Ιστορία της Αθήνας

What do you first think of when you think of Florence? The Renaissance, with artists such as Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, and others? Soaring Roman Catholic cathedrals? A center of culture and fashion and food? Fantastic art museums and works like the David?

... how about dinosaurs?

In Florence, along with museums like the Uffizi and the Accademica Gallery, there is a small complex of museums that make up the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze (Florence Museum of Natural History). One of these is the Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia, a fairly out of the way little building behind the S.S. Annunzoila. It's not well advertised... if we hadn't done a lot of research into where exactly we wanted to go prior to traveling to Italy, I don't think we would have known it exists at all. However, we did, and I was curious to see how Italy does paleontology, and so the morning of our last day in Florence, we set out to find the place. Now, the previous day, trying to visit the art galleries, we'd frequently gotten hopelessly lost, so our first stop was at an internet cafe to ask Google Maps to plot our course for us. This, however, completely failed. The street signs are often absent or are out of date in the city, and so, after wandering around confusedly for a while, we stopped into an archaeological museum on the Piazza di Annunzoila for directions. We found one large sign for the temporary exhibit currently in the museum, but still managed to walk past it several times before noticing the entrance.

Once there, though, the visit was entirely worth it. The temporary exhibit, "Dinosauri in Carne e Ossa" ("Dinosaurs in the Flesh") began in the Botanical Gardens, with life-sized reconstructions of various prehistoric creatures. These weren't small, Velociraptor-sized creatures either (for context, real Velociraptors are only about 6 feet long and 1-2 feet tall); the models included giants such as Spinosaurus aegyptaicus, Diplodocus longus, and Tyrannosaurus rex.

Diplodocus longus and I Image credit to Sarah G.

As much as the dinosaurs themselves were cool, though, the part I found more interesting, from what I could read of it with my limited knowledge of Italian, was the information about the artists themselves. The prehistoric creatures were from all over the world; all the paleoartists and sculptors were from Italy. Prior to this, I'd seen very little recent scientific art done by anyone outside the U.S., England, and Germany. It was very interesting to compare the pieces on display to the ones made at the paleo lab I work at back in Chicago. Some of the detail was less refined; the scales looked fairly manufactured, and none of the dinosaurs had flaws, scars, or strings of drool hanging out of their mouths, which are features I've come to expect out of a truly life-like model. However, there was a sense of tension and movement in a couple these pieces that I don't often see back in the states. It was rather reminiscent of some of the Classical or Renaissance statues I'd seen the day before, actually. Except, of course, that instead of human figures, these were prehistoric creatures, and they were made of special plastics instead of stone.

Spinosaurus eating MawsoniaImage mine

The exhibit continued inside the museum, with more models as well as a decent collection of Cenozoic fossils, including multiple mammoths, several bears, and a set of large extinct flightless birds from New Zealand. They also had a whole walk through time of invertebrate shells, showing how the diversity had changed since calcification first appeared in the Cambrian period, over 500 million years ago. They even had a token case full of plant fossils, mostly leaves and bark. For all that the museum was small, in need of some updating, and rather hard to find, it was really well set up, and had a wonderful collection.

Since I've been in Greece and Italy, I've been surprised by how little hard science seems to be evident. There's a lot of archaeology, but not much else. Perhaps it's here, and I just don't know where to look; perhaps in America, I'm so ingrained into that subculture that I see it everywhere, and it's not as prominent as I think it is. But I'm used to there being major natural history and science museums in every large city, that are well advertised and key places to visit. That doesn't seem to be as true here. So it was a nice surprise to find even a small natural history museum in Italy, to learn about the geology and paleontology of the area, and discover how that interacts with field in the rest of the world.

Alright, I have time to write again, now that I'm on my way to the airport hotel, where I'm staying (and probably posting this from) tonight before leaving tomorrow morning to return to Athens. But, to continue my story where I left off...

After a quick lunch at the Capitole Museum cafe, we headed off towards the Forum, for the second half of our visit. As we entered, we left the modern age and entered the remains of one 2000 years old.

The Roman Forum is in some respects analogous to the Greek Agora (which, I realize I haven't written about yet... But I have visited it, and as I catch up on the backlog, I'll discuss it further). It was the center for both secular and religious life in the ancient city. However, the Greek agora, in it's ideal form, us a primarily open meeting space; the Forum was anything but. There were numerous triumphal arches, public buildings, temples, memorials, and other ruins. One of the most impressive of these was the Senate House, which is now preserved as a museum. Unlike in most popular media, this was not an open semicircular theatre. Instead, it was a roofed rectangular building. When the senate would vote in antiquity, individuals would move to one side or the other, to signify a yes or no vote. The number of senators on each side would be counted to determine the outcome. The building itself is really beautiful. As Ilaria explained, and as was still visible in places, the walls would have been covered in frescos, and the floor with colorful marble. The objects stored in the building had little to do with it, but were also really interesting. Much of it was glasswork, including a really cool miniature portrait, made of fine plated gold placed between two pieces of glass. There were also many perfume bottles, cosmetic jars, and other little storage containers. Most of them were quite intact, which was really neat to see.

