Strike

Athens is starting to smell.  The garbage men have gone on strike and the dumpsters are overflowing with trash.  It is quite disgusting as you can smell the garbage wherever you go.

<-----Here is one of the several dumpsters that I walk past on my way to school.  They are all as overflowing as this, if not more so.


The one thing about strikes in Greece is that they are generally announced ahead of time.  We get an email from CYA a day or two before the strike so we can be prepared.  Generally it is the transportation people who are striking, so we hear that the metro won't run to the airport all day on the 24 or that from 11-4 the buses won't be running.  Fortunately this does not affect us much as we walk everywhere.  But when the garbage men strike, then there are problems.

These strikes are happening quite frequently.  The reason for the garbage man strike is that Athens is considering raising the retirement age for them, which they don't like as the job is labor intensive and they get to retire early.

Agora

So today was my last on site class at the Agora.  Here at DIKEMES you can take archaeology classes where you actually visit the sites that are talked about in class.  The Athenian Agora was the public gathering place back in the day.  There were temples, statues, stoas and a notice board.  This place was one of the most important places in Ancient Athens, which is why my class spent so much time there.  The Sacred Way went right through here, which the Panathenaic festival of Athens that celebrated their patron goddess Athena followed on their way to the Acropolis.

While at the Agora, my class discussed the various stages of the Agora, from the Golden Age of Perikles to the Romans taking over and building a new "agora" which was far closer to a forum.  Every single time we were at the Agora, one of the wild dogs of the site decide to hang out with us.  He even followed us to the Roman Agora which was a distance away form the Greek one.  We did nothing to encourage him, but every time we entered the site, there he was.

One of the things about Diamant, my professor, is that he makes us sit down when he talks to us.  Not only is this resting, but helps when seeing the plans of various buildings that were at one time in the Agora.  The only problem with this is that the Greeks are very touchy about their heritage and so do not like us very much, and sometimes someone sits on an important piece of marble, that looks like all the other pieces that everyone else is sitting on.  I have no idea how they distinguish which stones are important but they manage to and yell at us.  Fortunately Diamant can handle the guards pretty well, even taking us to places that have "do not enter" signs.

This is a view of the ruined Roman gymnasium.  Previously it was the Odeium of Agrippa.  In the back is the Stoa of Attalos, donated by King Attalos of Pergaman, it was rebuilt in the '50s.  Right in front of it is the Sacred Way.

Uprising

On November 17, 1973 Students from the Polytechnic School in Athens rose up and overthrew the military junta that had been ruling since 1967.  This day is celebrated every year with a march from the school up to the US Embassy.  The US supported the military dictatorship, which is why Americans need to b weary on this day.  The march itself is peaceful, but the anarchists at the end of the line are the ones who stir up trouble and start the riot that happens.  My ethnography professor says as long as we stay away from the end of the line and the people who keep their faces covered (as well as the police) then we would be golden.

Winter

So apparently winter is upon us here in Athens.  It has been a miserable day today, with on and off rain and thunder and lightening, and indication of the change in season.  Fortunately, I had no where to go except Starbucks, which was the biggest indicator that it is winter here in Greece.  They now have all the Christmas displays, cups, and music in the store to get you in the holiday mood.  Which is strange because Christmas is not nearly as big a deal here as it is in the states.  They still celebrate it, but Easter is the big one here.

Another way to tell that it is winter is the attire of the natives.  Since space is limited in a typical Greek apartment, they have ways to store everything just so.  High above the closet are cabinets.  These cabinets are high enough that you only want to get into them once or twice a year.  So what goes into them?  Off season clothing.  Winter clothes are stored in here and as soon as it hits a certain point in temperature the summer clothes go up and the winter ones come down.

This does not make much sense to me because I am seeing a bunch of people wearing down coats and it's 70 degrees.  However, I must not make much sense to them because since it is 70 degrees I am wearing shorts.  Which is why I get a lot of stares of people while walking down the street.  But by now I'm used to it because you get a lot of stares here anyway as I guess we are so obviously American.

Here is the storage space (notice the height of the doorway in relation to the cabinets):

      <----- Cabinets

When in Rome...

Over fall break I met up with my parents in Rome, the capital of the once great empire.  It was really fun, but you get "antiquitied out" by the end.  The Vatican, Pompeii, Coliseum, Forum, and catacombs of San Callisto are great, but looking at them in only 3 days is exhausting.  The food was good, but living in the US makes you used to eating Italian (or pseudo Italian in some cases).  There were so many tourists it was crazy!  It seemed like the Brits made up a lot of the tourists.  The problem with the numerous tourists was the lack of control the security guards had over the people.  In the Sistine Chapel the rules are no photos and no talking.  However, they let in so many people that everyone was talking and taking photos.  So they would shush people and then shout "No Pictures!" Not the way the Greeks do it at all.

St. Peter's Basilica 

Outside of the Coliseum.  There was an hour wait in line for tickets, but fortunately we had a Roma Pass that allowed us to walk past the line and go right in. 

Inside the Coliseum, where the cheap seats are.

The Roman Forum

The Terracotta Army that was in the Forum for some reason

The Forum of Pompeii with Vesuvius in the background.

The mosaic in the front hall of one of the homes in Pompeii.  It says "Cave Canem" (Beware of Dog)

Field Trip!

The past two weeks have been crazy.  Dikemes organized the field trip for all students to visit some important sites in the Peloponnese as well as Delphi.  We saw Mycenae, Epidaurs, Frankthi Cave, Mystra, Sparta, and Olympia. The sites were amazing and very hard to describe.  It was nice seeing real things growing as the Peloponnese is quite a fertile area. The weather was perfect for this trip and I learned so much.  Here are some pics:

My Professor lecturing on the megalomania of the Mycenaeans in front of their bridge. 

The view from Mycenae 

The ruins of the healing center Epidaurus that was centered around the healing god Asklepius, son of Apollo.

The theatre at Epidaurus, with perfect acoustics and if you drop a coin in the center of the theatre you can hear it all the way up at the top.

Frankthi Cave, where the early inhabitants of Greece lived up until around 3000 BCE and Professor Diamant worked on the site in the 60's when it was first discovered.  Quite the important discovery.

The view of fortified Mystra, a site from the Byzantine era near Sparta, which I did not include a picture as the ancient site is no more and the only thing now is the modern city built in the 1800's. 

The Olympic Stadium (the fourth one) at the site of Olympia where the Olympic Games started in 776 BCE.

The most important site at Delphi, the temple of Apollo.