Five days in Athens

MANILA, Philippines - When you arrive in Athens, the first thing you notice is the Parthenon (see picture). This is the big ruined temple everyone sees on postcards, art books, etc. So you think to yourself, Wow, I sure am lucky to have stumbled on this great view of the Parthenon. So you dutifully take two dozen pictures. You move on.

An hour later, the second thing you notice in Athens is also the Parthenon, now from a different angle. So you think to yourself, Wow, I sure am smart to have discovered yet another great angle of this world-famous building. So you dutifully take one dozen pictures.

Five days and a hundred pictures later, I finally realized that, actually, almost every corner of this city has good-to-awesome views of the Parthenon.

Which is just as well, because in terms of Famous Tourist Attractions, Athens is a bit of a One-Hit Wonder (though, as you will learn if you keep reading, there is a lot to like in this sunny and friendly Mediterranean metropolis).

Café Society. Important tip: as soon as you hit Athens, head straight for the Monastiraki Square metro station. This is one end of the part of Athens that counts.

On the day I arrived, it was a national holiday. A few people were demonstrating against proposed austerity programs. Half of Athens was home sleeping. The other half was lounging at sidewalk cafés. You could see teenagers, couples, businessmen, and what must have been great-great-grandmothers all happily chirping at each other and nursing one espresso for over two hours, thus depriving paying tourists like me of a place to sit.

Past the flea market, a vswath of sidewalk cafés continued for miles, more or less forming a crescent cradling the whole west-south side of the Acropolis. (“Parthenon” is the temple ruin; “Acropolis” is the hill it stands on). It was between 2 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon when I strolled by, and almost everywhere I looked, every last seat was taken.

Finally I found a rooftop restaurant which — surprise! — had a view of the Parthenon, and there I ate grape leaves or something while ruminating over Greek culture.

Mythology Lesson. Athens used to be just a little village on the hillsides of the Acropolis. Legend has it that there was a contest between Poseidon (the god of the sea) and Athena (the goddess of wisdom) over who would be the patron of the village. Poseidon offered the horse, which impressed all the men. Athena gave the olive tree, and all the women thought that was awesome.

But many of the men got on horses and rode off to war, so the women carried the vote. And it’s been downhill for humanity ever since. (Okay, I just made this part up. The rest is genuine legend.)

One fine day (around 450 BC), the people of Athens got it into their heads to build this gigantic temple to Athena. (We are back to fact now.) It took only 10 years to erect, and no one knows whose idea it was, but it is an easy winner for Most Influential Building of All Time. There are many fascinating facts about the Parthenon but here are the two that come to mind: (1) the columns are not perfectly vertical but were deliberately leaned inwards to give an illusion of greater height; and (2) if you visit the Acropolis at midday under the searing Greek sun, you are not very bright.

Museum of Naked Greek Men. The Greek government recently completed the New Acropolis Museum at great expense, and regardless of what I say you will go there. So go. But the sad truth is that this museum does not display much creativity or showmanship. Most of it is a rather dry, mechanical explanation of all the marble panels which go around the Parthenon (or, more precisely, went, since a Venetian gunner blew up half the temple around 1700 AD, and then an English ambassador carted off much of the rest, ca. 1800 AD).

For museums, I much preferred the Museum of Cycladic Art. The Cyclades are the smaller islands in the Aegean, but this compact museum covers a lot more terrain. On the third floor, I especially recommend the introduction to Greek mythology, and some visitors will no doubt appreciate the pictures and films showing cavorting naked men (see picture). It’s okay, you can look some more. It’s Culture.

More Ruins and an Orange Blossom. The Cycladic Art Museum is near Kolonaki Square, which as far as I could figure out is the center of chic Athens, with some pretty hot-looking babes slowly fluttering their eyelashes at passers-by. I was unable to get a seat at any café there, either, even on a regular working day. So I kept going, trying to thread my way to the top of Lykavittos Hill to see the panoramic views of the city. Let me give you a tip. In maps of Athens, some streets are really streets, but others are really and truly stairways, and ascend for hundreds of meters. Such was the route up Lykavittos. Was the view worth it? Let me not spoil the surprise; go find out for yourself. And take the funicular.

Everywhere I went in Athens, there was a delicious smell. It wasn’t a sex smell; it wasn’t a food smell. It was just — delicious. After some investigation I realized that it came from all the orange blossoms on trees planted everywhere around the city (and doesn’t in any way resemble the smell of orange peel). I eventually took to stopping beneath trees just to enjoy the scent, and kept doing this until my third day, when a wet orange fell on me.

