5 comments about Facing Athens: Encounters with the Modern City.

1. When you travel to Cairo, or Beijing, or Athens, you can focus your tourist eyes and attention on Pyramids, the Forbidden City, the Parthenon, and the people of the past. Or you can open your eyes and mind wider and also attempt to understand the cities and the people who live today in the shadows of antiquity. "Facing Athens" is for the latter group of travelers.
   
   George Sarrinikolaou faces Athens with eyes and mind wide open, with the memories of an Athenian child, and with a transplanted heart and soul that he also must open wider to accomplish his search for discovery and rediscovery.
   
   What results is a not only deft portrait of today's realities in a great and changing city, but a study that often can be applied, at least in part, to other cities (and countries). From it, a reader's own mind can formulate glimpses of what the future may hold for Athens and the world.
   
   "Facing Athens" is must-read for any thoughtful traveler who believes she/he is, or wishes to be, a true world citizen...and any armchair traveler who enjoys seeing through the eyes of the beholder.



2. This is mostly a book about urban decay and the flight to the suburbs. While the specific examples are from Athens, the same words could describe the Bronx or the French banlieus. Because ownsership of cars spread in Greece later than in the United States its effects start appearing in the 1970s, later than in the US. I lived in Athens between 1940 and 1961 and when I visited the country in the late 1970's what struck me was that the Greeks were repeating all the errors that led to American (and Western European) urban problems. However few people ever learn from the errors of others. Other parts of the book deal with the superficial Greek church attendence, common in any country where there is an established church, and corruption, also common in several countries and certainly in the Middle East. (The heritage of the Ottoman empire of which the Balcans and the Middle East used to be part of.) He describes the contrast between affluent Greeks and the illegal Albanian immigrants who tend their gardens but, again, the same words could also describe American suburbanites and the illegal Latin American immigrants who tend their gardens.
   
   Because the author left Greece when he was only 10 years old, he may have had an idealized image of the place and was disappointed by the reality. I left Greece as an adult (after college and military service) and any time I go back I enjoy the place. Overall it has changed for the better. (I stay away from the blighted urban areas for the same reason I stay away from blighted urban areas anywhere else.)
   
   The best thing I can say about the book is that it short, only 144 pages, so I did not waste too much time reading it.



3. I think the author does a good job of describing and capturing the 'uglier' aspects of today's Athens (which certainly need to be discussed further), but leans towards the dour, missing many of the more positive aspects of life in Athens. As with many large, compact cities, our impressions can change from day to day. With Athens, and Greece in general, the best and the worst of humanity seem to become more apparent and immediate to the senses. I don't know why; maybe it's the close quarters.
   
   The issues that Sarrinikolaou artfully raises can be unsettling to those in the Greek Diaspora and should stir discussion. Our impressions of Greece and what it means to be Greek are based (for myself and for many, I believe) on the rural/island traditions and kinship ties of our parents/grandparents. The problems that face modern Athens are not a part of that inherited image and can be easily overlooked.
   
   But,I find that the more time I spend in the city and settle into its peculiar rhythm, the 'village' is made visible in many of the neighborhoods. From late night group sings in a small apartment and familiarity of corner shops and kiosks, to an entire street helping someone park their car, the city is different from what I expected it, or even may want it to be. But it's also more exciting, unpredictable, provocative, and yes, often comforting.



4. An exile returns home and these are his musings. Being Greek, he is under no obligation to invoke the ancients at every turn and he provides an unvarnished look at a city that is dysfunctional and charming at all once. He'll speak of Greek racism (the Albanians are blamed for nearly everything, the Gypsies for the rest), the total disaster of traffic through the city center, and the pull of the old neighborhoods now destroyed by callous development that is turning everything into concrete block apartment buildings.
   
   I've been to Athens and seem most of what he is talking about. The magic of Athens is not that it is perfect, but that in its great imperfections it still tugs at something inside you.



5. George Sarrinikolaou has written a wonderful memoir of his trip to Athens. Sarrinikolaou was raised in Athens and returns looking for the home he remembered as a child only to find his homeland different. It is this blunt look at a changed Athens struggling to find its way in the world. Sarrinikolaou covers such topics as racism of different ethnics other than Greeks and the nouveau riche developing in the city.
   
   One of the most revealing sections talks about owning a car in a city clogged with traffic. Every Athenian hates the traffic, but they all want a car for the "freedom" they represent. It is this type of dichotomy the book represents.
   
   Sarrinikolaou writes with both anger and bitter sadness about the city of his childhood. He condemns, but it is also obvious he loves Athens. Much like those of us that moved away only to return later and remark, "I thought it was larger".
   
   The beauty of this book is that it is written in stark black and white. Sarrinikolaou calls it like he sees it and it is bleak.
   
   "Facing Athens" is a very personal account and it is bittersweet, but should not be missed. Highly recommended.

No comments about In the mountains of Greece,.

No comments about Athens (CitySpots) (CitySpots).