The next major building we saw was, in my opinion, the prettiest. This was the House of the Vestal Virgins. As luck would have it, we came right as the roses in the middle of the house were blooming. It helped restore some of the glory to this home I'd one of the must important people in Rome. The Vestal Virgins were in charge of keeping the sacred light that Aeneas brought from Troy when he went to found Italy. They were also in charge of keeping many state secrets. These priestesses were trained from age 6 or 7, and their post lasted until they were 30. Aster two and a half decades in a position of power, however, most found leaving the house to become a wife and mother to be both challenging and unrewarding, and so they remained in the house. The must famous of these priestesses were honored with status around the vineyard of the two-story building.This was a place where some of the most important women in classical civilization lived, and so definitely one of my favorite places to visit.

There was a ton more in the Forum to see, and that we did see, but I'm going to skim over that and move on to Palatine Hill. This was the site of the emperor's palace, a little away from the Forum, and overlooking it. This was in some ways a subtle cue of power dynamics, first instituted by Augustus. As the years went on, and emperors went on, new palaces were built, until the rule of Domitian. His palace was so huge, and so beautiful, with brand new styles of architecture, that most emperors after him choose to live there. It was the first example of "gothic" like building styles, with flowing curves instead of harsh angles. In many rooms, there was an apse for the emperor's seat, mimicing a statue niche and giving the emperor a status of power and a resemblance to the gods. We spent a lot of time wandering through here as well, looking at the various fountains, rooms, and marble floors.

The next visit was to one of the largest Roman bath houses, the Caracalla baths. These functioned more as a sort of rec center/spa/social hall than as simply a place to go wash up. The rooms were magnificently tiled, and the ceilings would have vaulted up over 40 ft when intact. It is still magnificent today, in it's ruined state; I can only imagine how impressive this complex was when it was in use.

Our final stop was at the Colosseum, the iconic image of ancient Rome (as the Parthenon is for ancient Greece). This, too, was an extremely impressive feat of engineering. And, according to Ilaria, it's function was more as a circus or theatre than as a bloody tournament ring. Wild animals, particularly big cats, were expensive, so it would have been impractical to let then get killed every single gladiator battle. And the gladiators themselves were more like sports stars; no one wanted their favorite to get killed. So, once again, the media got it wrong. Still, though, the site would have held impressive spectacles, especially of you were one of 50,000 packed it to watch. It really is one of the most unique buildings we saw during the tour, and the perfect place to end the day. It was time to get dinner and go home after our quick overview walk through the city of Rome.

It has been a whirlwind couple of days, and this is the first time I've had a chance to sit down and digest everything that's happened. (Well, almost. I had time on the train to Florence as well, but I had some technical difficulties and ended up just listening to podcasts instead. But this is irrelevant, and I'll return to my narrative now).

Tuesday started pretty early, though not as bad as the day before. It was also a nice slow start: the Piazza di Spanga View, our hotel, provided a delicious in-room breakfast, which we sat and ate while enjoying our magnificent overlook of the Spanish Steps (due to more technical difficulties, no picture right now, but I'll put one up once I get back to Athens and a proper computer). Then, we went to meet Ilaria Marsili (www.ilariamarsilirometours.com). S's parents had met her before, on a previous trip to Rome, and so set it up. And thus began the quickfire trip through the city of Rome.

In the morning, we primarily looked at things around the modern city, that you can find just by wandering around. Ilaria pointed out some of her favorite architecture on churches and secular buildings, much of it by the artist Barberini. He was one of the first to produce a sense of movement in a building, using alternating concave and convex facades, and intricate floral and insect patterns. It was secondly some of the prettiest design I've seen abroad thus far: In Greece, all the buildings are either really new, or ancient ruins. There aren't very many Neoclassical or Art Deco type buildings, and no gothic or renaissance style stuff. Rome, on the other hand, is a jumble of architecture from antiquity to postmodernism. It was really quite neat to see, especially with a guide. There were several occasions where she pulled us into hidden corners, such as a monastery courtyard or the alcove of a palace, filled with statuary pillaged from Greece.

Another one of these secret places in the city ended up being one of the coolest of the entire tour. Below the medieval church of St. Nicholas in Prison are the remains of not one, but three Roman temples, all built around the first century B.C.E., although there is evidence suggesting they were founded over a century prior to that. Today, some of the remaining columns are built into the church walls, which is by itself is quite interesting. The really cool part, though, is underneath the church. In the past few years, the temple foundations have been excavated. It is possible to walk around the bases at the street level from 120 C.E., seeing the bottoms of the columns and the shops that existed below the podium of the central temple (to Juno Sospita). In places, where the water hasn't caused too much erosion, you can still see the carved detail in the travertine limestone blocks. They also still have some of the pottery fragments discovered during excavation, and pictures of some of the the more complete artifacts, which are now in a museum. This was not just a new site for S. and I; Ilaria had not been there before either, and was at least as excited as we were. It was a lot of fun to see, and a fascinating example of the continuity of purpose, even as the culture and religion change.

