I went on a five-and-a-half-hour food tour of central Athens and need to process it all in the next day or so. In the meantime, please accept my favorite unrelated image from today's walk, in which my camera aperture met a bodiless kiosk vendor suspended in an aperture of his own, in the scrappy Omonia neighborhood. I have since returned to Omonia, and it has an undeniable energy not easily reproduced in this mostly laid-back metropolis.
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 Chin...
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