Filipinos in Spirit. Around Athens most of the ruins date back to the ancient Greeks. Except for those that date back to the ancient Romans. There’s the Temple of Zeus, the Temple of Hephaestus, the Greek Agora, the Roman Agora, the Keramika, and so on, and so on. But the truth is, if you’ve seen one Greco or Roman classical building, you’ve more or less seen them all. For example, if you’ve been to the New York City Public Library or Blenheim Palace or Knott’s Berry Farm, you can pretty much consider most Greco-Roman ruins optional. (I hope no ancient Greeks read this. Which would be sort of spooky.)

Democracy was invented in Athens sometime around 500 BC (if we discount the Poseidon-Athena story, which sounds fishy anyway). As inventions go, this was a pretty well-documented one, and beyond dispute.

Too bad that in practical terms, the Athenians never benefited much from democracy (“rule by the people”). A hundred years later, around 400 BC they lost a big war with Sparta, which was a dictatorship (“rule by the ruler”). Fifty years later, the Athenians and Spartans together lost a big war to Macedonia, which was also a dictatorship. Then all the Greeks together got conquered by the Romans, who behind a republican veneer were at heart a plutocracy (“rule by the powerful and greedy”). And so it went on through the centuries until about 1820 when after 400 years of occupation by Ottomans, the Greeks finally regained their independence. Having backed a losing horse (democracy) for 2,000 years, they finally opted for monarchy. And with no monarchs of their own, they sent all the way to Bavaria for a new king who had no relation whatsoever to Greece. Regrettably, this didn’t work out well, either...

The result of all these political and military misfortunes is that Greeks are a cheerful and philosophically inclined people, who laugh freely, don’t take their troubles too seriously, and seem to enjoy life a lot more than some other nationalities. In brief, the Greeks are the Filipinos of Europe. (To my Greek friends, not that I have many, this is a compliment. Really.)

I Will Not Be Held Responsible. Like Filipinos, Greeks eat well. But if all you know about Greek cuisine is what you learned at a food court in a mall in California, you need to think again. In America you hear of souvlaki (barbecue on pita bread). But do not order souvlaki in Athens because the Greeks do not know how to cook it. (By the way, neither do the Americans). If you wanted barbecue, you should have stayed in the Philippines.

Perhaps you know of the Greek national dish, moussaka, which is eggplant with other stuff. But moussaka is not a good thing to order in Athens, either, because the waiters will make fun of you behind your back.

Do not order souvlaki or moussaka in Greece. I will not be held responsible for what happens if you do.

Food for the Soul. On the other hand, if you want a really good meal and the respect of the restaurant staff, first start with fried peppers, which will come in enough olive oil to fry a chicken. The taste is Out of Sight. It’s good for your health, too.

Then have either exohiko or kleftiko. Exohiko is deboned meat in a whole piece, filled with spices and cheese, and slow-braised all day, not to be confused with a kind of empanada made with shredded exohiko. Kleftiko is meat coated with spices and olive oil, then baked several hours in a clay pot with the lid on tight to hold in the steam. Because of the time-consuming cooking processes, you will not find these in any Greek restaurant in a mall, and both dishes are so delicious, so Greek, yet somehow still “mainstream international” in flavor, that you will seriously consider marrying the restaurant owner, if only to enjoy these culinary pleasures again and again.

The restaurant where I had my exohiko was not much more than a hole in the wall, and had no English name. Its Greek name looks like this: IOAKh. For some time I pronounced it “lo-ak” in my mind, until finally realizing that the O was not an O but a O (theta). Which makes the name “Ithaca.” What do you know? Finally something useful came out of my calculus classes in high school. Or was it algebra?

This is a serious recommendation. Ithaca Restaurant is directly across the street from the Metropolis Greek Orthodox Cathedral, the most important church in Greece, and a four-minute walk from Syntagma Square, the center of town. The food is spectacular and the proprietress cute and friendly (and single; she turned me down). You will surely walk right by there in the course of your spiritual pilgrimage, unless you foolishly fritter away all your time in museums trying to find pictures of naked men.

Hotel with a Flaw. By the way, I found a great hotel over the Internet. It was located close to the center of town and right beside a metro station (which saved me 150 euros in taxi fare to and from the airport). Its rooftop restaurant had a clear view of the Parthenon, and the staff were not only charming, they also agreed with me about the souvlaki. It was, in some respects, a fairly satisfactory hotel.

Unfortunately, on my fourth day, without warning, they failed to deliver the Herald Tribune to my room. Hence, with heavy heart, I cannot, in conscience, recommend this hotel to you or even mention its name. Thanks. I knew you would understand.

However, if you want to see the birthplace of Western civilization, don’t mind a little hill-climbing, and have the good sense to stay away from the souvlaki, you will enjoy Athens, and the Athenians.