The other really interesting big thing we saw was the Pantheon, another ancient site-turned-Catholic church. The present iteration of it was built by the emperor Hadrian, but it was originally founded by Augustus and his friend, Marcus Agrippus. The building is constructed of a double wall with concrete in the center. Near the bottom, this concrete was made with heavy basalt; at the very top, pumice was used, because its so light. This was common practice in most large Roman buildings, but was particularly important for the Pantheon, as the building is domed. In the center of this dome is a massive 27 ft in diameter hole, which allowed light and air to get into the building, and also helped keep the roof from collapsing. Even from the outside, it's an extremely impressive structure. Inside, it's even better. While many things have changed, such as the added apse for the Christian alter, and the fact the statues of saints, the Madonna, and Christ now fill the 12 niches in the walls instead of statues of the 12 major Roman gods, much has been preserved. On the ceiling, the square patterning of the domed ceiling remains; on the floor, the colored marble tile work is still intact as well. Even though it now serves as a church, it is easy to imagine how it might have functioned as the major Roman sanctuary.

After the Pantheon and the Church of St. Nicholas, we moved on towards Capitol Hill and lunch, as it was around 12:30. We still had a whole lot more to see, though. But you'll have to wait, as this post is already far too long, and it's time for me to go to bed, before my second day in Florence. Ciao!

I'm not dead!

So... yeah. The daily blog thing sort of crashed after my three day excursion to Nafplio. I have drafts written for most of the days in between then and now, but I just haven't had time or motivation to work on them. I will post them, eventually, as I get caught up, but that may not be for a while yet. In the morning, I am leaving for Meteora, a neat site in Thessaly full of awesome geological features, and a bunch of monasteries, which I am very much looking forward to. I will take lots of pictures, and write up the experience Monday night, when I get back. Then I'm in town for all of a day, before heading off to Olympia and Delphi on the next class trip. Also very exciting, but once again, I'm going to be without Internet, which means I won't blog, which means I'll have another three days of stuff to get caught up on. On top of the two weeks I've neglected thus far. So.... I'll get to that all eventually, but it could take a while.

Anyway, in the meantime, I can summarize what has happened in the past week. The way my program is divided up, there is the equivalent of a three quarter class crammed into one quarter, which means that each "quarter" lasts about 3 weeks. Thus, at the start of this week, we started the second quarter, and got a new professor. She's quite nice, and I like her, but the teaching style is much more self-directed and discussion-based. She doesn't explain sites to us, or tell us what is happening at the time period we're learning about; instead, we explore the site, do the readings, ask questions, and discover for ourselves. I will get used to it soon, but it's a big change from the way our last professor taught.

As for sites this week, we didn't do anything really groundbreaking. Tuesday we went on top of the Acropolis, finally visiting the Parthenon. Wednesday was an excursion to Boiotia and Thebes, which would have been really cool, except that it rained the entire bloody time. Thursday was a free morning, and Friday (today) was a visit to the ancient agora. All the sites were cool, but nothing so spectacular that I want to elaborate right now.

Anyway, I promise a more detailed update when I return, but for now it is midnight, and I am off to bed so I can wake up to finish packing and get on a train. So, καλή νύχτα!

During the day off (April 2nd), I went to the Benaki Museum, which Professor Hall had pointed out on the Lakivatos morning trip. It's a nice little museum, encompassing Greek history from the Classical and Roman periods, to the Byzantine period, and through to today. On the third floor, there was a temporary exhibit, titled "Expulsion and Exchange of Populations (Turkey -Greece 1922-1924)". In it were a series of photographs, from the end of the first World War through to the end of the population exchange, along with snippets of text walking visitors through the events of those two years.

The images alone were powerful, but even more so when combined with the objects I'd seen in the rest of the museum. In Turkey and the Near East, Greek Orthodox families had been powerful, and rich. However, during and after the Greco-Turkish war, these families were uprooted, broken apart, and forced from a stable, comfortable life. "Greek" men in Turkey were gathered up and sent to labor camps, from which few returned. Others, along with women and children, were sent on death marches. Refugees from Smyrna and other Turkish towns flooded Thessaloniki, Athens, and other Greece cities, even before the war ended and the population exchange was initiated. The estimate presented in the exhibit was that over 1,000,000 refugees tried to find new homes at this point. Then, at the end of the war, another 200,000 or so Greek Orthodox Christians were ejected from Turkey, while a similar number of Muslims were moved from Greek to Turkey. On both sides, the new immigrants were treated with suspicion and contempt, and were kept as outsiders.

My favorite photograph out of the set was of a young refugee girl sitting on the lap of an evzone, the Greek ceremonial guard. The girl was laughing at the camera, a little shyly, while the soldier laughed slightly along with her. In other photos, too, in the awful conditions of the refugee camps, the some of the children were still smiling, and life went on. It made me wonder if there could ever be a tragedy so great that even the kids would be unable to smile and enjoy life. If so, I hope no one ever has to experience them. Things would have to be awful indeed for even the children to lose hope entirely.

