Plateia Syntagma

I came to Athens' busiest square only to find out where the X95 bus left for the airport. While I was here, a changing of the guard broke out in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Parliament building.

I had a passing familiarity with the evzone soldiers' fustanella skirts (400 pleats ― one for each year under Turkish rule) and pompommed shoes, but the slow high-kick choreography? No, I was not prepared for this level of Balkan/oriental strangeness. Two and half weeks ago this was the site of a pitched battle as police dodged firebombs during a protest over soaring energy costs. Greek politics are wild. Check out Costa-Gavras' 1969 movie "Z" if you haven't already. It's in French for some reason.

Anyway, if you have an early flight, here's where to catch the bus. (The metro doesn't start running till 5 a.m. and a taxi ride before then will cost $70.) A guy in this kiosk will sell you a ticket for 6E or so. It's in front of the Chinese restaurant at the top of the hill on the right side of the square as you face Parliament.

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Parting observations

The city has a lovely, decaying quality — both doomed and beautiful. I suspect that inheritors of many properties are waiting for just the right offer. Athens is the size of Chicago but in many ways remains a village. As for the rest of Greece? After emerging from bankruptcy, it is back in the EU's good graces. Yet prices are uncomfortably high, tax evasion is real problem, and people continue to arrive on little boats. The capital is an intoxicating place. Waiting for an elevator that is just wide enough for my elbows, I hear Arabic and Indian music leaking from my neighbors' doors. I want so much for them to invite me inside, offer me tea and an uncommon biscuit. Yes, I have an active fantasy life. So many dogs to pet! I home in on the handsomest breed, telling this guy his beagle was well-marked. "Thank you. But he is a little crazy." You don't say! Half the traffic in the city center involves small-displacement motorcycles carrying puffy tourquoise food...

I arrive

Piles of rocks

The Agora, where Socrates and Aristotle held forth, where the Apostle Paul preached and the terms of democracy were hammered out, is a grassy park and pleasant place to wander around. For the visitor on a tight schedule it can seem to be a confusing hodgepodge of ruins. I suggest setting the details aside and chilling in the shade of its olive, cypress and poplar trees. It was also the site of a busy marketplace. In a discussion of phobias in his book "On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored," Adam Phillips scrapes away at the roots of the word "agoraphobia." The agora was "that ancient place where words and goods and money were exchanged," he writes. Confronted with open space, "the agoraphobic fears that something nasty will be exchanged." That's a big ten-four. I made my stroll with a young Brit who had arrived the day before. Her phone and credit cards were stolen at the airport's metro platform, where this travelog began . Luckily she...

336 hours in Athens

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