Railroads of Greece 8: Ag. Theodoron

Agios Theodoron (also translated as Agioi Theodoroi; Greek: Άγιοι Θεόδωροι) is a small town facing the Saronic Gulf, about 5 miles east of Isthmia, at the eastern end of the Corinth Canal. The 1-meter gauge Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways (SPAP) formerly passed through Ag. Theodoron. The 1-meter train is no longer in use, having been replaced by the regular gauge Athens Suburban Railway.

The old stations were well-built, and most of the ones I have seen are secure and in good condition. The Greek railway appears to have done a lot of maintenance on tracks and infrastructure up to about a decade ago, when they abruptly discontinued use of the 1-meter system. Possibly this coincided with the onset of the Greek economic malaise around 2007, but I just do not know.

So, what do we do after a day of exploring railroads? Eat a Greek meal, of course, and finish off a bottle of wine (or two) - and then a chocolate torte. The food is locally-sourced, fresh, and home-made. None of that vile fast food crap here. It is a culture shock returning to USA after eating like this.

Return to Monasteraki, Athens, Greece - revisit with Tri-X film

During my 2016 trip to Greece, I revisited the Monasteraki district of Athens, the crowded urban core of the city. I have been there before many times, but the old twisty streets and mixture of early 20th century buildings and modern concrete monstrosities warrant careful exploration. The main commercial street is Athenas, a straight line which connects Monasteraki plaza (near the Pláka) to Omonia Square, but the side streets have no obvious grid or pattern - they are confusing.

Pallados Street

This time, I was struck by how much worse the graffiti was. I know that many Greeks people object to the austerity and cutbacks imposed by the EU in exchange for loaning Greece money, but defacing their once handsome city does not serve anyone's interests nor make much of a statement.

Trendy ladies on Pallados.

Some of the street art is slightly interesting. Note how this building is triangle-shaped to fit in one of the odd corner lots.

Junk (antiques) shop on Aristogonos.

There is a cluster of flea-market-style shops on Aristogonos, off Athinas. I did not see much of interest, but they seem to stay in business. Many of them now are owned or staffed by Middle-eastern men. It is not a nice atmosphere, and there is a lot of filth and debris on the streets.

The metro runs from Piraeus (the harbor) through downtown and on to the suburb of Kiffisias.

This is approximately the same location, photographed in 1951 or 1952.

A trip downtown is never complete without a visit to the Central Market (click the link for an earlier article).

After you are done watching the fish mongers chopping up fish or arranging octopi and squid, stop at one of the small restaurants in the Market to tuck in to fresh grilled sardines and some Retsina. Then have a Greek coffee at the Mokka coffee shop next door. This is the real Greece.

I took the square photographs with my Rolleiflex 3.5E camera on Kodak Tri-X 400 film. The 1951 photograph of the metro is from a Leica IIIC 35mm camera, film stock possibly an Agfa emulsion. The IIIC has recently been overhauled and is back in operation.

The TB Sanatorium on Parnitha, Greece - Revisited in 2016 with Tri-X Film

Mount Parnitha is a mountain northwest of the urban sprawl of Athens. In 1912, a tuberculosis sanatorium was built up on the slopes to treat TB patients. In that era, rest in a quiet environment with fresh air was the only means to help victims of the disease. Many Athenian notables spent time there. In sunny weather, it was a nice setting. But in winter, it must have been gloomy for the patients, and Parnitha was known for its winter snows. Thanks to public health initiatives and the availability of modern antibiotics, tuberculosis was largely eradicated from most of Greece after World War II, and the Parnitha hospital closed in the 1950s or early 1960s. Sanatoriums around the world closed, and many of these gloomy old buildings have become popular topics for urban decay photography or paranormal exploration.

Around 1965, the Greek National Tourist Organization bought the hospital and renovated it as part of the now-defunct Xenia hotel chain. Grotesque! Sometime later, it became a training facility for the Xenia organization and closed about 1980. The building you see in the first photograph is clearly not from the 1920s. I have been unable to find information if the original hospital was demolished or added onto.

I previously visited the sanatorium in 2015. But on my latest Greek trip, my nephew expressed an interest in visiting the site, and I had film, so off we went on a sunny afternoon. It was busy up there. A film crew was making a music video, complete with lights, reflectors, a drone, ladies with insufficient garments, and a rented BMW 1600 (see the first picture). Other visitors came and went all afternoon.

This may have been a sitting room or dining hall. The wood flooring is barely visible through the dust.

The hallways are as gloomy as ever. This was a 1-sec. exposure, with camera braced on a concrete block.

This time, we ventured down into the dark cellar level (I did not in 2015 because I was alone). My sturdy nephew was with me to maintain security, and we brought headlamps. But there were no issues, and several tourist groups wandered by, glad that we had headlamps. The photograph above may be one of the old kitchens.

This is a lavatory. The rooms to the right were toilet stalls. Again, a 1-sec. exposure.

There was not too much more to see in the cellars. Most of the wiring and plumbing has been looted. We never saw any kitchen equipment. The honeycomb concrete panels seem reasonably intact, but the degree of cracking plaster, concrete-spalling, cracks, and brick debris make me think the hospital is structurally unsound.

Note the exposed rebars in the wall and the debris scree slope. (This is a digital photograph.)

