random thoughts on athens

Way overdue - something I completely blame on tin can woman's april and with that a sad lack of inspiration - my random impressions of Athens. As in Greece. Which is the place where we went, back then. Beware of longish post.

: : From entering the Athens airport to leaving the same - a whole lot of smoking going on. Everywhere. Unhealthy, non-fresh and plain nasty. I may be naive, but I really thought most modern countries had come much further than that these days...

: : A very beautiful city - reminding me of Barcelona and Berlin - , multi layered, the mix of the omnipresent ancient, the history, the mythology, the gardens, the past ones prime withered old buildings and the top modern architecture is absolutely fascinating. On many levels.

: : I still mourn the fact that I never got to, as planned, study Greek in high school. It's such a beautiful language. Even if the Greek alphabet is parent to the Cyrillic alphabet (and me once upon a time studied Russian for years), I didn't feel it was that obvious how to interpret Greek signs and letters. Such luck that most everything was translated into English then.

: : The quite surreal scene with taxi drivers quarreling over us customers already in the backseat of the car - is this the Athens way? I am indeed a long long way from home - and ended with us being so totally overcharged for a 10 minutes drive. I later read in a local brochure that it's (unfortunately) very common for Athenian taxi drivers to try and earn even a week's wages from one drive with foreign tourists. I'm pleased that when taking a taxi to the airport the driver charged quite a bit less than we had expected instead.

: : Everywhere, big and small indentations on cars. I guess they drive a bit differently than we up north.

: : An amazing looking, trains running on time, effective subway system. So clean, so pretty, so modern (apart from some of the train sets). And with reasonable ticket prices. It really, really put the very less than clean, shabby, run down with constant delays, expensive tickets (if you don't have a so called monthly card) Stockholm subway system to great shame. I don't care if the train sets here are modern, there's a whole lot to be wished for as far as service and cleanliness go.

: : Things are quite expensive for visitors from non-euro countries.

: : It's an easy to get around, accessible city, by foot, subway - yeah! - bus or tram.

: : Dill, dill, dill - there may be a time and place for dill in food (though I can't think of when really), but not like the Greek way.

: : Way too little vegetarian options on the menus. When I have Greek food in Sweden I think it's fresh, good ingredients, flavourful and lovely. It's ages since I was in Greece and I have no recollection of the food back then - and granted I may have been less discerning as a teenager than now... - but I was just so very disappointed with what was offered. With one meal's exception, where were all the great Greek salads, the halloumi, the feta, the fresh vegetables, the fruit? And yes, of course we searched and had meals off the regular tourist tracks too.

: : Dito on the hotel breakfast. A total lack of vegetables and a whole lot of cakes and cookies. Who eat such things in the morning?

: : And what's up with the sugar overload in sweets and desserts and coffee? Gosh, that was just so... not... nice.

: : It was horrible with all the dead lambs with scalped heads and bulging eyes being roasted in the streets outside restaurants during (Greek) Easter. Not that I think it's less horrible when one observes that behaviour in Sweden or elsewhere. Nasty wherever, whenever.

: : My one food love during the trip was the simply amazing freshly squeezed fruit drinks, orange, fruit punch, banana, peach, available at most every café and restaurant. Now that's making the most of fresh and ripe local ingredients. I could live on those (and probably did).

: : A glass of water served with every order, without having to ask for it, in cafés and restaurants. Thumbs up.

: : The plethora of stray dogs and cats left me incredibly and totally sad. As well as made me think of how we keep our pets in Sweden. Those overall thoughts in a very own post to come.

: : I think it's quite strange that in many countries with warmer climate people tend to wear a whole lot more clothes than climate necessary. A lot of clothes and a lot of black clothes. In the hot spring sun.

: : Athenian women seem to care a lot about their hair and hairstyles. They look good. And their hair seem to be of a quite enviable quality compared to our in general sadly lack of oomf thin Scandinavian hair.

: : The swoon factor regarding intellectual men with grey temples charm is rather high in Athens.

: : Greek fashion and street style is just very not... me.

: : The Athenians seem to be friendly and accommodating, in general.

: : But the problem with countries, cities depending on tourism is not only that they are very touristy - I loath ingratiating, obtrusive throw ins and cringing sale clerks - if the tourists fail to meet the expectations, asking for reasonable substitutes, questioning things (in a polite manner) the ingratiating behaviour can quickly turn snotty and quite unpleasant.

: : It was actually a very good thing to (accidentally) travel to Athens during the Greek Easter, by comparison a liberating lack of hoards of tourists and a whole lot of free entrance to different attractions and must-sees.

: : The scent of Athens for me is the enchanting, wonderful all-embracing scent of orange blossoms in spring.

There will be more posts on Athens, Greece. And, needless to say, photos. If you just can't wait til the photos appear in blog, then you might want to have a look at Flickr.