A City of Dogs

Have you ever wondered where we get the phrase “It’s a dog’s life” from? Well, if I were a betting girl, I’d wager that the person who coined it lived in Athens. There are SO many mutts just hanging around the city streets that don’t seem to belong to anyone. The weird thing is, everyone I’ve seen has a collar and tags, but we see the same ones hanging out in the same places: near the Acropolis, in the Plaka (the block of restaurants/cafes/shops . . . basically a tourist trap that we’ve gone to pretty much everyday) near the same place, always by themselves. Most of us figure that either the government takes care of their stray dogs or they belong to restaurant owners that just let them wander the streets. The dogs will follow us around for a long time, though. We’ll walk by one of them, they’ll get up from their lazy spot in the sun and just start trotting along. We had one follow us all the way up the hill where the Parthenon is located, which is quite the climb on not so stable terrain. Some of them have been named by different members of the group; my favorites are Pericles and Boris. They also tend to be rather protective, although slightly stupid, dogs. They bark fiercely at anyone that walks past our group; however when our group gets separated and then comes back together, they bark at those guys too. It must be really hard to differentiate.
Ooh!! So, Greece is in the middle of all these fault lines, which I did not know until Tuesday. Anyway I was in my hotel room, working on homework (or . . . on facebook . . . ), and the bed shook just a little bit, so that I thought that someone either upstairs or downstairs had moved something heavy, or (worst case scenario) someone was under my bed, shaking it. Creepy! I just laid there, not really wanting to check under the bed and assuming it was just someone walking heavily or something like that, but luckily, I heard some of the other people in our group talking in the hallway about movement of furniture, so I knew that I wasn’t crazy. We checked the internet later that day, and turns out that there 5.0 magnitude earthquake about 25 miles south of Athens. So, I’ve been in my first earthquake, and I’m still here to tell about it!

On Wednesday, we walked up to the Parthenon, like actually inside of it. Well, almost inside of it because they had a lot of construction going on, trying to restore it. It had been damaged over the years, pretty much since it was built in 433 bc. However, in 1687, when it had been converted (again) to a mosque, the ottomans decided that it would be a really great idea to store their gunpowder there, to protect their weaponry from the Venitians who were at war with them. However, it turned out to be not such a good idea when it was shot and subsequently exploded. It was really awesome to see the columns though, how they’ve shifted so much and yet are still relied up on to hold up the entire top of them, and are still standing. There were actually three buildings there, the entrance to the Parthenon, known as the Propylaia, and the Parthenon itself, and then a temple, called the Erectheon, where Athena and Posiden had to compete to see who would give the city the best gift. Posiden gave the city the gift of sea water, and Athena gave them the olive tree; obviously Athena won, as the city is named after her.

It was really surreal, seeing the Parthenon. First of all, it’s so old, at least some of the marble is. Way older than anything in the United States; older than the united states, as a matter of fact. Way older. It’s just crazy to see how brilliant the ancient people must have been, to not only create a structure like that with so limited tools and resources, but to do it in such a small time frame also; it was built in only 53 years. It’s something you read about for so, long and then to actually get the chance to see it, up close, and discover things about it that I never knew, like the columns were not just one long shaft, but a bunch of cylinders stacked on top of each other. Also crazy to think that the pieces of marble had to be cut so perfect so that the structure would stand, and the necessary ways of arranging the building so that it would look proportional is slightly ridiculous. They also used no mortar to hold the building together, as this would have promoted deterioration; they relied on perfectly cut marble and gravity. They had to have been so advanced to think of all those precautions to making it look as majestic as they did.

I’m having a great time in Athens, in case you couldn’t tell! I miss everyone at home though; it’s weird to think I’ve been gone less than a week. I don’t miss the snow however, even though the Greek people think that 50 degrees is way to cold to go sit up on the roof of the cafes and have some ice cream . . . they have no idea.