovered for the design, but constructed it using new marble and such (instead of piecing together broken and incomplete pieces of marble from the original as they have begun doing with the Parthenon. It is quite impressive and stimulates the mind to imagine what the rest of the ancient great city built of marble was like.

After that we made a trip to the Panathenaic stadium. It was so impressive because the entire stadium was built entirely of marble. The original stadium was used for pagan rituals so with the rise of Christianity, it was unfortunately left in ruins. The marble was torn out by individuals and used in the construction of their shops, streets and houses. It was reconstructed later on though for the first Olympics.

After finishing up at the Olympic stadium we headed back to our hotel. For some odd reason, there were many other people also out and about with us also going in the same direction as our hotel. We continued and eventually we hit the point where there were so many people they began spilling onto the streets and the cars were diverted away. The way to our hotel was directly into the mass of the people so, holding hands a bit tighter, we pushed on into the crowds. As we pushed on it became denser and denser and about two blocks away from the corner when we turn towards our hotel we started getting significant amounts of people coming towards us rather than with us. Never mind, we only had a couple blocks to go, then a block away, our eyes started tearing and the crowd was getting a little louder, we held on to each other a little tighter, then the loud bangs started sounding and an even bigger rush of people coming our way. We were only about ten yards away from where we needed to turn but it was not going to happen so we joined the large crowd running away from the square in front of the Parliament building. After a few blocks down we changed course and tried going a different way, this presented and even clearer picture of the scene we were part of.

As we moved on a street parallel to what we wanted to be on, we were higher than the street and could get a better view. The square was filled with hundreds of thousands of people, and we could see the police in parts of it along with the smoke rising from the tear gas canisters. We decided we were not going to get to our hotel for the time being so began our walk in the direction opposite of the flow of people moving towards the square, towards the “touristy” or “safe” part. After some dozens of blocks, we were famished and decided we would eat and hope after a meal, the square would have calmed down. The waiters were very accommodating and gave us a free shot, maybe an attempt to reconcile for what was unfolding on the streets.

After a good meal, we walked outside of the restaurant, and immediately wondered if we should walk back in and ask for our table back, the streets which had been empty before were here too, full of people! It was apparent that our table was taken the minute we gave it up and decided to find the landmarks we recognized that led back to our hotel. The large square with a very beautiful and old church in the center was packed with people. The masses had moved down to this square too! And even worse, we could hear more activity of yelling and pops from tear gas canisters towards our hotel. After asking a few questions to some Greeks, we found out it was likely to last all night, and he thought it would be difficult, but possible to get tour hour hotel (two blocks up, into the noise).

We decided that we did not want to spend the night in the street so we pushed towards our hotel, towards the noise. At a certain point, when we walked past a burning heap of trash in the middle of the street and we could barely see thought our tears, the crowd of people was gone. At this point we were very close to our hotel and started moving faster towards our hotel. We continued on into the clouds of tear gas and knew that we were close, while we could barely see, and were starting to have trouble breathing, we finally had made it to the hotel and we banged on the glass doors for someone to let us in. Fortunately our friendly front desk people came running out of their hiding spots, clutching their gas masks to their faces, and unlooked the doors and let us in. We had made it! Climbing up the stairs, the man we had come in with collapsed, followed by Christina for a brief moment, but we finally made it to our room where the air was breathable and clear. We went up to our room and after taking showers, we calmed down and watched the police outpost outside our window for the rest of the night with all the lights off.

After having a prime place to view riot proceedings, we now consider ourselves experts and are confident that we would fair much better next time. It was quite the experience, and we will just have to check that one off the list. Reflecting on it, it is actually quite devastating to see how this city has fallen so far from its pinnacle on so many occasions, and now this financial crisis has created so much animosity. Our hotel workers and other shop owners around the city seemed to be embarrassed by the situation, while rioters, so filled with anger, would stop at nothing to break every ATM in the city and destroy these beautiful walls and streets of marble. From an outsider’s point of view, we were both really impressed by how well police had handled the situation. We watched this command post, which the most they would do is throw rocks, which had been thrown at them and toss a tear gas in the direction of the rebels. When you see this kind of thing on the news, it is easy to side with these people who will soon lose their jobs and experience pay cuts; yet, when you see these police men just standing ground, and basically just taking it, it’s hard not to pity these men who are just protecting a government that really has no other option.

When we were finally back to Spain, it was a relief to be home knowing that we got to see almost all of Athens, and a little added bonus. I think that is probably enough to leave you with for the moment. As always, we wish you all the best and hope you are doing well J



Como se dice "I'm sorry we are bad bloggers" : Lo siento. Somos bloggers malos

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