Sensationalist Riots
I arrived in Athens approximately 26 hours after leaving Belgrade, and was excited to get some quality sleep. I easily found my hostel between Syntagma Square and the Acropolis and only saw a few burnt out stores. The next day, I met some girls in the hostel who were finally going to the Acropolis. It had been closed for the last four days due to the riots, The Acropolis and its many temples, agora, and green space was beautiful, but a dwarf in comparison to Rome. It was great to visit, but the scaffolding and crane jutting out of the Parthenon on the top of the Acropolis didn’t help make it an amazing experience aside from its historical reasons. The rest of the day we visited other ancient sites around the city, ate traditional food in the Plaka area, and entertained ourselves with the dogs.
The stray dogs in Greece are collared, given rabies shots, and spay/neutered whenever possible. This mix of dogs are friendly and seem to adopt you for your jaunt around the city. For instance a group of us went out for dinner with a dog we named Nigel. Nigel would stay about 10 feet in front of us only to run off other dogs and cats, bark at other pedestrians, and mark his territory every 5 minutes or so lest we get lost. While we were at dinner, a man tried to sell us roses, and after declining the first time, Nigel jumped up and barked at him when he tried to come by again. After politely curling up by our table for dinner, he declined any scraps and took us back to the hostel where he found a couple other strays. It was a bizarre experience at first, but after a while you look forward to the company, and many of the girls liked it when walking alone as the dog would bark at suspicious person when not on a crowded street.
As for my experiences with the riots, they are based on little more than stories from locals and local news papers. Take the economics and politics as you wish, but what I heard is people aren’t happy with the government, and the demonstrations have turned violent, but towards Christmas trees, shops, and ATMs. Otherwise, the “riots” were little more than demonstrations with a few hooligans who got out of hand and are using laws protecting Universities enacted after the fall of the dictatorship in the 70s as a safe haven.
The government apparently has used up all of its 10 tonnes of tear gas during the stand-offs, and has used it liberally. One man told me about how he was alone on a street with seven old ladies who were carrying groceries home, and they were suddenly in a cloud of unprovoked tear gas. He tried to help as many of them as possible before not being able to see himself. Take it as you please, but I personally only saw some riot police calmly waiting around Syntagma Square ready to protect the replaced Christmas tree while happily using the free wireless around a bunch of holiday shoppers.
