Autumn In Athens 2022 (Part 2)

Emerging from the Monasteraki metro station (Samsung phone file)

Let's continue wandering the Pláka on a cheerful and hot day in October. What happened to winter?

Mrs. Popi's store

I first met Mrs. Popi in the 1980s. She has run this souvenir store forever. Her grandkids (?), who go to college in the USA, work here in the summers. They told me that Mrs. Popi is now 101 years old and stays home and cooks. Years ago, I bought a brass lion door knocker from her. But we never used it because our door at home has a glass panel and there was no place to mount the lion.

The Pláka district has 10s of stores like this selling tourist goods. We have wool hangings at home that we bought years ago. 

Monasteraki Square, always crowded (Acros film, Leica M2)

Alley off Monasteraki Square (Samsung phone file)

Flea market, 2011 (Panasonic G1 digital file)

Monasteraki is the flea market / traditional downtown district of Athens. It is nestled under the walls of the Acropolis and is a popular tourist destination. The flea market was once really that, but today much of the merchandise is Chinese budget stuff.

Heading north on Athenas Street, you pass by small side streets and lanes with a mixture of traditional 2-story houses and modern concrete boxes. It is sad that Athens let so much of its traditional late-1800s architecture get replaced with nondescript post-war budget concrete boxes.

Time for some Levis on Vissis Street (50mm Summicron lens)

Soukratos Street (50mm Summicron lens)

Pigeon house, Athenas Street (25mm Color-Skopar lens)

Keep walking north on Athenas Street and you soon reach the Central Market. This is a fun place to explore and is a popular tourist site. Buy some spices or nuts, fish, cow, sardines, bread, oil, or coffee. And stop and have lunch one of the small restaurants. I have written about the Central Market before several times. It's worth a visit every trip to Athens.

Heady experience (Samsung phone digital file)

Central Market in 1951, when it was a bit more earthy

The end of Athenas Street where it meets Omonoia Square, 1951

This ends our walk from Monasteraki Square to Omonoia Square. Here you can catch the metro and head home or to your hotel. Thank you for joining on this walk.

On the loose in Arusha, Tanzania

So, you have arrived at Kilimanjaro International Airport before embarking on a climb of Kilimanjaro or a safari to one of the game parks. You are tired, jet-lagged, and grubby. Other than a sleep, what should you do? Explore Arusha, what else?

Arusha is a bustling commercial city in north central Tanzania. It is not a tourist destination in itself, but is certainly worth a day or two of exploring. The central market in any city is worth a visit. This one was a bit smaller then I expected, and seemed quiet, but possibly my friends and I arrived too late in the day for the main action. The produce looks good!

Some big beefy ladies haunt the market district.

The market is next to the bus station, which is really active. There is no train service to Arusha now, but by bus you can go to Kenya or Uganda, and possibly further. That might be an interesting adventure.

Heading into town in the direction of the Clock Tower, the streets are commercial and lined with shops, small manufacturers, banks, mobile phone stores, and scooter/car repair shops. From what I can tell, everyone is busy, doing something, or plying some trade. Many of the stores run generators because while I was there, the mains electricity went off mid-morning and stayed off until early evening. Often the merchants sat on the sidewalk next to their generator. Yum, exhaust fumes.

A surprising number of merchants downtown were Indians (or Pakistanis?). We heard that many are descendants of Indian troops who were sent to Tanganyika in the early-20th century. When Britain gave up its colony, the former troopers stayed behind (or were left behind). Is this story true? In neighboring Uganda, the business class during the mid-20th century was dominated by Indians. Dictator Idi Amin (the "Butcher of Uganda") expelled the Indian traders, bankers, and merchants, and Uganda's economy virtually collapsed. (This sounds like the folly of Ferdinand and Isabella in expelling the Jews from Spain in the late-1400s - stupidity cloaked in religion.)

We came across a building with post office boxes, not a post office, just hundreds of boxes.

Near the bus station is a large and lonely cemetery. In the colonial era, it may have been the European cemetery. Sadly, it is neglected now.

On a clear day, Mount Meru looms over the city. Meru is a stratovolcano with peak elevation of 4,562.13 metres (14,968 ft). Our guide said there are climbing routes but it is not a common tourist destination.

We looked for English cultural remains, but I was surprised how few English buildings were left. This long colonnaded building was in the grounds of the Mount Meru Regional Hospital. Rangoon (see my Burma blog posts) has a much richer colonial architectural legacy.

This is the fourth of a series of Tanzania articles and has covered a short tour of Arusha. Should your travels take you there, do walk or take motorbikes round town.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic Lumix G3 digital camera with Panasonic 12-32mm lens. I  opened the raw files with Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 and processed most of the frames with DxO FilmPack 5 using the Kodachrome 25 emulation. I think it does not quite look like Kodachrome, but have no direct comparison available.

Something is Fishy at the Athens Central Market

This is the first of a series of articles featuring Greece. The Greeks have occupied their rocky, rugged peninsula for four millennia, and they know a bit about decay and rebirth. Athens is the modern capital, a bustling, frenetic city of over four million. The historic heart of Athens is the Acropolis hill, around which there has been human habitation since the Neolithic period. The commercial center of modern Athens is Omonia square, about a kilometer and a half to the north. Connecting the two is Athinas Street, along which you will find tool and hardware shops, banks, bakeries, coffee stalls, bargain clothing emporiums, and the famous Central Market. If you like visiting markets when you travel, this is a great example. It's in a decent part of town, the butchers and vendors are used to tourists, it's colorful and noisy, and it's not too smelly, even in summer. Thousands of tourists wander through, so although any American will stand out, the locals have seen much odder visitors. The market was built in the 1870s. According to a Smithsonian article, the mayor of Athens, Panagis Kyriakos, initiated the project in 1875. Construction continued for ten years, with the arched glass roof finally being completed in 1886. The roof you see in the photograph above is a new one. The market was renovated, painted, cleaned, and "sanitized" about a decade ago. In my files I have photographs of the older, scruffy-looking market, which I will try to scan. I am sure entry into the EU forced the administrators to make changes to comply with EU sanitary standards. This grand hall reminds me of similar 1800s arcades in other cities. In particular, one in Providence, Rhode Island, is said to be America's first enclosed mall. The overall market is in the shape of a large central rectangle with a "U"-shape area surrounding it. The fish vendors occupy the central rectangle, while the meat vendors occupy what was formerly the streets or alleys surrounding the 1870s market building. The streets have been roofed over, so that you think you are in one complicated enclosed building. You can buy almost any sort of seafood here (well, maybe not puffer fish), but all common Mediterranean species. Cod fish and herring come from the North Atlantic, and even a decade ago, I saw boxes labeled "Product of Iceland". Don't forget to pick up some octopus or a squid or two. For fans of Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern visited the Central Market in 2010. This episode aired on May 10, 2011. There are several modest restaurants in the market. I suggest a light meal of grilled sardines, fried potatoes, horta (greens), and crusty, chewy, delicious bread (likely to be better than almost any bread you find in the USA). Wash it down with a beer or glass of retsina (or two or three glasses). Your fellow diners will be a friendly cast of characters. They will be glad to take your picture or pose. You can read more in the market in the Smithsonian article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/athens-200801.html