Modern Athens lives incredibly intimately with its ancient past. Unlike Jerusalem which has a clear division between Old City and Modern Jerusalem, in Athens you can be walking down an average street and almost without noticing, pass the ruins of a 2500 year old building – which is flanked by a United Colors of Benetton store (an antiquity of its own kind). Driving along the major street closest to our hotel, we pass the ruins of the Temple of Zeus while heading to dinner downtown. Walking along the touristy shopping promenades, we run into a 1700 year-old church - across from which is a ritzy optometrist's shop.
Certainly Athens pays proper service to the Acropolis with a park, museum and institute of archeological research surrounding it. But in a city this old, you would have a museum and institute every few hundred feet if you gave everything its full due. So people live in harmony with their ancient ancestors of both Hellenistic and Christian backgrounds. And why not? Is the Parthenon not their birthright and a marker of their society's accomplishments? Are the churches not still functioning holy sites? And do not at least a portion of the church-goers need stylish eyewear and comfortable contacts?
One of the great attractions of Greece is its seeming adherence and simultaneous disregard for convention. Greeks revere the Greek Orthodox Church with 90% of them identifying as church members. At the same time only 38% attend church services at least once a month and only 29% claim to pray daily. In Athens, there are a fair number of pedestrian-only streets which seem to have a intermittent smattering of motorcycles and the occasional taxi running through them. No one seems to care – certainly not the police. And store hours are often a general suggestion. Greek shop owners may open and close at any times that suit them.
But in this disregard is the gold. Greece is a country of strong family values, interpersonal warmth and a focus on living with verve. A long lunch or dinner with family is more important than opening the family shop promptly. Watching the sunset remains important. Drinking and eating well are essential to a quality life. Riding motorcycles, smoking and enjoying ouzo are virtues, not vices. Foreigners flock to Greece in part to receive the permission of the Greek people to live a little. "The country is beautiful, the sea is bountiful, life is precious – live!" tourists hear from the collective Greek voice.
And so they do while they're here.
And we will too. Today, after a day of Emily working online and Matheus and me taking Sennen and Ailyn on the Hop On, Hop Off Bus tour of the city, some time at the playground and gelato we headed for Piraeus Port – Athens' harbor – to board the Blue Star 2 ferry for Patmos.
The taxi driver who picked Matheus up at the airport asked Matheus where he was going after Athens. "Let me guess, Santorini, Mykonos…" When Matheus told him Patmos the driver said, "You are the first young person who has ever told me they are going to Patmos! Good for you, it is the BEST!"
Of course, a key reason it remains the best is because unlike Santorini, Mykonos – or Crete, Rhodes or Corfu for that matter – Patmos has no airport. It's a pain to get to no matter how you go about it.
But we're okay with that. We're doing the layover in Athens. We're taking the 6 pm ferry that lands us in Patmos at 2 am. We're sleeping in the tight cabin for four (Matheus is in his own quarters). We know that in the modified words of Debbie Allen, if we want Patmos, Patmos costs – and this is where we start paying: in sweat.
Because on Patmos, that collective Greek voice telling you to really live and appreciate can be heard the loudest and clearest of all – with bright skies and deep blue hues of ocean vividly reminding your every sense that while life can be hard, painful and depressing – it can also be joyous and light. There is room in it to reach up to the heavens, root down in the earth, see, touch and taste all the is beautiful. And it is in the simplest things that we can find this.
Let's just hope that we can keep our eyes on the prize when dragging two tired kids off a boat and up a hill to our house at 2 am….
