Athens

I arrived in Athens, Greece yesterday and just walked around the city during the day. I visited the Acropolis, with the Parthenon, Temple of Nike, and the Theater of Dionysus. Impressive structures, amazing when you consider their age and significance. Everything is currently being renovated/restored though, so all of the ruins were covered in scaffolding, which somewhat detracted from the experience and made it harder for me to let my mind wander and imagine myself ther 2000+ years ago (although maybe they had cranes back then).

Last night, purely by chance, I stumbled upon a mass governmental protest. I was just meandering through the city center and wandered into the Syndagma Square, where the Parliament building is. Suddenly I found myself amidst a mass rally, surrounded by thousands of people all dressed in black, which coincidentally I was wearing too. People were holding banners, parading, chanting, and passing out flyers. My spider sense told me that something was going on, but the flyer that I was handed was Greek to me (sorry...) so I wasn't exactly surre what the demonstration was about.

Although I saw no Bush effigies, I was somewhat hesitant to ask after the rally's purpose for fear of being exposed as American in the middle of an anti-American occupation of Iraq protest or something, but after about 30 sec. my curiousity won out and I asked one of the girls handing out flyers.

The demonstration was in protest of the Greek government's delayed/non-reaction to the 200+ fires raging in Greece. Over 180,000 hectares have been burnt and 64 people have died. The fires are now being fought, with massive EU support, but the government's initial paralysis has been/was being highly critisized.

A state of emergency has been declared and they fires have been labeled a "terrorist act", as so many were started simultaneously. Conspiracy theories abound, with the fires simultaneously the work of the Greek mafia, the Greek government, home-grown or Turkish terrorists, etc. There is a lot of critism towards the state of emergency call, as many critics believe the government is using the fires as a political weapon and are trying to create an environment of fear in the lead-up to next month's national elections.

During the rally there occured what sounded like 3-4 big explosions of some sort. They happened near the Parliament building, which I was far away from, so I'm not entirely sure what actually happened. It freaked me, and all of the people I was standing by, out though, and we all walked away for a while, but apparently it was nothing of any substance because we all walked back about 10 min. later and nothing had changed.

Today I'm going to check out the Temple of Olympian Zeus and the National Archaelogical Museum. There are a couple of beaches about 45 min. outside of Athens, so tomorrow and Saturday will probably be beach days, or I might take a ferry to one of the nearby islands. Tubular.