2 June 2009: Athens Burns!

Usually, one would start a story with an introduction and finish it with a conclusion. Not in this case - I can say from the beginning that I did not like Athens. I expected something else - something like, say, culture. Instead, I found the Omonia Square, and Hotel Lozanni. Read through.
I left Heraklion in the morning - an uneventful trip to the airport, and then a lovely flight, with Aegean Airlines, to Athens. This company is inexpensive, yet very reliable, its planes are clean, and they even serve refreshments for flights as short as 35 minutes. I paid 39 euros, taxes included, for the Heraklion-Athens flight. An excellent deal, as the boat would have cost me about the same.
Having reached Athens, I phoned Kostas - my old friend - and we met in Syntagma Square, where the airport bus left me after one hour of travel. Yes, it took more to get from the airport to central Athens than to get from Crete to the Athens Airport. I hope they will soon fix their metro.



Kostas had just returned from Thesaloniki. We had a coffee, and off I went to the hotel, by foot. It was not that far away. When I saw the area - a central one! - I got very disappointed. As I would later say for tripadvisor.com,

I had to spend a night in Athens, between planes. As next day I would have two important meetings in Romania, I had to have a good night rest. I chose an inexpensive hotel, in what I thought was an OK area of Athens (it is one of the two central squares). Well, the area is the main issue - it is located in the middle of the ghetto. If they did not charge my card already when I booked the hotel, I would have rather returned to the airport or asked my Athenian friend to find me another place. At 3 AM, when I left the hotel for my early flight, the prostitutes were looking for clients just in front of it. I called a cab, and, for a very short distance to the other square, where the airport bus is located, I had to pay 8 euros. In conclusion: avoid, not that much for the hotel itself, but for the horrible, horrible area.

I left the hotel for a trip to Athens, I saw the Parliament and the Acropoles ...





...but, more than that, I saw the Athenians - the communist and lumpen variety.





A girl from the "Nea Democratia" stand said, "there aren't that many communists, they only like to make noise".
In any case, I wish these commies could spend a week in Tuol Sleng, the Cambodian prison - museum I visited two years ago while in Phnom Penh. Not as guards, but as inmates. As for the lumpen, it is not their fault they were there. They were invited by social democracy. Until things change, ...