The other striking thing about the photographs was just how similar they were to images of much more recent disasters. In China, Japan, Haiti, New Orleans, Iraq, and Sumatra, in just the past decade, we've seen memorable photos of people living in the exact same sort of conditions. The faces and landscapes and disaster stories change, but the degree of human suffering, and human spirit... those are the same. The expressions of hopelessness, pain, and grief visible in pictures from this 1922-24 set are just as clear in the photos taken today. But present, too, are the expressions of defiance, of hope, and of the human will to survive. At the end of the exhibit, along with the photo of the little girl and the soldier, were several family portraits of refugees, who created a new middle class in Greece. Seeing that gives me hope that people will recover from today's disasters as well, and make the world a better place in spite of the hardship they have faced.

Over the past two weeks, I've visited a lot of archaeological sites: the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia, the Temple of Zeus at Nemea, the palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, and more. Nearly everywhere there are ruins of different ancient memorials, sanctuaries, and buildings. Most of them look something like this:

Sorry for the recent post drought. After being gone for three days, I've had a lot to catch up on, and so haven't been blogging. I'm currently sorting through all of my photographs and notes from the trip to the Argolid, so hopefully the posts from those three days will be up shortly. In the meantime, though, I wanted to talk about some events that took place over the weekend.

On Thursday, while I was in the Argolid, a man named Dmitris Christoulas, a 77 year old retired pharmacist, committed suicide in Syntagma Square, as a protest to the austerity measures. In his suicide note, he wrote, "I cannot find any other form of struggle except a dignified end before I have to start scrounging for food from the rubbish" (source). Following this, Greek citizens reacted violently. There were riots on Thursday, following the event, and again on Saturday, after his funeral procession. I don't know how this event has rippled outside of Greece, but within the country, it seems to be making quite an impact. There's more information on the funeral, and the reactions of the Greek people, here.

Yesterday afternoon, after checking that everything was all calm, my roommate and I went to Syntagma to see the reaction. In the center of the square is a giant tree, covered with lights and paper notes and signs, surrounded by rings of candles and flowers. There were many people there, adding their own notes, placing flowers, or just reading the outpouring of anger and sadness already presented. It was a really powerful memorial, and one of the first really clear signs I've seen that all is not right in this country. On the surface, everyone is happy and peaceful, and things are going well. But economically and politically, things are far from nice and settled. Sometimes, that tension boils up to the surface, like it did this weekend.

For the past two weeks, I've been wandering around in ancient history, looking at artifacts and sites from 2000+ years ago. But that's not the only history present in this country. Right now, if I stop to look, there's history happening all around me. Greece is at a tipping point, and the future is uncertain, for both the country and its people.

I am not a huge fan of modern or abstract art, in the States. Most of it just makes no sense to me, or seems like a waste of space and material. Now, that's not to say that I hate all of it: I can find individual pieces that I like in any style or genre, be it in visual art, music, theatre, literature, what have you. However, a few pieces here and there are far from the whole, and American contemporary art does nothing for me.

On the tour of Greek galleries tonight, however, I found that that attitude applies much more strongly to American modern art than to Greek modern art. We took a tour of 5 different galleries in the Kolonaki area, each with very different pieces on display. The first we went to featured the art of Manolis Charos, made within the last four years. These pieces were primarily surrealist-like paintings, with one found object sculpture. I really liked most of them, particularly these couple:



The next gallery was also really interesting, this time featuring a paper sculpture artist, Tsakirakakis. His works combine color, dimensionality, and language to create some really powerful images. Some of his works are simply beautiful, like his piece "Smell", which is a paper construction depicting flowers with the word smell entwined in the leaves. Others were more political, such as one showing a ton of cars tangled up in traffic, emitting CO₂, or one with the word "Democracy worked into it. My favorite one, simply because it's a bit funny, is the Politics one:


The last few galleries did not impress me quite as much as the first two, but they were still interesting in their own right. The third featured the work of Aikaterini Gegisian, in an exhibit titled "Who Doesn't Like a Good Old Story?" She is an Armenian artist, and so her photography focuses on Armenian subjects. There was a lot of contrast between the old and the new, and nature versus the man-made in her work, which was quite interesting. The fourth included the works of Alexis Korbis, in "Third Heaven". These painting were very realistic, with dark backgrounds and human figures, presented as they look in life. These figures all seemed to be contemplating themselves, and usually a reflection or faded image of the subject was included in each work. Finally, the last gallery displayed the work of Maria Blanth, who does abstract clay sculpture. This was probably the least favorite of the shows we visited, simply because it is this kind of "find your own meaning" abstraction that is overwhelming in American modern art, that I tend to find somewhat useless. Still, it was interesting listening to the artist talk about her work, so that improved it somewhat.

For the past two weeks, I've seen a lot of art and architecture, but most of the focus has been on pre-Classical works. While that is something that interests me more than modern art, in general, in general, here in Athens, those pieces are remnants of a long-gone era. Visiting these galleries, and seeing and hearing how Greeks today view their world and interpret it through visual media, has given me much more of a sense of what this country, today, is going through. Despite outward appearances at the moment, it isn't a settled, peaceful, "first-world" sort of place... it is a people and a culture going through a time of unsettlement, of change, of coming to a new identity. That theme ran through all the art I saw tonight, and has given me a new perspective on this place I call home for the next few months.