No comments about Frommer's Greek Islands With Your Family: From Golden Beaches to Ancient Legends (Frommers With Your Family Series).

5 comments about Greece: Images of an Enchanted Land, 1954-1965.

1. Many of these collected black and white photographs, taken with a Rolleiflex in the 8 1/2 inch square format by the photographer during some of his many trips to Greece in the mid 1950's and 1960's, take one's breath away - arresting lansdcapes, portraits, and scenes of life as it was lived then, a vanished era, to quote the author. The pictures were made by someone who undoubtedly knows and loves the people and the country with a passion that shines through. McCabe is not a professional photographer, but rather the best kind of amateur, in the sense of comparing Olympic sports to professional sports. His work has a freshness and vitality that is more amazing considering that the pictures were taken over 40 years ago. The book recalls for me a trip I once made to the Greek Islands. During a night passage, our boat anchored off the coast of Delos, an uninhabited island (then) that is known as a sanctuary and the birthplace of some important Greek Gods and Goddesses. My memory of proximity to the aura of this sanctuary, the way it made me think about history, the ancient Greeks, was summoned back by McCabe's photographs in a way that made clear his understanding of the interconnectedness of people. His pictures make one think about how human intellectual history, our knowledge, began there, in Greece. Whether it is a picture from great height of an amphitheatre where Sophocles' plays were originally performed, or a glimpse of two young girls giggling over a shared secret, the effect of this book is to draw out a fascinating combination of history, landscape and human emotion.



2. The photos in this book are in turn beautiful, warm, moving and joyful. In all of them, McCabe's love of Greece and all things Greek shines through. This book is awesome and wonderful. The reproductions are superb and the images evocative of a time in Greece when life was simpler than today. Find a comfortable chair, open the book, and enjoy the journey!



3. This is a spectacular book. Robert McCabe's intimate knowledge of Greece and its people informs the beautiful photographs that are presented in this record of a truly idyllic land. When I first received the book, I did something highly unusual for me: I sat down and went through the entire book, page by page. What a treat that experience was. I recommend this collection of photographs to anyone interested in Greece and to anyone who loves great photography.



4. I have not seen such photography since Cartier Bresson's photos on everyday French life. It brings the people and land to life and presents a marvelous "record" what was and is about to partially disappear. It is a rare work of art. Peter Sichel



5. McCabe presents a Greece living now only in the hearts and minds of Yia Yias and Papous but never quite forgotten as this book proves masterfully through the fantastic photography. The reader walks through post-WWII Greece and experiences the simple wonders of the Greek people and land. This book is a journey not to be missed.

No comments about Ancient Greece: A guide to the Golden Age of Greece (Sightseers).

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2 comments about Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (Penguin Travel Library).

1. Patrick Leigh Fermor's Roumeli gives us a glimpse at many ancient customs of Greece that were still practiced at the time of writing. His book is a must read for any one intrested in Greece



2. All of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books are of an unusual beauty, but this is without doubt the most beautiful of all. But the author is not for just anyone. I have a friend who bought Roumeli and got only ten pages into it before deciding she didn't like it. But there are reasons for that. She has a journalism background and she lives in New York. Appreciating Leigh Fermor involves taking the time to savor elevated language and imagery emanating from several sometimes unfamiliar realms of meaning. Sorry, folks, but the dumbing down process stops here.
   In the first chapter we have a description of the author's travels in Trace and in particular the area around Alexandroupolis, which, interestingly, is named for the Russian Czar Alexander II and not for Alexander the Great. The focus here is the people he calls The Black Departers, or the Sarakatsans, a mysterious and little-studies nomadic group who some say are descendants of the original Greeks who came into the peninsula.
   Then there is a delightful chapter centered on the monasteries of Meteora and the holy but realistic Father Christopher, the abbot of St. Barlaam, who has a few tales to tell about the foreign occupiers and their mindless cruelty and how the monks outsmarted them on a few occasions.
   Chapter three deals with the famous difference between Hellenes and Greeks (or Romios) that has been used as an analytic model by many serious writers who take an interest in modern Greece, including Robert D. Kaplan in his Balkan Ghosts. This is the division or polarity existing within every Greek you meet on the streets and it shows the distinct pulls of the Eastern and Western orientations that still abide in the Greek collective consciousness and which give, sometimes, the impression of a split personality. Mention is made of George Soteriades the archeologist who insisted that Romios should be used only in the pejorative sense of a mean, vulgar, and sordid man. But the word has also had its very distinguished defenders.
   Also worth noting is the fact that this book contains the very elegant and entertaining essay called Sounds of the Greek World, of which I cannot resist giving a few examples here:

   Chios is a cakewalk on a cottage piano. ....Hermoupolis is the filioque. .....The Plaka is a drunken polyphony at four in the morning in praise of retsina and the tune of a music- box perched on a photograph album of faded plum velvet with filigree clasps at five in the afternoon.

   Yes, this book is beautiful. Take the time to read and enjoy it.

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