ATHENS

Friday 4 December

Actually after further reflection on the Schengen rules I realise we have breached more than 4 countries.  We have done 24 countries but only 14 have signed with NZ to allow us 3 months in each regardless of how long we have spent in other Schengen countries.  The other 10 countries are either non Schengen or do not allow you in if you have already spent 3 months in other Schengen countries.  So the list of those we should never have gone into start with Estonia, onto Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland and Slovenia and the non-Schengen one we were ok in is Croatia.  I did read last year that NZ had an agreement with all Schengen countries and it was on a Govt website so someone got it wrong which meant we ran the gauntlet in all the above countries and are lucky we didn’t get caught.  We are ok from here in Greece, Italy and Spain.

Breakfast is done and we go to have a shower but there is no hot water.  We were really looking forward to one this morning and we are both a bit pissed off.  Scot says the fella inside is a bit grumpy so maybe it is the guy we met on the way in who seemed a bit cranky yesterday.  So we get dressed, pack up and are about to leave when the lady comes out and says there is now hot water.  We are ready to leave so say no but instead she insists we come in for a free coffee before we go as I think they feel bad.  So we go in for coffee and have a good chat to the people who live here and there seems to be a few of them.  The grumpy buggar is ok once you get talking to him it seems that it is just his manner and perhaps he has a lot on his mind.  Summer saw less people staying than normal so maybe they are struggling a bit.

We leave and head towards Athens.  There is an amazing mix of different houses as we drive, from the well maintained, expensive homes to the run down shacks that you wouldn’t put a chook in, but unfortunately people do live in them.  Like Croatia and some other countries we see many buildings that have been started but it seems just never finished.  Or there are some buildings where people are living in one part that is semi finished but the rest of the building is still open to the elements with a lot of work to go.

As we near Athens we can see the smog from the city hanging over it.  It is a nice day with a great weather forecast to come.  The entire road from Patras to Athens is virtually completely under re-construction as a two way highway but thankfully they are doing it so that we are not held up all the way like we experienced in Latvia.  We are grateful we are early as we don’t want to get caught up in the hectic Friday afternoon peak hour traffic.  The countryside continues to be just the same scrubby rocky landscape and is really nothing to look at.  As we head into Athens we hit a 4 lane highway which I quickly realise is the road I thought was a small suburban road that runs right past the campsite.  We are in the midst of traffic that is insane.  Trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes are all weaving, ducking and driving insane speeds.  The road rules are the same as in Poland whenever the road narrows to one lane – you are expected to move over as much as possible to let everyone pass and they do regardless of what is coming towards them and regardless of whether it is safe.  On this 4 lane highway we watch the crazies as we stay in our safe slow lane on the right.  This road houses a lot of small industry and we see car and bike wreckers, not with large yards but with all the parts stripped off the vehicles and housed in low level apartment buildings that have no windows or doors.  The buildings are small and narrow.  There are many different types of small businesses, but the most obvious thing here is the rundown state of everything and the rubbish that is strewn all over.  It look like pictures I have seen of Delhi and what I imagine it would be like there.  Scot says it reminds him of Fiji where everything is filthy and in tatters.

I am amazed and horrified I guess all at the same time at how this place looks.  People are parked and stopped everywhere and they don’t care.  We find the campsite and park up.  We saw a carpet place down the road and think maybe we can find a remnant to replace the carpet in the van to have something fresher, so we take a walk down the street.  It is a scary feeling as there is little place to walk that seems safe with the footpath littered with vehicles and all sorts of other things people have parked there.  The carpet is a no go and we decide to cross the road to the other side.  This sounds like a simple exercise, but in this country it is putting your life on the line.  People do not like to follow any rules here and so even through the light may show red and the traffic must stop, there are those who do not.  If you do not watch out they will just run you down.  It is quite a scary process and we cross back via an underpass but are confronted by motor bikes that think they have right of way there as well. Motorbike riders here are required to wear helmets by law, but from what we have seen most don’t.  They are travelling on this road outside the camp (with a speed of 60) without helmets, without any kind of gear and they are doing speeds that appear to be well over 100km.  You can watch in amazement as they weave in and out of traffic at high speed without a care figuring it won’t be them that has the accident.  Or you hear them from the van winding the throttle right out at full speed.  We have seen them on bikes with little kids in the front and on the back without helmets or any kind of protection either.  Life is not held in any esteem here.  It also appears that most don’t wear seatbelts again even though they are compulsory.

We head into a local supermarket to buy a couple of things and get fresh feta, olives and tomatoes for a Greek salad for tea and Greek yoghurt for my breakfast.  So delicious and cheap.  Back to the van for dinner.

