The lost American nods into his beer and says that the Greeks are different. He should know. He came here, he’s not sure, maybe 20 years ago – he just dropped out and never came back – and he’s been here ever since, mostly writing poetry, and for all that time he’s been illegal, no kind of papers at all, and the fact is that it’s never caused him a moment’s hassle.
He drinks his beer, and I drink my brandy, and both of us stare stupidly at the vast brown barrels full of home-brewed liquor that are piled up in the shadows of the taverna. Outside on the pavement, there’s a stray cat stretched out in the sun and that sweet smell of old drains which you always get in a country that’s not yet been consumed by the air-conditioned nightmare.
The lost American says the truth is that his home here is illegal, too. He has this room, it’s not far from the Acropolis, and, for his money, it’s in the finest house in all of Athens, but the house was built without a permit – 140 years ago. And, in all those years, there’s never been a moment’s hassle about that either.
So, what does that mean? That the Greeks don’t respect the law? Hell, no – they invented the law. Of course, they respect the law. But they also respect people. That’s what makes them different. Like Mr Walk-up-and-down, with the bushy grey beard and the coat of many odours, who stomps his way up and down Kidathineon Street, muttering under his breath. He gets food and water and anything he wants from the shopkeers. They just give it to him, because he is a clown of God. Same with the alcoholics, they get treated well. And the stray cats. And the refugees.
There are 500,000 refugees in Greece – the whole population is only ten million – and you don’t see many of them begging because they get jobs and houses. The lost American says the Greeks understand about refugees, because they’ve all got cousins in the United States and Australia. Sure, the Albanians get blamed for all the crime – and rightly so. The Albanians are mountain people and they’re just as tough as they have to be. He says the Greeks understand that. They’re mountain people, too, and so they crack down on the Albanians before they get out of hand. Even that is a form of respect. He says he himself may be dirty, he may be gay, he may be lost, but the Greeks will respect him for the man he is.
Maybe he’s right, this dusty guy in his dark corner. Or maybe he’s just romanticising the place, trying to justify his oblivion. Out on the streets, the evidence is against him. There’s Omonia Square with the kiosks selling porn and the jam of drivers pumping their horns; Syntagma Square with the litter on the pavement and the junk music on loud speakers and the junk food from the imperialist Mcdonalds and the same drivers squirting oily black fumes over everything. There’s the smog that hangs in the air, trapped by the circle of mountains around the city; the illegal brothels they call ‘cribs’ where Greek organised crime groups sell the women they have trafficked in from the Ukraine. And then there’s the Acropolis.
There are very few places in the known universe which can be visited by time-travellers from 2,000 years in the past and still be recognised by them without hesitation. The collection of temples and theatres on the Acropolis of Athens is one of them. At least, it is from a distance.
Before eight o’clock each morning, the coaches start to pile into the car park on the southern edge of the theatre of Dionysius. By eight o’clock – a hideous miracle – an avalanche starts to move up hill, hundreds and hundreds of heaving, sweating, panting visitors: the Americans with buttocks like boulders, grunting like rutting rhino as they lumber upwards; the flocks of Japanese, so delicate by comparison, so terribly numerous; the French schoolchildren who win Olympic gold medals for screaming; the dour Brits with their sensible shoes. By half past eight, they have covered the place like headlice. There is no peace. There is no place to stand. And yet, there is magic here.
The best of it arguably is in the ancient Agora, which is bypassed by most of the tour groups and where real life signals from the past: in the two-thousand-year-old remnants of Simon the cobbler who lived on the edge of this old market and who left behind the hobnails and eyelets of his trade along with his favourite goblet, with his name still scratched into its base; in the jar marked ‘biscuits’, or in the pot where some unknown lawyer kept the documents he was gathering for his next trial; in the names of the ancient senators still scratched into the clay ballots they used to cast when they voted; in the 13 pot thimbles which were found in the remains of the state prison and which, the archaeologists believe, carried the hemlock with which the condemned kissed goodbye to their lives.
Even on the peak of the Acropolis, where the tide of tourists is as thick as lava and no sweeter to smell, you can still catch the sheer love of life which inspired these buildings. Look, in the museum there, at the statue of the youth with the calf around his shoulders, its hooves gathered on his chest, and see the peace and the pleasure in him; or the young women with their braided red hair; or Artemis leaning gently against her brother, Appollo’s thigh while he chats to her, as gods must do when they feel at peace with the world.
It is the same in the streets. Behind the curtain of noise and smog, Athens remains a collection of villages. Just turn off any main street and follow any twisting alley and you will find yourself among small house with dopey dogs and grape vines on the walls – and tavernas. The tavernas are the home of real Athenians, of this differerence which the lost American adores. These are places of pleasure and specifically of two particular pleasures for which the Greeks have found words: ‘parea’, which would be very badly translated as ‘greed’ and much better as a deep affection for food with friends; and ‘kefi’, which might be misunderstood to mean drunkenness but which really describes the abandonment of self through alcohol.
These are warm and often rowdy places, with every class and kind of Greek thrown in together. They stay open for ever: for those who start work with the sun, they serve lunch from the middle of the morning; for those who want to talk till late, they stay open till dawn. Their food draws on generations of refugees who have settled here: the Turks who fled Smyrna in 1922 bringing their spiced meats and fish as well as their hashish; the USAF men who brought fast food, now adapted to Athenian ‘tost’; the more recent EU migrants bringing French and Italian wines and ingredients. But their core is Greek.
You can see that Greek core even more clearly in the shops, particularly those that cluster around the sprawling markets on Athinas street: cheese shops, like Zafolia, which sells 50 barrels of feta a day; the herb shops on Sofokleos Street; the olive shops on Sokratou Street, like Papalexandris which sells 25 different kinds of olives from Thassos and Attika, from Crete and Amfissa; the hams and blackened sausages on Armadiou Street; nuts from Aegina; figs; beans from Kastoria; halva with honey and almonds. All for the pleasure of being human.
Despite all the threats of modernity, Athens is still a city where cats sleep on pavements and where lost human beings come to find respect.
See below for city details
Eat at:
Kafeneio, 1 Epiharmou Street, clatters with life. The waiter brings a tray of a dozen dishes so you can choose without speaking the language.
Dionysos Cafe, western end of Rovertou Galli Street, not a beautiful building but a great view of the Acropolis, good for breakfast.
Kalokerinos, 10 Kekropos Street, complete madness as a bouzouki band takes over the taverna and the diners take over the stage.
Platanos, 4 Diogenous Street, looks like the kind of restaurant you might have hoped to find in Paris in the 1930s, clean and simple and delightful.
Fish restaurants in Tourkolimenos, a quiet harbour a short taxi ride away from the underground station at Piraeus.
Drink at:
Bakalarakia, 41 Kidathineon Street, where the owner makes his own brandy and wines, some of them 45 years old.
Apotsos, down the arcade at 10 El Venizelou, a plain and simple ouzo house for politicians from the nearby parliament.
Diogenes, Lysikrates Square, for tranquility beneath the olive trees while the stray cats play on the excavated ruins in the square.
Xynou, Aggelou Geronta Street, look for a green lattice fence and head for the door on its left, a classic Athenian taverna.
Centre of Hellenic Tradition, cafe upstairs at 36 Pandrossou, a refuge from the heat and the noise of the flea market.
