My Thoughts on Athens

So today was another fun filled day. I'm pretty happy because I've kept more occupied than I thought I would. I'm starting to run out of things to do though, so next week will be interesting. We leave for Santorini tomorrow, and I've decided that instead of heading back on the ferry with Becca, I'm going to move on to Crete for a day or so. I've heard it's very authentic with people living in the old ways, I'm really searching for some element of traditional Greek lifestyle here. I feel that the country is having a personality crisis. After discussing with some of the other people here, we came to the conclusion that whereas places like France and Italy have been able to integrate their history with modernity, Greece seems to be having some trouble. I think that this is because Greece seems to have dropped off the map for a large part of history. There's about a 2,000 year old gap after the height of civilization (the civilization that gave birth to Plato, Aristotle, Homer, etc) to the present day, and in much of that time, the history has crumbled with the countless wars with no one to record it or look after it. Whereas in someplace like Paris, that has plaques on every building telling you what famous person lived there, the history isn't really well documented here. You will be walking and bam! there's an ancient ruin among some slummy looking apartments; however, it's completely meaningless without the history and the stories behind it. They have not been well taken care of, although that's changing now, but I get the feeling that in some ways the only reason they're changing is because of the tourists, not because they are ridiculously proud of their heritage (perhaps I'm being a bit harsh). It is soooo hard to get away from the tourists here, they are everywhere. I almost died laughing yesterday because while at the acropolis this woman turned around and asked us where we were from, because she said it was "so odd to hear English in such a foreign country." I looked at her in disbelief and all I could think was "lady, EVERYONE speaks English here." It is impossible to get away from the droves of Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Aussies. I was over the moon to find a bar with mostly Greeks last night. Speaking of Aussies, this morning while I was quietly slumbering away this giant drunken mass comes swaggering into our room speaking bits of 4 different languages and waking everyone up. Thinking he was French (because French was one of the languages he was talking in) I railed back in French, and that's when the Aussie accent came out. This man was the most drunk, boorish creature I think I have ever seen. Thank god he didn't stay, he put his countrymen to shame. European men are just slightly ridiculous by the way (you should have heard what the Aussie was saying, if I hadn't been confused having just woken up, and if propriety hadn't gotten the best of me, I would have decked him in the face). I knew that staring was more, accepted, here, but not to this extent. On the beach today Becca and I literally had men pulling out camera phones and taking pictures (of course we moved away from them). I had some guy tell us, while we were eating ice cream, that he wished he was ice cream (go figure the innuendo on THAT one).......gross. They call Americans prudes, but that is just disgusting. Our responses so far have been to glare and walk away. Haha, I wonder what Turkey is going to be like. I can only imagine.

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Part of trip: The Ancient World

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