Jason And The Argonauts Here I Come !

Well, it has finally begun!

For so many years just a dream and now my first true holiday out into the vast expanse of Europe. Fifteen days in Greece. Yahoo buckaroo! Land of Jason and the Argonauts, of golden fleeces, of numerous famed gods on mountain tops, of great mythical one eyed beasties, of blazing bouzouki’s and ouzo and courageous feats of plate smashing. My kind of place!

I had no doubts that this was a place I truly needed to see and experience first hand. Well it was certainly different to what I expected and it certainly served to prove to me just how abysmal my knowledge of European history is. Never the less it turned out to be a wonderful living history lesson in itself, a great deal of which shall remain firmly imprinted in my memory.

Bettina and I flew down with Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Athens, (2658km’s as the crow flies) not one of the cheap flights unfortunately as none of the peanut and cola airlines go there as yet. No doubt there will be a surge of them, either with or after the Olympic Games in mid 2004.

We had a real mixture of weather during our stay down there with about 3 days of rain, several with grey skies and howling northerly winds but the remainder was all blue skies and sunshine pushing the temperature up to 22 degrees which for Winter is none to shabby.

It was in the course of the taxi ride to the hotel from the airport that the truly run down nature of Athens and its surrounds became overwhelmingly apparent. The reason for this civilisation in decline I shall illuminate a little later.

The traffic, dust and smog combined with a vigorous pre-Olympics public works program left nothing discernable other than complete and utter bedlam. Mediterranean madhouse. So much of Greece has been destroyed by so many wars, crusades and various other invaders that city after city has been built on the ruins of the previous buildings. The Turks ruled here for 450 years after the Venetians until their Ottoman/Ozmanian Empire was thrown out in 1821.

A good example of the modern day mixed up heritage is the national flag. A blue cross on a white background in the top right hand corner with the remainder covered in horizontal blue and white stripes. The blue and white stripes are from the flag of Bavaria. Southeastern Germany some 2500km’s away to the north. The country has been taken over by Turks, Egyptians, Italians, Germans and even the allied forces in WWII. Empires with names like Roman, Ottoman, Franks, Venetian, Byzantine and Mycenaean have held claim to it at some point in time. The Germanic influence in Greece goes way back, Queen Victoria being Kaiser Wilhelm II grandmother, Queen Victoria’s daughter later married Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm and then Elizabeth II marrying Phillip who is himself a Greek. The extension of European blue blood lines. The English, German and Greek royal families have interbred for years. Princess Diana was the first royal to marry inside the British bloodline for over 300 years.

No sooner had Greece emerged scared and battered from WWII than they were flung into a civil war from 1944 till the end of 1949. The right wing won defeating the Stalinist left. They then had a succession of ultra right / conservative fascist dictators running the place. The most notorious being Papadopolis who in 1971 rolled out the armies tanks in response to a student demonstration, killing over 200 of them. The Chinese were not so original in Tiananmen Square. Not a pretty history even in the 20th century.

We finally arrived at the Divani Apollon Palace & Spa in the southern suburb of Vouliagmeni. The Vaucluse of Athens. Green, leafy sprawling suburb on the beachfront and a regular oasis after the helter-skelter taxi ride to get there. The property is only 2 years old and is touted as the best in Athens. I managed to get 2 free nights there courtesy of Leading Hotels of the World. We were given a really nice room on the top floor with our balcony overlooking the beach below and out across the Saronic Gulf towards the Peloponnese in the west. The room was comfortable but not overly large considering the price tag of 600 euros (AUD$1000) per night. I would never fork that much for a room like that no matter how wealthy I was. Still a freebie is a freebie and all the more enjoyable because of it. They even threw in breakfast which I have to say was really good. Lots of freshly made Danish pastries and exotic fruits with a large pot of coffee makes for a great start to the day. We didn’t bother to eat anything else in house as there were so many cantinas along the beachfront serving traditional Greek cuisine and the hotels menus were to say the least was ridiculously exorbitant. A cheeseburger at the coffee shop style brasserie was approx AUD$28. A cup of coffee, which is always a good indicator was about AUD$9.50. As I found out upon checkout, they even managed to slug me about AUD$20 just for some ice in the room to mix with my duty free supplies. Cheeky sods.

At any rate on both evenings we tramped a little way along the beach path a selected a cantina and set about hitting the menu with gusto. Calamari, surely the nicest I have ever had, taramasalata and garlic dip, chicken and lamb souvlakia etc. etc. etc. All washed down with a liberal quantity of Mythos Hellenic lager beer. Probably the closest thing I have discovered to Victoria Bitter since arriving in Europe. Just magic. The only disturbance to mar the relaxing sound of waves gently rolling up the sands was the squelching rumble inside my own head as I munched and guzzled my way towards olfactory nirvana. As we walked back from a local marina the tide had come in and a lot of the cantina’s table and chairs were sinking at odd angles into the sand as a foot of water swirled around beneath their stricken legs. No one seemed to care. Maybe they all get washed back up the beach by morning and it saves having to wipe them down. I would not put it past them.

Our first full day there was spent doing the traditional tourist trip. Having consulted the doorman Yannis as to best routes into town, we struck out for the nearest bus stop. Public transport is way cheap in Athens. Only 45 cents a ticket to anywhere in town on the bus. Bargain!

We arrived in the central city outside the parliament building where they also have the war memorial. Every Sunday they have the traditional, “Changing of the Guard”, ceremony between the sentry boxes in the front square. Dressed in billowing white shirts, red fez caps, trousers better suited to Sinbad the Sailor and shoes with large upturned toes and red pom-poms attached to the points, they make for an interesting sight. There must have been forty of them in the squad and all shouldering the ubiquitous Lee Enfield .303 rifles. They even had the full military band to march them out of the square and onto the main street where they disappeared off around the side of the parliament.

We then walked down the hill to The Plaka (market) an ancient suburb, which borders the Acropolis and is made up of a higgledy-piggledy maze of cobbled stone lanes and streets. The central area for tourist shops and a myriad selection of cafes, ouzeri taverns and restaurant tavernas. Music and televisions blaring forth from the open doors and the pervading smell of charcoal fires as they sizzle the fresh calamaris and souvlakia. The Greeks are a notoriously loud people. Just about any place you go into has a gigantic television set blaring away up on the wall, the radio turned up to distortion level behind the counter and everyone in the place screaming to be heard over the mind numbing din. With every second car and truck driver leaning ferociously on their horns mixed together with the machine gun staccato of the passing scooters and the general rumble of cars and trucks, it is a cacophony of sound on an immensely grand scale. You really have to watch where you walk as well as the footpaths have holes disappearing into cellar and black looming spaces. Some have a steel mesh grid thrown over the top but a lot are just left open. Seriously dangerous for the unwary. I would not recommend Athens as a place for someone to go to de-stress. However there were small places of sanctuary to be found as we wandered along. Some of the lane ways and the buildings therein were so quaint and rustic that it really was like stepping into bygone century. Nothing compared to what was to come however.