Saturday 14th January 1984
A good night’s sleep and we were out on the town at 10:00 hrs. We started with breakfast on Sintagma Square and went on to wander aimlessly around the city. Our main objective was to book a ferry to Israel. The cheapest quote we were given was 6,460 Drachma (142 Drachma = £1 Sterling, so £46 quid), but we would have to wait until Thursday for the ship.
We stumbled on the Monastiraki Flea Market and spent ages browsing amongst the stalls selling fashion and second-hand clothing. George bought a good leather coat, bargaining down from 1,200 Drachma to 450 Drachma with a friendly old boy with only one hand.
At 14:00 hrs. the semi-permanent stalls started closing so we broke off from perusing the army surplus and found a coffee place on Kotzia Square, which is a square in the city centre. The square retains several characteristics of 19th-century local neoclassical architecture, such as the City Hall of the Municipality of Athens and the National Bank of Greece Cultural Center. It is named after Konstantinos Kotzias, former Mayor of Athens.
I bought “Which Bike?” magazine as we were interested to see the latest developments in the motorcycle market, written up in excellent journalistic style. It inspired George to write travel articles for motorcycle magazines in later life.
The sky was blue, and the sun was shining despite the cold, excellent weather for photography. Every street seemed to hold some building of interest or a classic ruin. Many were visible from afar, being situated on the isolated hills around the city.
By 15:00 hrs. everything was closed, and the city was dead except for the newspaper kiosks. The kiosk, "Periptero" in Greek, is an important part of Greeks everyday life for almost a century. It is the equivalent of the newsstand that can be found in many countries around the world, with the difference that it is present in every major street of all cities and villages in Greece.
George was tormented by a magazine featuring in-depth articles on Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton but written in Greek. Unintelligible to us, the Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late ninth or early eighth century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the first alphabetic script in history to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants.
We walked back to the hostel via the Academy, the University, the National Library (all side by side) and the road lined by orange trees through the National Garden. George tried eating one of the windfall oranges, but it was too sour.
Youngsters played football by the statue of the discus thrower, a sculpture that impresses with its movement and the size of the athlete’s body. It is opposite the Panathenaic Stadium and reaches 2 meters in height. The discus thrower is standing, with his hands extended raising the discus behind his head before throwing it. It was made by Konstantinos Dimitriadis in 1927.
Back in the dormitory we listened to music cassette tapes until the cinema started at 19:10 hrs. We went out prior to this, after I had stripped off and had a shower in spite of the freezing temperature. Luckily, 20 Drachma provided enough hot water to last as I washed my greasy hair.
We killed the last half hour before the film in a noisy fast-food place on Imitou. It was Saturday night, so youths roared about or posed on their motorbikes. These ranged from Honda 50’s to huge trail bikes and even some tiny fun bikes.
Teenage girls were dressed up to the nines (To the nines. "To the nine" is an English idiom meaning "to perfection" or "to the highest degree" or to dress "buoyantly and high class".) and looking for romance.
We left “the boys” posing on the street corners and went into the sinemá (cinema) on Efthidou. We saw the movie “Breathless”. This 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard's "A Bout de Soufflé" was savagely attacked by critics. Jesse (He's the last man on earth any woman needs... and every woman wants! - played by Richard Gere) has to get out of Las Vegas quickly, and steals a car to drive to L.A. On the way he shoots a policeman. When he makes it to L.A. he stays with Monica, a pretty French architect he has only known for a few days. As the film progresses, the police get closer to him, and the crimes escalate.
We were unimpressed by the film, but the crowds were fighting to get in for the next performance as we battled to get out of the auditorium. It would seem that nookie films (movies of a sexual nature) were all the rage here.
Athens is a pleasant, well laid out city with an arty air that I would expect from Paris or Vienna. It is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence started somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennium B.C.
Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent, and in particular the Romans.
In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Greece. It was a far cry from the crowded, more primitive hustle and bustle of Thessaloniki.
We returned to bed, happy to see that our drug-crazed roommate was not in evidence. This afternoon he had been feverishly leafing through the huge pile of newspapers mounting up on the shelf behind his bed.
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