Highlights: the first two weeks

We've settled into the rhythms of life in Greece, and classes are in progress. We sail to Crete this evening!

The highlight of our orientation session on Tuesday, 24 March was Ioannis (John) Zervos' talk on ancient and contemporary Greece, or Hellas as he prefers to name it, a young, teeming country famed for its classical greatness whose latter and more recent history he sketched for us: the four centuries of Ottoman occupation; Byron and English philhellenism in the Romantic era; the struggle for independence from Turkey; the Smyrna debacle and the convulsive population shifts between Greece and Turkey early in the 20th century, w/ the sudden, enormous growth of Athens; the Italian-then-Nazi occupation during WW II, then the terrible civil war; then the junta, finally a restored democracy and inclusion in the EU. A master raconteur-improvisateur, Mr. Zervos held us fascinated and helped us to understand what it is to be Greek, and to visit Greece, today. Several students attended the Independence Day parade the next day, and it meant much more to them for this introduction.

The evening of the 24th, we enjoyed a welcome dinner at the Vyrinis Taverna down Archimidous Street from the Athens Centre (our options delicious roast lamb and chicken), and the next night, site-director Rosemary Donnelly invited us and the Penn State students over for a mixer with hors d'oeuvres and krasi at her home. On Friday, one of Rosemary's staff, Aphrodite, led us on a walking tour of central Athens: through Syntagma Square, Monastiraki, finishing w/ lunch at a good souvlaki place.

Saturday evening (27 Mar), Nancy and I had the students over around 5:00 for pizza, and we took advantage of our proximity to First Cemetery to tour those amazing grounds together at dusk. The highlight was our discovery of a small new section of recent plots (all 2009) outside the wall up beyond the massive tomb of Heinrich Schleimann, with a stirring view of the Acropolis and the Hill of the Muses in the late light. "I could stay here forever!" Tricia remarked. "It's so beautiful." "A lot of people are staying here forever," I kidded her.

The next week classes began, and the students enjoyed their first major excursion on Wednesday with archaeologist Michael Wedde, who took them up to the Acropolis, down to the Theater of Dionysus, and into the great Acropolis Museum, which deserves an essay of its own. It is the most elegantly conceived, brilliantly executed museum I've ever stepped into, with clear floors offering vertiginous display of ruins beneath and tall windows inviting contemplation of the slopes and the plateau where the marbles and other artifacts on display were found. The top, Parthenon floor holds a true-to-scale abstraction of the Temple of Athena, oriented exactly to the points of the compass like the original, with the metopes hung where they would have been on that building, the white plaster casts of those in the British Museum staring down in mute but compelling argument that it is time now to return the Parthenon marbles to the place of their making.

This was Easter Week in Greece, and most of us found our way to ceremonies like the parading of the epitaphios (a symbol of the crucified savior) through the city. The ritual in First Cemetery was quite moving, with the epitaphios carried on a bier by six pall-bearers and preceded by a marching band, the cortege followed by hundreds of people carrying long, thin, beige candles and winding past the flower-adorned tombs of the extensive cemetery. The band at one point played Chopin's Funeral March as they made their way back towards the sanctuary, where the service continued. On Saturday night, following a long service of priestly chanting, at midnight Easter Sunday began with a lighting of candles--everybody had one, slender white ones now--from a flame flown in from Jerusalem and distributed to all the churches, and the congregations spilled out onto the streets and plazas to light up the night together as bells clanged deafeningly, priests continued their chants, and fireworks boomed. Welcome back to the world of the living! Custom holds that if you make it home with your candle still burning, and don't put it out for a good 15 minutes, your luck will be good this year. We saw people drive off with lit candles in their cars.

Photos:
Acropolis Field Trip
Easter Week