August 26, 2007
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Burning down the house!
Roaring flames are eating up this country; first the forrests decided to combust and then a bunch of psychotic arsonists decided to help them. The burning began on Friday. Saturday, the sky over Athens was sooty and nauseating; a perpetual dusk settled over the city. The sun was an angry orange ball. Giant chunks of ash swept through the air. My eyelids grated and stung. I sneezed gray. I got headachy and weird and sick and had to lay down in the hotel as the day heated up, scorching and dehydrating and parching everything. The day was toxic.
Aside from being surrounded by fire, Athens is a mixed experience. The Acropolis and Zeus’ Temple were incredible – we spent early Saturday morning soaking it up, before the day got too hot and while we were still so excited that we all but forgot about the sooty air. We spent today (seriously, from open to near close) in the National Archeological museum, which was amazing. But the city itself is depressing. It’s dirty and covered in graffiti and filth and smells and big dogs and hungry cats and cigarette butts and the heat. Oh, the heat. The heat is trapped inside the city in a bubble of hell, making the tight passageways even more claustrophobic than they would be already. The architecture is just sad: cruddy, ugly, washed out, dust covered 1960′s and 1970′s block residencies tower above, their first floors bearing security cage-covered shop fronts. I can’t help but think that coming from the wide open natural beauty of Crete and Milos is making me extra sensitive to the grit of Athens. Plus, it’s not like we’re seeing it in it’s best light, what with the fire and all. So I’m not being totally fair.
We’re enjoying ourselves, though. Staying indoors as much as possible. (Really – you can’t BREATHE outside.) We went to see a Tarantino movie, Deathproof, last night to escape the toxic air. It had subtitles in Greek that I suspect were done poorly, as Shaun and I seemed to be the only ones laughing riotously at some points.
All for now. Am sweaty. Be well. Stay away from matches. Send thoughts of comfort and respite to those country men and women of Greece, stumbling through smoke-billowing olive groves, a wall of flames licking at their heels.
Comments (2)
Glad to hear you’re faring well. When I saw that Greece was on fire I wondered if it was affecting your good time. Nice to see it’s not.
I just read about this and came home and here. I have been out of the loop prepping for school and became worried. Glad you are doing well and am definitely thinking of those people.