The air shafts have piled debris that has crumbled off the adjacent walls. The old hospital is unsecured. What will likely happen is someone will have an accident or be killed, and then the municipality will reluctantly secure the site and pay for demolition. And of course, it will be no one's fault for having neglected the hazards for decades.

The square photographs were from a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera with Schneider Xenotar lens on Kodak Tri-X film. Most exposures were 1-sec. long, where I placed the camera on walls or window sills. The Rolleiflex is convenient for this type of work because you can place the body on a support, look down into the viewfinder from any angle, set the self-timer, and move out of the way. I processed the film in HC-110 developer and scanned the negatives at 2820 dpi with a Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner. I manipulated the exposure curve to bring up details in the shadows.

As an example of the resolution of the 1960s Xenotar lens, here is a full-size crop of part of the first photograph. You can see the film grain and easily read the license plate.

I am glad to have recorded the hospital with film. Will we be able to open our digital files in 50 years? Will the typical household preserve their digital files for half a century? If you think yes, you are dreaming.

Update 2019:  My nephew told me that the doors and entry ways to the old hospital have been concreted and blocked.

On the Waterfront - Piraeus, Greece

Piraeus (in Greek: Πειραιάς Pireás) is the port of Athens. Piraeus is a separate municipality from Athens, but the two are now merged in one sprawling urban area. But it still has a different feel, that of a seaport, as opposed to a cosmopolitan capital with a sophisticated veneer. If you have ever taken a ferryboat to Crete or some of the islands south of the mainland, you probably embarked from Piraeus. During my last trip to Greece, I only had time for a short visit, and here are some observations.

If you come in from downtown Athens, you probably take the SPAP train, which is now part of the Metro. The tracks were laid in 1882 as part of the Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways or SPAP (Greek: Σιδηρόδρομοι Πειραιώς-Αθηνών-Πελοποννήσου or Σ.Π.Α.Π.). This was the first electric metro in Europe, quite progressive for a poor country that had only enjoyed independence for half a century.

The station has been restored and retains its late-1800s architecture. But today, you use a coin-operated machine to buy your ticket rather than these queues.

Walk across the street (without getting squashed), and there is the port. In the morning, this inner basin is lined with ferries and it is quite the scene of lorries, jostling people, and lost tourists.

The Library of Congress has some historical Piraeus photographs in their holdings. This is a view of Piraeus taken between 1850 and 1880, from an albumen print.

This is a view of Piraeus from the sea, approx. 1900-1920, scanned from a 4×5" nitrate negative.

This is a 1907 scene of "Modern shipping in the ancient Athenian harbor at Piraeus, Greece," half of a stereo card from the American Stereoscopic Company.

Stevedores were loading supplied on an American Red Cross ship, from an undated 5×7" glass negative. These supplies might be heading to the war zone in World War I.

This a 1922 print showing, "A section of "barber's row" Enterprising refugees among the hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians who fled from Asia Minor to Greece have set up stools, boxes, chairs and everything that can be sat on in a long row on the quay in Piraeus, the seaport of Athens, and shave and cut the hair of customers." TIFF files of these and other fascinating photographs can be downloaded from the Library of Congress web page.

In 2015, I did not see any outdoor barbers, but there is a fish and produce market. It was rather quiet on this September weekday, actually rather dull. Much more interesting is the big Central Market on Athenas Street in downtown Athens (click the link for details). 

I can never resist photographing the sophisticated local ladies. These lovelies were on Sotiros Diros, a pedestrian street lined with cafes, fashion goods, and telephone shops. The ambiance was clean and reasonably prosperous, certainly not reflecting the stories of economic decay that we hear in the US media. Piraeus is worth a visit, even if you are not planning to board a ferry.

I met an American, a former New York hair dresser, who retired to Piraeus. He said you can live relatively comfortably on US Social Security in Greece. Interesting idea....

All 2015 photographs taken with a Panasonic Lumix G3 digital camera, with RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software. The ladies are out-of-camera jpeg files. The map is from ESRI ArcMap software.

Abandoned railroad depot, Lavrion, Greece

In the early 20th century, a narrow-gauge railroad (1-meter gauge?) ran from Kiffisia (a northern suburb of Athens, to Lavrion. At that time, Lavrion was a mining town on the east coast of the Attica Peninsula, a few miles south of Rafina and north of Cape Sunio. According to Wikipedia, the railroad opened in 1885 and was later extended to downtown Athens. Here is an 1888 photograph from Wikipedia Commons (in the common domain):

Today, Lavrion is no longer a mining town. It was rather rough for decades but has rebuilt itself into a popular yachting center with a clean and cheerful downtown.

A few weeks ago, I was driving on the coast road and saw this derelict railroad depot in the distance. Of course, it was too good to pass up.

It was just a simple little shed but had handsome stonework. It is architecturally similar to a railroad station in Markópoulo that I photographed in 2012.

Wow, great red plaster ceiling. Maybe the station master used the building as a disco.

Here is one of the diesel rail busses on a display in the main town. Pity it is deteriorating.

Lavrion was a mining town as long ago as the Classical Era. Athens' wealth was derived from the silver mined here by slaves. These old works are now part of the Lavrion Technological and Cultural Park, operated by the National Technical University of Athens.

Here is a coffee and pastry shop in another one of the railroad buildings in town. It's a nice way to reuse these sturdy old structures.

The 2015 photographs were taken with a Panasonic G3 camera with 12-32mm LUMIX lens, with raw files processed in PhotoNinja software.