As much as this first week has been fun, there's only so much of the same 24 other people I can tolerate, and after some incidents last night, I needed to escape from everyone and just get away. Fortunately, unlike in Chicago, that's very easy to do here in Athens. Exactly a week ago, when Katja took us on the walking tour of Central Athens, she'd suggested that we climb the Hill of the Muses, which is one of her favorite places in the whole of Athens. It's also right near the Acropolis, which I've been to around four times now, and it's always busy there, since it's a major tourist trap, so I packed a lunch and hiked off by myself to climb the hill.

It's a really nice hike there. Once I got to the fork in the path, where one way leads up the Hill of the Muses and the other leads around the base of the Acropolis, there were almost no other people around, and the hike was at a nice shallow incline, forested most of the way up, before opening up into an amazing view of Athens and the Acropolis.


I hung out up there for a while, eating my lunch and just thinking about my week, and my life in general. I don't know yet, how much different I will be after this trip than I was before it. I feel like I am becoming more confident on my own, but then, I've only been here for a short period of time, and I'm around strangers, who I'm always more confident around. I certainly will be healthier: despite all the second-hand smoke, the air is much cleaner here, and the weather and elevation changes are much more to my liking. The food is also better: I can cook for myself, or go to a taverna or restaurant and get large portions of tasty food on the cheap. As to what else will change, physically or mentally, I don't yet know. We'll have to wait and see. I think after this, though, I will be more prepared to take on the future ahead of me. Preparing for graduate school and making decisions about my life is something that scared me immensely. It's exciting, but also a major life change, and especially being as young as I am, it's rather terrifying. I like having a rhythm, a place I know with people I like, a plan. Moving to grad school will break me out of that, make me have to start all over again. Yet, this program is like that as well, with the added challenge of being surrounded by people who don't speak the same language as I do. Being here makes me feel much more prepared for the next year, and the adventures that will come afterwards.

Before I get to that, though, I need to complete my adventures here. So, after thinking and eating, I moved on, exploring the area, including finding a children's festival in progress, and the little observatory I'd noticed from the Acropolis hill. Then it was time to return home, before people started worrying about me, since I'd been away for 4 hours at this point. But having time to relax and reflect has helped me to deal with socializing again, and prepared me more mentally for the second week here in Athens.

By my school's way of counting, today was the end of first week. But, because I'm on study abroad and every one week is like 3-4, in order to cram three quarters into one... I have no idea where I'm at, school-calendar-wise. However, I know for sure that I've finished my first week of classes, and gotten into a rhythm here in Athens... which will promptly be ruined by the fact that I have next Monday off entirely, next Tuesday morning off, and then leave on Wednesday for a three-day trip to the Argolid. Also, as a head's up, I have no clue what my Internet capabilities, or my time to blog, will be like during that trip, so you may not hear from me between Tuesday and Friday. I promise I won't be dead... but if you don't see a huge post from me by Sunday after the trip, start making inquiries into my livelihood.

Anyway, today was the first of two trips to the Acropolis Museum, which has to be one of the most gorgeous museums I've ever been to (and I have been to a lot of museums; I'd list them for you, but then you'll get bored and leave). There was no photography inside the museum, so I can't show you much, but the outside looked like this:


The top level of the building is at an angle to the rest for more than just architecturally looking cool. It's actually set up so that the artifacts inside perfectly line up with their orientation in situ on the Parthenon, which the top level is aligned with. On the lower levels, they're set up to line up with their respective other buildings on the Acropolis. It's really very, very well thought out.
And, even cooler, is this:


This museum is actually built over an neighborhood of ancient Athens, which is really, really neat. There are glass panels in the floor so that you can look down and see the site below you, as you explore the artifacts found around the Acropolis. The range of ages, too, is amazing. Even after just a week, I started to get into a mindset of "There's super old stuff (ruins), then there's sort of old stuff (old churches), then there's new stuff (anything modern)". But it isn't that simple: there's a good 3000 years or so of history on the Acropolis, which can be divided up into couple hundred year or less chunks of time. Intellectually, I know that's true: I mean, that's what we talk about in lecture, is each of these bits of time and their significance individually and in a larger whole, but that doesn't tend to stick with me very well. I'm used to thinking of time on a much larger scale, millions and billions of years rather than hundreds and thousands, so without anything concrete, it just blurs together. Seeing it concrete like this, however, and being able to see the distinctions that allow historians and archaeologists to break up the time, just like geologists break up time by changes in the climate or landscape or fossil record, makes it so much more real. Seeing these sites and artifacts in the round allows me break out of the mindset of "new, old, and ancient."

It's been a very long day. We left from the apartments at 8 am, meaning I was up much earlier than I normally like to be. I also, unfortunately, seem to have a carsickness problem if I wake up too early and don't eat and ride in a bus. So, that wasn't fun. And my camera batteries decided to be dead, so I apologize for the poor quality of these photos; I had to take them all on my cell phone. But, prefaces aside, my day ended up being quite awesome.