Saturday 5^th December

Off on the local bus in the morning at 9am.  We are told they go every 10 minutes but we wait over 20 so they obviously don’t run on time.  The buses here do not pull into bus stops they just stop in their lane and everyone has to walk out on the road to get on, so you often see people standing right out on the road waiting and watching for their bus.  We get ours and it is often a challenge to know which is the right stop to get off.  It is much easier in other countries but when things are in Greek it is a challenge.  Some things are in our alphabet as well but not all.  We get off at a stop that most other get off at and I am not sure if it is correct so I ask a couple.  No it is the wrong stop but is still ok as from here it is easy enough to get the metro to where we are going.  We have decided to do the free walking tour today to have a look around so we get off the train and head up.  Our first introduction to Athens as we stand on the side of the road is 3 African fellas doing a drug deal in plain sight of all and then a couple of minutes later on the steps to the first Greek style building we looked at there is a fella sitting on the steps with his tourniquet on shooting up.  Holy shit, I am now a bit concerned about this city and even more so when we walk to the end of a nearby mall and there are police with machine guns standing around.  I am not sure if Athens is still on any kind of alert after their bombing a couple of weeks ago, but our tour guide reckons not.

We meet up with our tour group which consists of about 25 mostly young people from many different countries and we head off having a look around.  It is cold in the wind but as we head out into the sunshine is quite a nice day.  The tour guide takes us past a few important buildings and we see a few ruins from a distance.  We walked through their botanical gardens (ex royal palace gardens) which the guide thought was very nice, but for us it was a very badly kept excuse for a garden.  Very overgrown and unkempt, sad really as I imagine they would have been very nice when in royal possession.  We walked around the bottom of the Acropolis which we will see properly tomorrow.  He took us through an interesting area of little narrow walkways and whitewashed houses which for me depicted what you imagine the islands in Greece would be like.  This guide doesn’t get paid by anyone and the tour is free but they say that if you enjoy it then they would be grateful if you paid money.  The guide, like tour buses, had his little haunts that he took us past.  One was a yogurt shop where he was given a free smoothie and we had free samples in the hope we would buy more.  We did buy yoghurt with cherries which was lovely.  We also went past a few other places he wanted to promote on the way.  As we walked around there were many stray dogs that up and followed you around the streets and there are many stray cats as well.  The dogs looked a little worse for the wear but unusually the cats were in better condition than we have seen them in other places.  In a few places though we saw the cats eating biscuits and tinned food, so someone is feeding the cats and possibly dogs around the city.

As the tour winds up he takes us through the market area which is an area with hundreds of little stalls all crowded in narrow streets.  All selling different stuff, from souvenirs to flea market style stuff, to clothes, food – really anything went.  We finished late and I was getting really tired.  He took us through all these back streets that were unbelievably dodge and I was thinking holy shit what are we in for here.  Half of the tour group had dropped off on the way and there were only 12 at the end.  He took us to a hostel where he said they had a great view over the city which was partly true.  It had a great view over a few other buildings in the area, but the city, I think not.  I was a bit cranky as we were in the middle of nowhere in a dodgy setting and I had no idea how to get back to the metro.  Athens is the first city I have felt that maybe we could be done over or pickpocketed due to the amount of people here.  Athens houses half the population of Greece – 5 million people and we can believe it from the throngs that we are seeing here.  We leave the hostel where we have literally been dumped and try to find our way out.  It is chaos and there are masses of people everywhere.  I am tired and feel a little uncomfortable where we are.  We end up in a main shopping street that is jammed packed with people and they are not even tourists.  Most here are locals out for the day.  I would hate to see this place when it is packed with tourists.  We manage to get past all the masses and out to a major cross road that I work out is our road back to the metro.  One thing that is really obvious and in your face here is that everything and I mean everything is covered in graffiti.  They even tag beautiful historical buildings and ruins.  It seems that nothing is exempt and the city does nothing to remove the graffiti.

On the way back we stop at a phone shop and get a sim for the tablet.  I doubt somehow that the coverage is going to be good as I doubt Greece cares very much if the other half of the population outside Athens gets phone coverage on not.  We find the metro, travel two stops and get on the next bus going past the camp.  We get back and we are both unbelievably tired.  We have done quite a few cities but don’t remember when we were both this tired.  We lie down and rest up for a couple of hours before dinner.  We were both feeling like maybe we don’t want to go back into that horrendous bustle of a city and battle the crowds as we were so glad to get out, but we haven’t seen the ruins up close so that is really a priority for tomorrow.

