“Okay, we have a pervert in here.” 2-16-07

We’ve been in Athens for 8 days now. I’ve been pretty busy trying to experience all the souvlaki Athens has to offer, which is a lot!, so I haven’t blogged in a while.
1. I really like Athens and I wasn’t expecting too. It’s a pretty smoggy city (which we found out when we left our clothes outside to dry, and they came in smelling worse than before they were washed) but the weather has been really nice. I don’t think I would like it as much in the summer when it’s really hot. It might be a lot grosser then.
2. We went to the National Archaeological Museum this week. It is a huge and very important museum. I was very excited to see a lot of the works. Toumazou told us a story about when the old Chair of the Classics department was working on a paper on the progression of sculpted pubic hair. He asked Toumazou to take pictures for him at the museum but he had a wide angle lens so he couldn’t zoom in and pretend to be taking a picture of the whole statue. He had to get up close and the room was packed. He just imagined everyone thinking “Okay, we have a pervert in here.”
3. Athens Polytechnic Institute is not too far from our hotel. The students are known for their political activism so I’ve seen three pretty large protests since we’ve been here. One was because they are unhappy with the way their school government is run. It is an issue that they are apparently very enthusiastic about. The most recent protest we saw involved people being tied together, and someone in a mask pretending to whip them and lots of chanting and yelling. I’m just waiting to start walking down the road as see a Bush protest. Yesterday Syntagma Square where our hotel is located was closed down for demonstrations and so was the metro system. As a result we’ve also seen a lot of Greek military police. They line the streets at every intersection during demonstrations.
4. I can see the Parthenon and Erectheion from the porch in my hotel room. It’s a pretty spectacular sight when it’s lit up at night. A few days ago we spent the day on the Akropolis. It did pour rain that day, and I’m pretty sure it was acid rain. One entire side of the Parthenon was covered in scaffolding and it has a crane in the middle but it was amazing. I first studied the Parthenon in my sixth grade architecture week project at Village School. I think I’m going to take a seminar next semester only on the Parthenon. So it was a pretty exciting day.
5. In our efforts to find the best souvlaki in Athens, we’ve gone several times to Toumazou’s favorite place. I think it’s high on everyone’s list because I think at any given time when we’re not at sites there is someone from CSA07 at this restaurant. They may have other things on the menu but we’re not really into exploring them. When you go in, you order however many skewers of pork souvlaki you want, and if you want tzatziki or French fries (tzatziki and French fries is my new favorite combination). Then you walk to the grill to pick up your skewers and then next counter for the tzatziki and fries. There is unlimited bread in a big bin in the middle. My favorite is to combine them all in one bite. AnnaMarie has a significant amount of video just of us eating there. It’s a little devastating for all of us to think about leaving it in a few days.
6. AnnaMarie got “euro-ed” a few days ago. She, Brad and I were walking around a Kolonaki, a neighborhood in Athens with lots of little shops, and she decided that it was the day to go all out with a Euro style haircut. The man who cut her hair was referred to as “the master” by everyone else in the shop and she left it entirely in his hands. It turned out well. I considered getting euro-ed as well but I think I had all the dramatic haircuts in September I can take for a while.
7. Jeanna, AnnaMarie and I (2 Classics majors and a Theater major) had a dramatic reading of Aristophanes’ Birds last night. The reading gets a little tedious sometimes so we decided to mix it up. It was only a problem when one of us had to play two characters in the same scene and we were answering our own questions. We went out for tomato salad to celebrate at the end.
8. One Valentine’s Day we all went out to dinner together and we got to meet Toumazou’s sister who lives in Athens. Afterwards a few of us went to an AEK -Athletiki Enosis Konstantinoupoleos (Athletic Union of Konstantinople, the Athenian Pro team) soccer game at the 2004 Olympic stadium. It was pretty hilarious- the Greeks and French are very into soccer. AEK lost 2-0 to the Paris team and with every bad call we learned how to give the finger in Greece. There were three young brothers sitting below us. They were fighting and pulling on each other’s mullets. I think the youngest one lost a bet and he had to move up and try to talk to the Americans behind them. After the game, we packed into the metro with every other AEK fan that had been at the game. I never need to get that close with a bunch of people again. It was really unpleasant!