An excited professor in front of the alter

Our first site of the day was the site of the Amphiareion at Oropos, on the border between Attica and Boreas. It was the sanctuary of Amphiaros, a Greek hero. He was one of the sons of Oedipus, who squabbled over the territory after his father blinded himself and exiled himself to atone for his sins. If you don't know the story of Oedipus, go look it up... it's the most dysfunctional family in all of Greek tragedy. Anyway, at one point, Zeus zapped the ground with his lightning bolt, and Amphiaros fell into the resulting chasm. Somehow, some time later, he emerged from the ground again, at the site where the sanctuary was built. Additionally, he was reputed to be a seer. Thus, visitors to the temple came for visions of the future... for a fee. They would pay the cost of 9 okos (about twice the daily wage), sacrifice a few animals, and then sleep on the skin of their sacrificed ram (women in one building, men in another), hoping for a vision of Amphiaros telling them their future or what they needed to do to solve some health or economic trouble. The architecture reflects this reconstruction of the sanctuary. It is an interesting one, as it continues right through the Dark Ages, which is not true of many other sanctuaries. It also has an unusual construction. Instead of being at the end of the temple, the central statue of the hero-god was in the center, with a secret room in the back that was likely a treasury. The alter, too, is unusual, as instead of being lengthwise along the end of the temple, where the statue could watch the sacrifices, it runs in the same direction as the temple. This may have been due to the landscape: the sanctuary sits into a steep hill, and so the terracing costs would have been high, both monetarily and labor-wise. Additionally, this long alter setup would have allowed more people to watch the sacrifices, a spectacle popular at the time. It was a neat site, and provides a lot of information about the way one of these remote sanctuaries would have operated in the 4th century BCE.

After spending an hour and a half at this site, we moved on to catch a ferry to the island of Euboia, which was quite pretty. We then went to the museum of Eretria and Lefkandi. These two sites are the outliers of the "Dark Ages", a period of time where Mycenean civilization declined out of existance, and the land area of Greece seems to lose much of it's population. Connections and trade routes to the outside world seem to fail, and the whole quality of life seems to drop dramatically, from the year 1200 to around 800 BCE. However, in Lefkandi and Euboia, while it is not Mycenean culture, there do still seem to be far-flung connections to as far as Cyprus and Egypt, and there are elaborate burials, of several different varieties. There are cremations in urns, children burials in pots, and all sorts of artifacts put into the graves. It was really a neat museum, but even cooler was the House of the Mosaics, a wealthy house preserved, with Greek mosaics in the dining rooms.

Greek Mosaics

After that, we did a group project on houses in Eretria, a site that was built up several times, with only the foundations remaining. This exercise made it very clear just how challenging archaeology can be in these areas, as one has to sort of what buildings existed contemporaneously, what those buildings look like, and how did they function. From there, we went to the site of Lefkandi, specifically a building that we have no idea the purpose of. In the center of the structure was a set of two pits, one with four sacrificed horses, and the other with a double burial, with a cremated man and an inhumed woman. Both appear to have been very wealthy, but their relationship to each other, and, in particular, the fate of the woman, are quite mysterious. He is thought to have been a warrior-chieftan; she may have been his wife. She was buried in elaborate dress, including a gold breast-plate and gold hair pins and a glass necklace. She also had a knife next to her head. Was she a ritual suicide? Was she a sacrifice? At this point, it is impossible to tell. The house, too, is enigmatic. It is by far the largest building of the period, squarely in the middle of the Dark Ages. However, the floor seems to have not been packed, suggesting it was gently to not at all used. It was purposely buried, by the people, yet the pottery shards in the mound and on the floor of the building, suggest that it was built and buried at the same time. It's quite odd, and two theories exist. One is that the warrior built this house, but died shortly after it's completion, and he and the woman were buried in it after their funeral. Another is that the house was built afterwards, after the deaths. Yet, both situations pose issues, and this site remains a unique site, with nothing even kind of analogous yet found.

After finishing up at that site, it was time for lunch and to return to Athens. It was a day full of history and archaeology, which has resulted in quite a long blog post. Tomorrow is another museum visit, this time to the Acropolis Museum. Hopefully, I'll be able to find camera batteries before then, so will have better photos then. Regardless, I'm quite looking forward to it. I've been in Athens for a week now, and so only have 9 more to go. If this pace keeps up, I'll be leaving well before I'm ready to. Still, very excited for what other places I will see and learn during the rest of my time here.


καλή νύχτα!

Γειά σου!

For the second day in a row, I really haven't got much to say. Today was a free morning, and there was a transit strike here in Athens, so instead of going out to do anything, I just slept till 9, did homework, cleaned stuff, went grocery shopping, and generally did all the sorts of things I do at home. Not every day in Greece is going to be an exciting adventure to exotic and historical places. In some ways, life in Greece is exactly the same as life in the U.S. Chores still need doing, class is still class, and life, while a bit different, is still basically life.

