Athens Friday 7th March

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This morning was planning morning. One of the things that we wanted to do on this year of travel was to allow the journey to evolve, responding to ideas and suggestions of those around us and to our feelings at the time. This is all very well but we have discovered that we need to have our ‘evolution’ working about a week ahead of current time, to allow for investigating travel and accommodation options and to research new places so that we have a reason to go there. So it was back to the Lonely Planet Guide for Greece, more research and corresponding on the Couchsurfing site, and internet trawling.

Finally, after deciding to head off for Crete on the Saturday night ferry, we set off for the Athens Archaeological Museum. We were waylaid by a demonstration of electrical workers who were striking about the changes to their insurance. Apparently this issue is of great national concern and there have been strikes and blackouts at various times for a while. It includes changes to pension conditions and also to the list of dangerous jobs from which it was previously agreed that employees would be granted early retirement.

The Archaeological museum shuts at 3 pm because, like all sensible museums in Athens, they stick to the siesta schedule. On a couple of days a week they reopen later and stay open into the evening. Meals are taken later than in Australia, with the evening meal sometimes not starting until 10.

We needed every minute of the three hours we had to enjoy their amazing collection. Downstairs we moved through a chronological display of statues which clearly showed the development and accumulation of sculptural skills over the generations. In very early times, statues were static and fairly box-like in shape, with hair connected to the shoulders and arms by the sides. Male statues were always nude so the development of anatomical knowledge and the ability to carve it was clear to see. At the same time, since female statues of people were always clothed, skill in depicting clothing and drapery was growing. Sculpting Gods and Goddesses allowed for the practising of all the skills on the one task. Other markers were the degree to which limbs were away from the body, the expressiveness of the face, techniques for making eyes look real and the ability to depict the body in motion.

Items continue to be found on land and in the sea to this day. One spectacular bronze statue of a sturdy, tall woman was found off the coast only recently. She epitomises a person who is timeless. It is easy to look into her face and see the commonality in the experiences of all women. One Dutch visitor must have felt this too and wrote a poem in response to the statue. In English, it is on the wall, and provides another layer of connection between women.

I do not know the moral code for people in ancient times but for the gods, everything seemed to be OK. It seemed strange, then, to see a statue if Aphrodite being coy with Pan. We had heard of her amorous exploits with all and sundry, which were so extensive that Zeus (not a fine example of virtue himself) decided to take action. He married her off to an ugly god and I am not sure about his thinking – after all, she was the goddess of love and lust and was probably just doing her job.

Upstairs there was an extensive collection of pots and vases, most of which had been used for funerary purposes. Two skeletons were displayed as they had been found with the pots and vases around them.

Another section featured the Island of Santorini. It showed film footage of the eruption in 1926 with thick clouds of smoke billowing out everywhere and neatly dressed gentlemen, in suits with hats on their heads and coats over there arms, strolling about, happy to be in a film. Goodness knows what was happening to their lungs as they breathed it all in. Other exhibits suggested that the ancient eruption which blew the centre out of the island was a bit like Pompei, but with people having had time to leave. There were household items, such as a bed with rope tied on it, which were able to be recreated using plaster to fill the cavities they had left in the volcanic ash after the wood etc had rotted away.

After tea (bread and salad in our room) we strolled around the archeological sites and the Plaka area to see everything lit up.

We nibbled on a slice of fresh coconut bought from a street vendor and enjoyed being out and about. There were quite a few people but not many tourists. On the way back the fire brigade arrived at a street corner to attend to an enormous rubbish pile which was smoking. In Athens a lot of the rubbish is collected at the ends of streets and people walk their rubbish down to communal skips for collection. Many streets would be too narrow for a truck to enter. Almost always the amount of rubbish exceeds the capacity of the bins and, as in this case, it can build up.

The highlight of an otherwise slow day was catching a glimpse of Spider Man and Zorro looking for baddies in the park in front of the Archaeological Museum.