A Week of Wandering

Kifissia, church, and a large cemetery

Metro stop at Kifissia

This past week has been busy as many different homework projects are coming due.  But I still managed to find some time to explore Athens – here are the highlights.

On Saturday, I went with my regular travel companions, Mari and Darryn, to see Kifissia.  Kifissia is an area of Athens that is about 40 minutes away from our downtown area by metro.  It’s a hard place to condense into a simple description, but I think Darryn put it best when she said, “It’s like the Beverly Hills of Athens.”  Kifissia, especially in its most Hills-ish part, looks very wealthy.  High-end clothing and jewelry stores sit next to extravagant cafes and restaurants in which this college student could only dream of eating.  Even Everest, a popular fast food chain, seemed to exude an air of luxury, if that’s possible.  A short walk down the tree-lined sidewalk will bring you past houses.  This is unusual in its self – in many parts of Athens, (including ours) the need to house five million people in one city has led to a landscape of apartment buildings.  The houses of Kifissia, though, were also very extravagant, with small ponds and olive trees in gated yards.  We all agreed that we had found the mansions of Athens. 

On Sunday, I woke up early to go to a Greek Orthodox mass.  The first thing I noticed when I walked in were the colors of the church.  Growing up in a Catholic household, I was used to the brightly colored Christian themes, but the Greek Orthodox’s walls are painted in dark hues that gave the entire place a somber feeling.  In the front of the Church, there sits a large, ornate, white wall (some of the only white in the church) with an open door in the middle.  Through this door, you can watch the priests perform the rituals on the other side of the wall.  Throughout most of the service, there is a constant chanting from a group of men in the corner.  The repetitive chanting, combined with the dark colors and burning incense, created an almost hypnotic environment for me.  To be fair, I’m pretty sure that church was fairly traditional in its practices, and that others it the city are somewhat more laid back.  And since 97% of Greeks claim to be Orthodox, I think it was a very worthwhile venture.

To round off my week of exploration, my roommate, Bob, and I decided to visit the National Cemetery that sits directly across the street from our apartment balcony.  I remembered hearing at some point that this cemetery is where all the “important people” are buried.  Overall, though, it wasn’t very remarkable – except for its size.  There’s really no way to take a photo of it, since its covered in picture-blocking trees, but Bob and I decided that we could have spent a large part of the day wandering through.

Well, that’s all I have for you this week, except for a small surprise that’s brewing in Athens.  But I can’t tell you about that until next week – wouldn’t be much of a surprise if you knew about it, now would it?

See you soon!