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.

Autumn in Athens 2022 (Part 1)

2022 Note

Likavitou Hill from the Alexandros Soutsos Museum

Greece had a warm autumn in 2022 with benign weather. Tourism had plunged in 2020 when the pandemic shut down most leisure travel around the world, but it picked up with a vengeance in 2022. People were thrilled to be traveling again. Tourists were swarming all over Athens and the islands. My relatives were surprised because usually the tourists start to disappear by mid-October. But for 2022, local merchants and restauranteurs were thrilled. Hotels were heavily booked. The islands were swarming. I heard several times that merchants were very pleased with American tourists because they spent a lot of money, were especially friendly, and did not seem to care about prices. Hmmm.....

First Cemetery

First Cemetery (2018 photograph)

First Cemetery is the resting place for generations of prominent Athenians. It is an oasis of gracious trees and green in the urban jungle. Melina Mercouri and Heinrich Schliemann reside here. Some older photographs are here. It is off the usual tourist route but worth a visit. 

Protest apartment, Leof. Alexandros (Samsung phone snapshot)

Anafiotica and the Pláka

Likavitou Hill from Anafiotica (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, deep yellow filter)

Tucked under and around the northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis is the Pláka, the historical neighborhood of Athens occupied since the medieval era and, probably, since antiquity. The labyrinthine streets twist and turn past little houses. You could almost be in a village in the mountains. Well, except for the drone of traffic in the distance. And the different languages of the tourists. Every time I visit Athens, I take my obligatory walk through the Pláka, look at the scenery, take some photographs, eat a hearty lunch, and ponder the passage of history.

I have photographed here before, but each time I visit Athens, I can't resist doing it all over again. Here are some samples from October of 2022. 

Balcony, Thrassiliou

Stairway to ? (25mm ƒ/4 Color-Skopar lens)

Cottage courtyard (25mm Color-Skopar lens)

Where are my customers? Aretousas Street (25mm Color-Skopar lens)

Here's looking at you, Graffiti Alley

I took most of these photographs with Fuji Acros film using my Leica M2 camera and various lenses. Praus Productions in Rochester, NY, developed the film.

From the Archives: Northern Greece in 1951

When my dad first moved to Greece in 1951, he and some of the other engineers took field trips to northern Greece to look at rivers, irrigation canals, and waterworks. They also visited local engineering offices to obtain stream flow and discharge data. Sometimes they flew on a Grumman Goose airplane. I assume it was operated by the American Mission in the early 1950s. 

One of the towns where they stayed was Komotini, a city in the region of East Macedonia and Thrace in northeastern Greece.  

The New Mosque and Clock Tower, March 14, 1951

Note the stork on top of the bell tower

The baker of Komotini - delicious loaves

In 1951, Komotini was rather basic compared to the bright lights of Athens. My dad noted that accommodations were primitive and food grim. He also commented on the Turkish toilet. It sounds like it was a novelty to him, although surely he had encountered them before in Asia. I remember him telling me that when he asked for hot water to shave, the hotel host brought a tepid teacup of water. 

Agricultural wagons

What's the way to Athens?

Muslim ladies of Komotini

Komotini had a large Muslim minority. After the 1919-1922 military disaster in Anatolia, ethnic Greek and Turkish populations were exchanged and moved (forced) back to their homelands. Many Greeks had never lived in mainland Greece, and many Turkish Muslims had not lived in Turkey. As noted in Wikipedia, "Historians have described the exchange as a legalized form of mutual ethnic cleansing." It was a horrifying episode. But Komotini was not included in the forced exchange, so many Muslim families continued to live there. Two mosques are still active in town. The New Mosque (see the first photograph) has its own web page. 

Buklutzas River

I had trouble finding this spot in Komotini. My family told me that the Buklutzas River has been covered over and is now the main highway through town. None of these buildings exist now. So much for progress.....

The cobbler of Komotini

Note the gent with the overcoat walking away from the cameras is wearing a fez. In Turkey proper, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had banned the fez (to be replaced by the western fedora), but men continued to wear fezes in former Ottoman areas.

