Last Days In Athens

We've been here around 11 days I think, and we've just about seen everything a tourist could see I suppose. Somewhere along about last Thursday we were going through a museum where each room was a microcosm of what had been the focus of entire museums we had seen the previous few days, and I sat down on a bench and decided I had learned enough and seen enough and was ready to take the final exam and go home for the summer. Naturally, we've been to several museums and archaeological sites since then.

To name some of the places we've visited since I wrote last:

• The Acropolis
• The Temple of Olympian Zeus
• The Panathenaic Stadium
• The Roman Agora
• The Ancient Agora and museum
• Hadrian's Library
• A return visit to the Acropolis Museum
• The Museum of Traditional Pottery
• The National Gardens
• The Benaki Museum
• The Museum of Cycladic Art
• The Museum of Byzantine and Christian Art
• Lykavittos Hill
• Filopappou Hill
• Pynx Hill
• The Heraklaidon Museum
• Keramikos Cemetery and Museum

We also got a private Sunday tour of an exhibit at the library of the American School of Classical Studies, thanks to a colleague of Ilene's who is a native and happens to be here now, along with some other inside dope, and today we took the long tram ride out to Glyfada Beach to try out the Aegean. Tomorrow we're making a quick side trip to Delphi, and on Tuesday we're knocking off a measly two wings of the National Archaeological Museum that we didn't get to on the first visit, and then we're done.

It has been a somewhat bittersweet trip.  It's been hard to enjoy while we see so much suffering around us. As you probably know, the Greek economy has been doing very poorly for several years and things are coming to a head this weekend. The employment rate has been stuck at 25% for years, with youth unemployment at 50%, and public sector workers who do have jobs have had significant pay cuts. I know that I underestimated before what 25% unemployment really means. It's like the first year of the Great Depression, except in this case it's seven years on now, the recovery hasn't started yet, and there aren't New Deal programs to get people working.

I'm no expert in this stuff, but it's plain to us walking around that this is a pretty desperate situation for local residents. Store fronts are empty everywhere you look, graffiti covers everything, there are empty buildings and empty lots everywhere, usually with people living in them, and the city literally smells like shit. In shops and cafes, everyone is courteous, but on the street and subways, everyone looks angry all the time. People are begging on every subway car and at every subway entrance. There are tons of stray dogs, bu the funny thing is none of them are mutts. They are all either thoroughbreds or just a generation removed from the breeders. Except for being dirty and being unaccompanied, they look like they ought to be somebody's pet.

In other ways, we can see that the city is holding it together. The subways run on time and are clean. The parks are clean. The museums look great. We can hear the trash trucks collecting from he bins on our street every night. The tram out to the beaches was packed today.