Paul woz here two/too
Friday, September 18th, 2009Athens, Greece
Is it plagiarism when you write an email to someone and then publish it on your blog?
I think not, if it is your own work!
Dear Dad (known on this blog as Grandpa),
I’m sitting here struggling to find words to put today into a blogpost. It was one of those full-to-overflowing days that refuse to be captured in print.
I can’t even get sidetracked with looking for your musings for the day!
Just writing about catching a tram this morning would make a complete post (what a saga!!!)
…while it could include a commentary on the traffic of Athens (my oh my, and we think we have a traffic problem in Auckland – we don’t have narrow roads with nowhere to widen them or cars double parking in front of NO PARKING signs or so many cars that only half are allowed in the city on any given day or the zippy manouvres we became familiar with in Italy or thousands of yellow taxis)….a tram-saga-only piece would miss out the Acropolis, the Parthenon….
….the amazing brand-spanking new museum (more on that later), Hadrian’s Arch, the statues and myriad of temples….
….the bare marble Mars Hill, the first Olympic Games, the other wonderful old buildings, the shopping streets, all the people who stopped us to enquire of our family (just like Asia again, only these ones also asked how old we are and commented on my non-motherly figure and our obviously abundant finances, and clasped our hands in congratulations!)
It would miss out the pressing crowd at the top of the Acropolis, people from all over the world, but mainly loud Americans.
It would miss out the conversation with a Polish artist on the side of the street, the conversation in a travel agent about cruising to the islands, the contemplations about how poor my Classical Studies teacher was – she never even mentioned that the place where the plays we studied were performed was still sitting here in Athens to be seen, she never even showed us a picture, she never made the connection between the Greek vases we had to rote learn the names of and Aristophanes’ The Birds and The Clouds – they were two different subjects as far as her teaching went.
It would miss the excavations that continue to this day and Mboy7’s suddenly inspired desire to be an archaeologist and sift through rocks for a living.
It would miss out Paul’s life in Athens, his understandable dismay at the range of gods available to call on, his speaking to philosophers at the hill now more famously known as a large American church.
It would miss out the view of the capital stretching a full circle around us, sprawling out to the horizon at every point of the compass. Take a look at this photo and imagine yourself turning a complete circle – this is what you would see the whole way round, this city of over 3 million people, all seemingly living in sparkling white apartments:
It would miss out the turtles we saw wandering around, the thunderstorm mid-afternoon and all the black men suddenly, miraculously trading their sunnies-for-sale for umbrellas-for-sale (You need umbrella – no we don’t need a dozen umbrellas thankyouverymuch), it would miss the whistle-blowing police so reminiscent of Bangkok, the leather sandals and embroidered shirts for sale, the pompom-ed slippers and creative t-shirts (finally some tourist t-shirts that actually look wearable).
It would miss the hour spent riding through the suburbs……street after street after street of high-ish-rise apartment blocks, all with balconies and wide wide awnings, most with table-cloth-covered wrought iron or wicker tables and chairs, and the profusion of green green green everywhere under the smog. Actually it might not miss that, because that was from the tram.
And now, I can leave Grandpa’s email (which has actually been highly embellished – if you are a reader but not Grandpa, please don’t wonder why you don’t get such full letters from us and if you’re Grandpa, please don’t think you’re getting old and doddery, because you don’t remember us saying half of this in your email – we didn’t!!)….for now I know what I’m going to write about today.
The Acropolis Museum.
Opened only a couple of months ago, it is an expansive building that beckons you through it, through dim wide passages in the depths of the building and up into bright light-filled spaces at the top – just like climbing the Acropolis. In fact, when you get to the top, there’s a replica Parthenon of sorts – the columns are plain steel, but there is the right number of them and inserted between are the friezes and statues, some castings and some originals, with explanatory notes about them. Artefacts from the area line your journey upwards; jars painstakingly pieced back together, fragments arranged creatively with illustrations of how they probably once appeared, all sorts of statues; a horse with the back missing (somewhat humourously described as “Horse without rider”), gods and goddesses, naked men in various poses, semi-naked women with flowing robes, so gently draped, that you expect to see them ripple in the slightest breeze, despite being made from marble. Metal columns support some statues; others stand atop huge slabs of glistening white marble. Not only are your eyes drawn upwards, but they search downwards too. The entire building is sited over excavations, and much of the floor is made of glass so that you can peer down wells and along paved paths and look through doorways below your feet. Even three floors up, the floor is glass and you can see all the way down the atrium to the foundations, a hint of which you had received at the approach to the museum, where the excavations are left entirely open to view:
The sheer number of lamps, jars, cooking pots, bowls, jugs, toys, spindles, figurines and urns, displayed both in cabinets and under the floor, is staggering and leaves you with no doubt that a LOT of people once lived here!
As if this were not enough, there is also a continuously-playing documentary about the history and reconstruction of the Parthenon (playing alternately in Greek and English). If anyone were planning a visit without employing the services of a guide, it would make a fine introduction to the site, well worth seeing BEFORE tramping up the short, but fairly steep rocky climb to the Real Thing.
So that’s just the museum…and not even everything – I have failed to mention the seats shaped like urns and courtyard garden – imagine how long a post this would be if we told everything that happened this full day.
rayres