In other news, I cooked dinner today! I made lemon pepper chicken and potatoes. It was not the most flavorful or ground-breaking food I've ever eaten, but considering I've never really cooked chicken before, it was a quite successful adventure. The chicken was moist, but fully cooked, and the potatoes had absorbed a lot of the lemon juice, and so were a tasty compliment. I was fairly pleased with myself. But, that's pretty much the most exciting thing that's happened. It's nice, in some respects, to have a slow, normal day. I feel much more functional now than I did at the end of yesterday, when I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to tomorrow, despite the early call time, because we will be going on our first excursion out of Athens! I will have pictures and much, much more to talk about them.

Until then, καλή νύχτα!

Photo Credit: My roommate T.

Every Friday, an open air Farmer's Market takes place a few blocks away from where I live. It's a very neat market, with vendors yelling out (in Greek) what they're selling, and for how much. On the very first full day here in Athens, I went to it with my two roommates, to pick up some food for the apartment, and just to see what was available. We were just looking, when S. decided she wanted an orange. We stopped at a vendor, and in English and hand gestures, she asked the vendor how much one orange cost. The vendor looked confused for a moment, before waving her hand and saying "Dorean, dorean!" She was giving S. the orange for free. S. thanked her, and the three of us went on our way.

A few moments later, an older man I'd noticed standing near the vendor tapped me and T. on the shoulders. We turned, and he handed us each an orange, with a smile. We thanked him, and he waved us off, the universal sign for "Don't mention it". Without a word, he went one direction, and we continued in a different one. It was the first real interaction we had had with Greeks since we'd arrived, and I won't soon forget it. As the people at the Athens Centre keep telling us, the people here are laid back and friendly, not like the city-folk back in the States at all. I'm highly inclined to believe it, and look forward to getting to know the people here better.

One of the nice things about this program is that we get a rental phone, with a Greek phone number. I had gotten a global phone in the US over Christmas, because at the time I didn't know I would have a phone to use. However, the rates to call from a US phone in a different country are absurd, so there was no complaint when I found out. Still, my family activated my personal cell phone for use here in Greece, just in case.

Of course, technology being what it is, I turned on my phone when I landed in Athens... no signal. To this point, I still haven't gotten it to work. Apparently, despite following all the instructions, Verizon failed at activating my SIM card, meaning I have a very expensive calculator and alarm clock. But, hey, I've still at least got a phone for calling within Greece, right?

For the first day, yes. Turned on the phone, used it, programmed in all the phone numbers, everything was fine. The battery got low, so I charged it. Turned it on the next morning, and entered the PIN for my SIM card. "SIM Card Locked. SOS Only". Now, I'd only entered the password once. It was supposed to give me three attempts before it locked the card. So, I shut it down and tried again. "SIM Card Locked. SOS Only." So, knowing what I do about mobile phones, I shut it down, took out the battery and the SIM card, blew on the contact points, put it back together, and tried a third time. "SIM Card Locked. SOS only."

By this point, I decided that phones hate me. So, I went to talk to my TA, to let him know that my phone was out of commission, and see if he knew who I should talk to. He referred me to Isabel, of the Athens Centre staff. She played with it for a bit, and came to the same conclusion: she had no idea what its issue was. The PIN number I was using was correct. All I'd done was charge the phone. There was no good reason why it was acting up. It was time to ask an expert. She send me down to Germanos, the cell phone dealership nearest to the Athens Centre, and I met a nice employee there who a) spoke decent English and b) had the resources to experiment and figure out what the problem was. It turned out that my SIM card was perfectly fine: put it in a phone, and it worked, no issue at all. When you put any SIM card into my phone, however, it came up with the same dialogue: "SIM Card Locked. SOS only." After determining this, the man in the store gave it back, saying that the phone body was a piece of junk. There was a software issue, and they couldn't fix it. I thanked him, and said I'd talk to my program about buying a new phone. I reported back to Rosemary and Isabel, and they agreed that they would have to buy a new phone body; after all, I'd already been walking around for 2 days with no means of communication. If I were to get lost on an excursion or get hurt or something, I couldn't get a hold of anyone, and they couldn't get a hold of me.

Finally, on the afternoon of Wednesday of the first week, after having two useless phones since Saturday, I got a new phone body, one of the same style but much nicer than my initial one. I've got it all charged up and re-entered the phone numbers of my professors, TA, and classmates. Now I just need to add some more money to my SIM card, and the technical difficulties will be over. For now.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus. The Agora. The Areopagus. The Hill of the Muses. These were some of the highlights of Ancient Athens, and the places that we explored today on our walking tour. It was a very interesting walk, and I will share some of the stories I learned, about the history and mythology associated with the area, in one of my short posts. The areas we went to weren't really new, though; I'd passed them all before, on the walking tour last Saturday. So, not as many photographs to take. But here's one, to keep this update from being too boring:

Hadrian's Gate, outside the Temple of Olympian Zeus. There's a funny story about this...

