Why the Acropolis might be the worst thing to visit on your first day in Athens, Greece.
I
There’s little to mark the birthplace of Western democracy.
If it wasn’t for the rock-cut steps that led you to the top of this bare, low hill, and a few raised surfaces worn smooth by the passage of many feet, you’d see nothing. Some of the most momentous decisions of Greek history were decided here. The hill’s very name, Pnyx, means “tightly crammed together,” and 6,000 people could have squeezed onto it. Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes and Socrates would have walked up here, would have muttered, lambasted, implored, argued, and shaken their fists.
You? You see nothing of it. There’s nothing but the wind, the view of a city too big for your mind to take in (above), and the distant grumble of traffic. You can never completely escape the noise of traffic in Athens, but up here, soundproofed by the surrounding parkland belonging to the Greek Ministry of Culture, it’s as quiet as anywhere you’ve found.
It’s peaceful up here. You savour it, bask in the heat, and try to imagine what’s missing – but all you can see is what’s here, which is virtually nothing. Still, it’s a serene spot to get your bearings, take in the surrounding sweep of the city, and start to feel like you’ve truly arrived.
Then you wander off the hill, turn a corner, and all hell breaks loose.
II
Last week CNN published one of my articles, on the subject of tourists traps. I may have used the wrong term, or at least defined it differently to most people (see the comments), but in a nutshell, the article is about how over-popular places are always worth visiting.
And now I’d like to tweak that statement a bit.
On my first full day in Athens, I went to the Acropolis. I walked there via the parkland surrounding the Agora, and climbed onto the Pnyx. I pottered around, I enjoyed the heat and the hush, I drank half of my water supply without realizing it, and I had a deliciously relaxed time. Then I wandered along a path, went up a few steps, and everything turned into tourists.
The Acropolis is spectacularly popular. This regularly turns the gated, security-guarded entrance into a bottleneck of visitors. In 2007, they were checking bags. Michael Turtle (whose blog post I linked to in the CNN article because it really conveys the flavour of the climb up) was told off for carrying a tripod for his camera. Plenty of restrictions apply. And that’s understandable. The Greek authorities are looking after the welfare of their site, and the more people visit, the more careful they have to be.
I found absolutely nothing offensive in this approach. I understood it completely.
But I turned round, and I went back to my hotel.
And now I’m proud I did that.
III
If you’re in Athens for the first time, and you have more than an afternoon to explore it, here are a few fun things to do.
- Get lost. This city is vast. Stupendously huge. It’s also raucous and modern, and there’s a lot of the Middle East in it. If you’re a pasty-faced Westerner like I am, there’ll be enough familiarity to ground you and enough novelty to confuse you. It shouldn’t be too hard to get lost – and that’s when you really start paying attention to a place. Just go walking, and give yourself plenty of time to end up in the wrong place. It’s worth it.
- Drink All Night. Don’t be stupid enough to get visibly drunk - Greece officially hates it, and if you’re a guy, it’s the least manly thing you can do in public. Nevertheless, the Greeks love their beer. There’s no paradox here, because a common routine is to alternate between beer and coffee (usually adding a cigarette in there somewhere for an extra jolt to the brain), and stay up until stupid o’clock. If you’re accustomed to having dinner around 5-6pm, you’re in for a shock. Hardly anyone eats it before 9pm, and food is usually served until after midnight. So if you get a kick from people-watching, this is a great way to see the people of Athens being truly Athenian. Move from bar to bar, restaurant to restaurant, circling the Plaka district and keeping nicely topped up with caffeine and alcohol so you’re friendly with everyone, brave enough to try out your pathetically rusty Greek, and notice absolutely everything. That’s a good first impression of Athens, right there.
- Climb Lykavitos Hill, the highest point in the city. The view at sunset can be incredible.
But don’t go to the Acropolis first. Leave that for another day.
First impressions happen once. Just as our initial assessment of the value of another human being is based on appallingly limited data, our judgement of whether a place is “good” or “bad” can be based on a single experience – the first one we have. And because first impressions are (ridiculous, blinkered) drivers of future relationships, that “good” or “bad” tag can stick in our minds, derailing our attempts to be fair and balanced about the world.
This sucks. But everyone does it.
A massively popular tourist attraction is usually swarming with people who aren’t from those parts. They’re like you. They’re visitors, not residents. They’re also visitors from everywhere - a multi-cultural, multilingual throng. A confusing mess, everywhere you look. That’s part of the fun.
But it’s also a dreadful thing to have as a first impression of a city.
It’s context-independent. It’s confusing as hell. And it has very little to do with what the place is – it’s just a symptom of what that place does.
If you visit Athens and you go to the Acropolis on a blazingly hot day when everyone else is trying to get up there, and you have a miserable time and you come away convinced – at some deep level, absolutely convinced – that Athens is a horrible place to spend a sunny afternoon, you just missed the Athens I love, and that Athenians are proud to call home. All of it. Every single bit. Athens is far from being a sea of Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps. You’re just wrong.
Your first impression of the city is broken – and that was completely avoidable.
Here’s how. You go to the Acropolis tomorrow, or the next day, when you’ve seen the city and you’ve let it sink into your bones. You go when you know why people get excited about the Parthenon or the Erechtheion. You go when local Greeks have explained why you should go, maybe as friendly advice from the next table as you eat your dinner at midnight.
You go when you’re able to look past the crowds, and truly see why there are crowds in the first place.
But you don’t go there first.