A short social note:  After the brutal and vicious Greek Civil War ended in 1949, towns in northern Greece were desperately poor. Many of the farmers lived on almost a subsistence basis from the produce they grew. My stepdad, a Greek surgeon, said many villagers had never seen a doctor or been to a dentist. Childbirth was dangerous and often led to death. Tuberculosis ravaged families. Appalachia in USA may have been similar at that time, with isolated towns and desperate poverty.

Today, towns like Komotini are clean and cheerful. Stores are well-stocked, streets clean and well-paved, buildings neat, and the townsfolk have bright little cars, decent clothes, and look happy and well-fed. They welcome tourists. They foregather at nice local restaurants and coffee shops. Their children have often been to college and many are bilingual. 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Κυριάκος Μητσοτάκης) told Fareed Zakaria at the World Economic Forum that on a day that is sunny, windy, not too hot, not too cold, Greece generates 90 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Prime Minister Mitsotakis graduated from Harvard University, Stanford University, and Harvard Business School. 

And today, Appalachia is still Appalachia, an underclass of grinding poverty, drugs, food insecurity, crumbling towns, racism, and despondency. What is wrong with this picture?

Photography:  My dad took these these photographs on Ansco Super Speed film. One collector on Flickr states that this film was rated at ASA 100. He used his Canon rangefinder camera with a 50mm ƒ/1.9 Serenar lens. I remember this camera but I sold it in the 1970s.

Winter at the Beach, Chorefto, Pelion, Greece

The beach in winter is quiet. It wonders where the happy voices and cheerful tourists have gone. Why have I been deserted? So what if the water is a bit cold and the air bracing?

Chorefto is the beach town located below the village of Zagora on the Pelion Peninsula of east central Greece. Summer is the busy season, but my visit in October was quiet and lonely.

The tavernas are closed, the tables put away for the season.

This is an example of traditional stone architecture for the Pelion area. The red trim may be a recent trend.

An unused house near the stream.

A number of streams like this tumble down from the mountain. This one does not appear to carry much sediment load because the shoreline is straight here without any obvious deltaic accumulation.

One day I may restart my series on Greek doors. It has been done before, but I'll do it better 😁

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea,

You and I you and I, oh! How happy we'll be,

When each wave comes a rolling in,

We will duck or swim, and we'll float and fool around the water.

Over and under, and then up for air,

Pa is rich, Ma is rich, so now what do we care?

I love to be beside your side, beside the sea,

Beside the seaside, by the beautiful sea.

(Words by Harold Atteridge, Music by Harry Carroll (1914))

I took these photographs with a Samsung Galaxy A53 5G mobile phone.

Railroads of Greece 11: east of Tripolis (Greece 2019-07)

In the previous article, I explored the train yard in Tripolis, used by the 1-meter gauge Peloponnesus Railway. Afterwards, I drove east along the country roads that approximately followed the old rail line. The route crosses a plateau with rich agricultural fields and then descends via many turns and bridges towards the coast. The town of Myloi was the main rail junction next to the Gulf of Nauplio (click the link to see Myloi photographs).  

This small work shed is in the town of Steno, a few kilometers east of Tripolis. The tracks were in good condition, but if they are to be used again, gravel and dirt from local roads will need to be cleared, as will brush and trees.

I stopped for lunch at a taverna in Steno. Six Californians were there. They had rented three touring BMW motorcycles in Athens and were on tour around the Peloponnese. They were the only customers, so the proprietor was pleased. He was even more surprised when another American showed up.

1914 country house, Steno

Unoccupied country house, Steno

Steno was on the old road from the coast, and the town had some early-1900s houses in good condition. Notice the nice stonework on the arched windows in the second photograph.

Partheni was my last stop. It really looked like a sleepy little agricultural town that time left behind. Without the train, the only access was by twisty mountain roads. The train platform was in use by a coffee shop. The cicadas chipped in the trees, doves cooed in the trees. Time for a nap.

Railroad outhouse, Partheni, Greece (Moto G5 digital file)

Partheni has some sturdy early 20th century stone buildings. This area looks prosperous; I was pleased.

The black and white photographs are from Fuji Acros 100 film exposed with my Leica M2 camera and 50mm or 35mm Summicron lenses. In Steno, I used a yellow filter to darken the sky. It was a brilliant sunny day and quite contrasty, but the Acros film handles exposure extremes well. The three digital files are from a Moto G5 mobile phone.