I'm also into my second day of classes, which is nice. I've missed having a schedule, even if just for one week. Greek class, in particular, is going to be a lot of fun. We've only covered the alphabet so far, but I think that's a major first step in understanding this language. For instance, when I set up this blog a few months ago, I transliterated "Ιστορία" as "Iotopia", as you can see in my URL. Unfortunately, though, that's totally wrong. I should have written it, in English, as "Istoria". If you can't tell what it means from that pronounciation, Ιστορία is the Greek word for History. Thus, Ιστορία της Αθήνας is Istoria tis Athinas, or History of Athens. Things you learn when you actually study the language. I've also learned a lot of the greetings: καλή νύχτα, or "kalinichta", is goodnight, and Γειά σου is the singular informal "Hello" or "Health to you". It's very helpful, being able to say and write and understand these words, rather than just using Google Translate all the time. I doubt I'll become fluent in Greek by the time I leave, but I hope to be able to maintain at least a simple conversation at the end of these ten weeks. We'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow is a free morning, so I'll have some time to write up the short posts I've been meaning to get to, which will hopefully serve as a better insight into some of the details of my experiences here. Some will be my own stories; others will be things from class. All are things I've found interesting or funny during my week here so far. I'm sure there will be more as the time goes on.

 καλή νύχτα!

While out and about over the past through days, one of the most prominent features of the landscape has been this:

Facing North

Facing South

Today was Greek Independence Day, and a completely free day on my program's schedule. Thus, there wasn't a whole lot to do, besides continuing to explore the city and completing the readings for class tomorrow. I spent most of the morning sleeping and reading, before going with some of the other students to a cafe for breakfast, and then wandering back to the National Gardens to find a place to continue reading. Once I got bored of that, I wandered around looking for ruins and taking photographs. Here is a collection of my favorites:




As always, the rest will be up on my photograph page. I will have more to talk about tomorrow, as classes get started. I may also being posting more short tales, of cool or interesting or just fun things that have happened to me while here, that don't really fit in the narrative of a long post. I'll continue trying to get these up as well, but as classes start, I may have less time to write out a whole big post. Still, I continue to share my adventures in this city.

Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

Γειά σου!

As I mentioned yesterday, the Athens Centre took my whole group out to dinner last night. It was a very pretty restaurant, with pretty good food. I liked it all, though I wasn't as impressed with it as the one the night before. Additionally, so much stuff has happened just today that I don't want to ramble on about food again. Suffice it to say, it was tasty, I had very good conversations with the students I was sitting with, and came to realize why sitting next to both of the photography enthusiasts on the trip was probably a bad idea.

I don't even know what this face is, or why I'm sharing this photo, because it's ridiculous.

Today, we took a walking tour of central Athens, including the National Gardens and the Acropolis. Both are easily within walking distance of the place we are living, which is excellent. We walked past the Temple of Olympian Zeus, though the Gardens, to the Zappeion, which has a neat history. It was commissioned by Evangelis Zappas, and designed by Danish architect Theophil Hansen. It was to be part of the Olympic Games infrastructure, and construction on it started in 1874. It wasn't finished until 1988, by which time Zappas had passed away. His cousin, Konstantinos Zappas, was asked to finish the building. Today, it is mainly used as a conference and exhibition hall, but was used for the Olympics every time they have happened in Greece. It's a cool building.

See? (It isn't actually curved like that... that's just me and my software being bad at panoramas)

After that, we meandered our way towards the Acropolis, passing a hoard of police officers on the way. Tomorrow is Greek Independence Day, and so there was a small parade today, and there will be another one tomorrow. There will also be a lot of things closed for the holiday, but the Acropolis museum will be free, so I may go there. I walked past it today, on our tour of the Acropolis area. It is a bit of a tourist trap, but still a very cool area. There's lots of places to hike, and there's literally another monument or amazing artifact everywhere you look in that area. It's also a fascinating blend of the old and the new, of civilization and of nature. There are street performers and little cafes on one side, and this meadow- and ruin-covered hill leading up to the Parthenon on the other. It's really fantastic. I was able to hike up the hill and little bit, and get an amazing view of the city of Athens and the surrounding towns.

The view from here was really amazing. This picture does not do it justice, by a long shot.

A bit past the Acropolis, the businesses start. There's a whole bunch of little stands where Athenians sell their handmade goods in this little square. Then, past that is Monastiraki, where the Athens flea market is located. This is still a bit of a tourist area, but there were many more Greeks there as well, which was neat. You could buy nearly anything in that area, which was full of small shops, a bit like an open-air outlet store. I didn't end up getting anything, because I don't need much and will wait to get souvenirs for my family and friends, but it was still fun to people watch and window shop in that area. There was also an open square at the end of the flea market, which an amazing example of the layers of history present in this city.

Left to Right: Old Greek Orthodox Church, the Parthenon, and a modern shop

Today was our last day of orientation.Tomorrow is a Sunday, and also a national holiday, so there's nothing scheduled in particular. On Monday, at 9 am, classes start for me, with a walk to (and up) Lycabettus Hill. I'm looking forward to it, and am so glad to be spending the next 10 weeks in this laid-back, historical, eclectic, wonderful city.

Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

(P.S. There are more photos of the places I went and saw today. Click on the Photo Gallery link to find them. Cheers!)