“Is this it?” I muttered rather disappointedly as we clambered out of the metro station near Athens’ Monastiraki Square. Somehow, in my dreams, Greece didn’t have blackened old buildings reminiscent of Mumbai, raucous Turkish bazaars radiating from the square and worst of all, the familiar sign of McDonalds advertising pita wrap combos. Then I looked up and caught my first glimpse of the Parthenon high above the city sitting like a sentinel atop the Acropolis Hill. Neither the pictures I’d seen, nor the ones in my mind had prepared me for the sight. Set against purple sky and the setting sun, the sight of that ancient temple was breathtaking.
Around us, as the evening dimmed, lights were slowly beginning to come on. In the cover of merciful darkness, Athens was taking on a different persona. Pedestrian streets off the Monastiraki Square, lined with cafes (or tavernas, as the Greeks would say), were filling up. Passing the evening in a taverna is an important part of Greek social life, we learnt. Judging by the numbers of people thronging the tables, we realized that very few stay home in the evenings. “Let’s not go to the hotel yet,” I suggested to my husband. The unique East-meets-West charms of Athens had insidiously worked their magic on us, and we hadn’t even realized when.
The balmy evening deepened to night, as Spiro, the friendly taverna-keeper came to our table for a chat. When he heard this was our first evening in Greece, he clapped his hands in delight. “This is wonderful,” he said, “let’s drink to your holiday!” said he. The Greeks, said he, drink Ouzo or Oyzo, a potent anise drink. He poured out it out into squat ice-filled tumblers and the clear liquor turned milky as it flowed over the ice. “It’s Lion’s Milk, very potent indeed!” said he, “so sip slowly.” I found it sweetly pleasant, and gulped it down thirstily. The second glass went down even better than the first one, and when I discovered that our waiter loved Bollywood movies and Mithun Chakravarty, I toasted him with a third. “Remember,” my husband’s voice said from far away, “we still have to lug our bags to the hotel.” But I’d been struck by what Greeks fondly call `white lightening’, and barely managed one foot ahead of the next during what seemed like an unfairly long walk to our hotel.
Probably as he had to carry the entire luggage (and me as well, but I don’t remember that), my husband was quite unsympathetic the next morning. He woke me up really early, flung open the curtains and declared, “let’s walk up to the Parthenon!” There’s an unearthly brightness in the light in Greece which its almost white rocks reflect, but somehow I couldn’t appreciate it very much that morning. But as I gradually came to life, the walk seemed like a great idea. Plaka, the area where our hotel was located, was quite picturesque and situated just below the Acropolis Hill. In fact we’d chosen it for the fact that it was walking distance from all of Athens’ sights.
Till the 1800s, Plaka was all that Athens comprised of. Today, many of its wonderful old buildings have crumbled into oblivion. Today it’s a posh area with houses, shops and hotels, although some old buildings and older temples still remain. We walked around there that morning, thinking there was no hurry to make the gentle climb up to the Parthenon. Then we realized our mistake – as we reached the bottom of the hill, we saw huge numbers of tourists descending from air-conditioned buses. “Next time, we’ll climb up at seven in the morning,” said my husband, and I agreed. For as early as 9.30 am, there were serpentine queues of tourists surging ahead all the way up to the temple of Athena Nike, also known as the Winged Victory. The good thing, we realized, was that our tickets were valid for three days, so we could return at leisure, and at no extra cost.
In spite of the hordes, the view from the top of the Acropolis Hill was fantastic. We realized why it had been inhabited as long back as in 5000 BC. Its sheer sides and height enabled it to overlook the sea as well as the plains of Attica, arming it with superb natural defenses. After we’d crossed the Prophylia, the 5th century BC gate that leads into the Parthenon complex, we were riveted by the sight of the Erechtheion, tomb of Erechtheus the legendary king of Athens. Six graceful kores, maidens, held up its ceilings.
Legend has it that this is where Poseidon and Athena quarreled about who should be the patron deity of Athens. He struck his spear on the floor (there’s a hole in the floor and ceiling of the Erechtheion where this supposedly happened) and drew forth a spring of sweet water. Athena conjured up an olive tree, representing control over Attica’s fertile plains. He lost and she won, and Athens got its name.
There’s something about the Parthenon that’s difficult to describe. It’s old, sure. It’s made of marble, but then so is the Taj. Was it the wonderful creaminess of the stone, or the delicacy of the friezes on its roof or the superb grace of its architecture? I don’t quite know. What I do know is that as we stood there, I thought I’d never seen any structure that fired my imagination more. Sadly, we couldn’t go close enough to see its friezes, let alone inside. But then, even in its heyday, only the high priest and kings were allowed in to pay obeisance to the colossal statue of Athena made by the great sculptor Phidias. Locals and tourists all know what the statue looked like, even though it doesn’t exist anymore – every touristy cup, fridge magnet and t shirt in Athens bears her image.
The architectural grace of the Parthenon was amplified when we saw the relatively newer temple of Hephaistos on our way down. Its pillars were stout and inelegant compared to those of the Parthenon, and the overall effect was nowhere near as pleasing to the eye. I’d read somewhere that Iktinos, the architect of the Parthenon, was a master of optical illusion. The external columns of the Parthenon are actually slightly thicker in the middle (a device known as entasis). When viewed from a distance, the columns give the illusion of being absolutely straight.
So enthralled were we by Greek antiquities, we spent hours pottering about in the National Archeological Museum, which, incidentally was the only place we visited in Athens that we couldn’t walk to. One of Athens’ principal charms lies in its numerous walkers zones. Most of its key sights are linked by pedestrians-only walkways, including its four main squares – Monastiraki, Omonia, Syntagma and Kolonaki. The plan, we learnt, is to create pedestrianise areas all the way up to the main stadium, which, incidentally hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
At the same time, the Greek government is going all out to extend its bus and metro networks. One evening, as we stopped to rest our feet in the ancient Agora, I saw a pile of rubble near the metro tracks. Ruins in the Agora had evidently been sacrificed to make way for Athens’ state-of-the-art metro. We sat a while, watching the trains go past those incredibly ancient relics, thinking that nowhere else in the world could the old and the new co-exist with as little fuss, as they do in Athens.
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