July and August are typically summer months in Europe. 2007 was no exception. I know; I was there and summer was most definitely out in full force. There were, in fact, many places of notable roasty-toastiness experienced by myself and the husband on our sojourn but none that sticks in the mind with such sweaty lethargy as dear old (indeed, ancient!) Athens.
Geography and latitudinal placement converged on this ancient city to make it a sweltering sauna of ruins, marble and grime. I'm not partial to saunas or grime, but it seems those little gems never make the advertising brochures, or the super adventure stories you hear from well-traveled folk. So here I am, suitably well traveled for the bank account to call me home and armed with some hard-hitting hot truth I'm going to share with you.
Marble. We've seen it in expensive bench-tops and pompous old busts. There's an amount of elitism that colours our perception when we see a place adorned with marble. Not so in Athens. Bricks in buildings and paving are replaced by marble. Concrete steps down to the underground train stations are marble. There is no sand on the beaches but marble pebbles. The gravel on the walkways up to the ancient ruins is marble. School-yard games of marbles are not played with glass balls, but with marble. Holigans avenging themselves throw, not bricks, but marble through the windows of their enemy.
It's everywhere.
Like a noxious weed, only mineral, not vegetable. And the bloody bugger is reflective! So, if you weren't hot already, you have the addition of the sun's burny bright rays bouncing up at you from below as well.
And as well as being a public nuisance and halving the burn time there's the added bonus of it's wear-away-ability and slipperiness. With Aristophanes and Plato and all their mates and all of everyone's family trees ever since running up and down all the pretty marble steps since the dawn of whenever, they're no longer flat. Quite warn away in some places. Once, while resting and hydrating ourselves in a much coveted pool of shadow, we witnessed a sweet defenseless young Asian woman slip and fall, painfully and embarrassingly hurting her ankle.
As if to mock her we came upon a European woman (possibly Italian) prancing 'round the Acropolis in crazy heels. How she got there, or whether she escaped in full possession of both of her legs is anyone's guess.
My only thought is that perhaps she was a professionally-trained, well-paid stunt woman there to inspire and annoy...
Like many much-visited spots the Acropolis boasted a teeming horde of hawkers and sly, over-friendly salesmen. The common object of sale were parasols. There was much to covet in a parasol; their bright colours gave a feeling of laughter and holiday gaiety rarely available outside of Lesbos, and when placed against the shoulder of a young woman there was a sense, by me anyway, of that lady being cared for; treasured; loved- lest the sun should shine down upon her and taint her precious face. Obviously the salesmen were not sly as they could have been for there was a considerable absence of hand-held fanning devices, of both the manual and electronic varieties. Though with heat like we experienced it is quite possible the entire stock of fans had sold out!
Grime was ever-present, but definitely exacerbated by comparison to the gloriously clean, marble underground train stations freshly chiseled into the Ancient soil for the Olympic Games in 2004. It wasn't horrific, but it felt like the whole place had spent a week playing a jolly exciting game of backgammon and not bothered to shower afterwards.
Another contributing factor to grime issue may well have been the blanket ban of toilet paper in toilets and the scent related. After wiping the toileter was required to place soiled paper into the wee bin (lid? no, sorry) beside the loo. To counteract the immanent stink in this hot humid environment there is an sickly sweet artificial scent pervading any and all ablutions facilities.
But, all in all, the stinking hot, griming place is jolly old and, if you're in the neighbourhood, do swing by. But don't get carried away, you'll only need one day, possibly one night if you can't avoid it. And perhaps when you go they will have finished the restoration of the Parthenon and have taken down the scaffolding and shade cloth that got in the way of all the photos but none of the sun.
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1 comment:
strange about the toilet paper - I thought that was only in Asia? Same thing in thailand. But they had a ladel too so you could ladel in water for flushing. mmmm.
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