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The Laverna Player
This Athens street performer is playing a laverna, which sounds like an out-of-tune piano. It carries a vintage portrait of a woman, and you toss coins into the little tray beneath it. I arrived in Athens a week ago on the first stop of my Backpacking the Balkans tour. I have stayed here for a week with my friend Georgia and her mother, who is a saintly spanikopita-making machine. She just laughs at us when we show up at 5AM every morning, and wakes us up at 2PM in the afternoon with the aroma of Greek (not Turkish!) coffee.
Georgia is an Athens native and a fairly famous performance artist in the country, and through her circle of friends and knowledge of the city I have had many experiences I would never have had otherwise. I have tramped through the city several times over, mingling with the Anarchists in Xarchia square and the African vendors in Monistiraki by day, and then meeting up with Georgia and her friends for conversation over cocktails at hipster joints like the Booze Cooperative and Kinky at night. It's always at least 3AM by the time I even think about going back home.
Just last night was a special episode. We were coming through the vending halls of Monistiraki after hours and veered off along a boardwalk when I asked Elias for the name of
The Spanakopita Welcome
Georgia's mom, Maria, teaches me how to make spanakopita. (The fact that I don't speak Greek is immaterial). a columned building in the distance that was all lit up. It looked like the Parthenon except that it wasn't on the hill, it was much closer. He looked at me, paused, then said something in Greek to Georgia and Stefanos. After a few minutes I discovered that none of them had any idea what it was. This was a beautiful building in the middle of the Agora, in the middle of town! They looked at it as though it had appeared out of nowhere, as if a Geometric period Greek-columned spaceship had landed in the middle of Athens. They made me go ask the waiter what it was, because it was just too embarrassing for them to do it. I did, and he said it was the market, which we knew was wrong. Georgia was determined that we would investigate, so off we went to what we soon discovered is the ancient Temple of the Fire God (don't ask me to spell his name).
Once this was resolved, we decided to hop the fence and sneak onto the grounds. It was a glowing colonnade, a massive temple with weeds poking through its foundation. No sooner had I started
Georgia and her Vespa
I felt like a native zipping around on the back of this red chariot. to take pictures than the massive lights giving the temple its ethereal glow gave out. The Temple still glowed faintly under the full moon, but we were afraid that the Greek fuzz might be coming, so we re-hopped the fence in the other direction, flush from our juvenile little adventure.
I am a little bit of a juvenile delinquent, even though I am far past the age to be a juvenile anything. Nevertheless, if it will make a good story or a good photograph, I'm usually game.
For me Athens has been a mix of the ancient and the contemporary. I have toured ancient sites such as the Acropolis and the Kereimikos but also visited the Art Athina contemporary art fair, where young artists like Georgia are showing (and in her case demonstrating) their work. As with ancient art, not all of it resonates with me, but the pieces that do really really do. Georgia's piece, which is something between a performance and dance and ritual, punctured the stolid atmosphere of the place with something the audience had not seen before. Her dance was an accompanied with a band playing atmospheric, but stirring, music which sounded like an
Trespassing on the Temple of the Fire God
We hopped the fence and had a pagan religious experience. operatic Mogwai. It was utterly contemporary, elemental and terrific.
Then there are my trips to visit ancient art. I'm not an archaeologist, so the sight of something that just happens to be 2000 years old isn't going to do it for me. But, in the Acropolis Museum I felt drawn into the expressions of the Kouros (ancient sculpture). The expressions were so nuanced, so vivid, that I took portraits of them all I will attach here.
My time is running low, so I'm off. I will attach pictures soon. I'm off to Zagreb via 32-hour train ride tomorrow night.
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susie
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WOW!!! How are you doing? Fantastic photos. love, susie