“One thing I know very well is that I know nothing.”–Socrates

We arrived in Athens yesterday afternoon after leaving the Dickinson’s (my in-laws home) in Blakeney at 4:15am, and then driving two hours to Stansted for our flight.  Thank goodness we had been in England long enough to get over our jet lag because Greece is another two hours ahead. After checking in, we managed a short, hot walk in the area before eating a massive platter of meat complemented by a small Greek salad, and then Dani and Susan were ready to turn in for the night. I went out to get my bearings on the area with a further stroll around the Plaka, the most “touristy” area of Athens due to its proximity to the Acropolis. I wasted no time in securing tickets to a play about Aristophanes for tonight. Click the link below for more info now and I’ll tell you more about the production tomorrow.

Aristofaniade

Athens is often referred to as “the cradle of civilization,” and the metaphor is supported by its physical terrain. Athens proper is a bowl of a metropolis (a word originating from Greece, which translates as “mother city”) surrounded by mountains and approximately half of the 11 millions citizens of Greece live here. If it was as flat and sprawling as L.A. who knows how many million more would be here.

To quote Sam Cooke, “Don’t know much about history,” but what I did know about ancient Greece had started to flood back to me as we started our drive from the airport to our hotel, and made small deposits into my consciousness like bits of flotsam and jetsam washed up on a beach. My knowledge of history is tenuous and mostly serves me well playing trivia games, but I kept returning to the fact that much of what we take for granted as a society originated with the Greeks. The first two Greek letters, Alpha and Beta, give us our English word “alphabet.” If it weren’t for a Greek named Cleisthenes, we wouldn’t know or care who Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are. I don’t blame anyone for not knowing Cleisthenes; but he’s the guy who dreamt up the concept of democracy, and then implemented it almost single-handedly. In every gift shop there are statues of people like Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Socrates among the various deities and heroes reminding us of their very human accomplishments.

What could potentially happen in the U.S.A. if we started revering our mathematicians and philosophers instead of reality TV stars, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Athens has this really weird dichotomy (yet another word of Greek origin) of old and new blending simultaneously, and I’m trying to wrap my head around it. In the meantime, we are just taking it all in and enjoying every minute of it.