Sunday 6^th December

Up and off on the same bus as yesterday.  We change to the metro and head to the Acropolis.  The mass of tourists won’t be there this early so hopefully it will be a more peaceful experience.  We walk up to the ruins and what a blessing, today it is open for free.  Great stuff no payment.  We head in and are really quite in awe of such magnificent structures.  They have scaffolding on most of these ruins as they are trying to stabilize them and stop them deteriorating further.  Some parts have been removed and preserved in the museum and replica parts put in their place that are identical.  You wouldn’t really know the difference.  In some places they have had to insert newly made pieces to help keep parts together but it’s ok as they help show you what these places were like.  There aren’t masses here so its good that we get some people free photos.  The views over the city are amazing here and the city stretches out for miles in every direction.  Most buildings are white so it’s difficult to see where one starts and another finishes.  As we walk around we see what appears to be a building on fire.  Thick black smoke pours out the top of possibly an apartment block in the distance and we wait and watch and listen for a siren, which doesn’t happen for at least 20 minutes.

We run into a couple of the American girls that were on the tour yesterday.  Scot wishes he was 30 years younger and single as they are both really lovely girls.  They are studying at Uni in Amsterdam but must be finished for the year as they are due to fly home next week.  We spend quite a bit of time here at Acropolis and looking at the Parthenon as they really are quite spectacular and they are really the only reason we came to Athens.  Personally I wouldn’t have come here for anything else as it is not a city I would care to return to.  After these ruins we head away to find a large area where there is another temple – temple of  Hephaestus and Ancient Agora plus multiple ruins that you can walk amongst.  After these ruins we head into the market area where we walk past multiple cafes and into the throng of market shops that really I dread to be amongst.  Scot spies a leather jacket store and as we finish off a pita bread he heads in to see what they have.  He has wanted a leather jacket since we started travelling so he checks out what they have.  He finds one he fancies and the salesman is keen for a sale so he discounts by 30% and he gets himself a sale.  He reckons it is made in the UK but I am a little wiser and doubt very much it is made anywhere near the UK, more likely Romania or Bulgaria where a lot of goods are made with cheaper labour.

It is time to head away.  We don’t want to be in this city after dark, I am uncomfortable here and do not like the looks we are given as we walk the streets.  We find a metro station and know we can travel one stop and get on another line that will take us to the bus station.  This train is already jammed packed and there are many people needing to get on so we all squeeze in and when I say squeeze I mean just that.  I have no room to move and as I stand squished between many people I feel my bag move.  I grab for the zip and it has been partly pulled open.  There is nothing I can do to look for who may have done this and I do not want to try and open it further to see if they have managed to take anything so I hang onto it as best I can with the crush and we get out at the next stop.  A lady beside me has apparently said something to a fella behind me who throws his hands up like ‘what, it’s not me’ and she said something to me but it’s in Greek so I have no idea.  I think she knows what was going on.  Outside the train I check my bag and my wallet is still there but I reckon it was close.  I did have partially hold of my bag but just not quite where the zip was and I had been holding onto my pocket that my camera was in but shit these people will try anything.  I am happy to be out of the squash and the next train isn’t so bad.  We get off and wait for the bus.  Now I am double suspicious of anyone that stands or sits near me.  I really can’t wait to leave this city which has not impressed me one little bit and head out to the countryside.  I only hope it is better  away from here or I think we may be heading away sooner than not.

Back at the van and we run into the French man who is parked beside us.  He was on our bus.  We have a part English, part French conversation and discover that he spent 3 months in NZ and 3 months in Australia a couple of years ago travelling around.  He is on his own and I always feel sorry for anyone I see travelling in a van on their own as I reckon it would be a rather lonely journey.  I often wish we had seats and a table that we could invite people like him in for a drink but I could not handle pulling the bed down everyday only to have to make the bed back up at night before bedtime.  Plus, there is nowhere to put our bedding really.  Anyway back to the van, dinner and an early night.  Tomorrow we are off somewhere a little nicer and quieter than the city.

Actually as we sit watching the news tonight we see a lot of rioting that appears to be happening in Athens as we watch, so I check out the internet to see what is happening.  The train stations were locked down this afternoon and we had to go to a different station as our ones were locked down ones.  We wondered why, but it was because protests were happening on the anniversary of some teenager who got killed years ago.  The fire we saw burning earlier today was in fact the start of the riots not far from where we were and it was close to where we walked through yesterday.  The protests got out of hand and Molotov cocktails were thrown and teargas was put amongst the crowd.  I am glad we are leaving here tomorrow as the city screams of very unhappy people and unrest.