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Newsletter 33June 2004
“Tribute to Greece and to the Athens 2004 Olympics”
Prometheas’ concert, Under the Auspices of the Ministry of Culture of Greece, “Tribute to Greece and to the Athens 2004 Olympics” took place on Sunday, May 23, 2004 at 7:30 pm at the prestigious Lisner Auditorium of the George Washington University. The renowned composer Dinos Constantinides, Boyd Professor of composition at the Louisiana State University and Music Director of the Louisiana Symphonietta, along with 14-member ensemble from Baton Rouge, the Greek mezzo soprano Angelica Kathariou and the Trio Verdehr presented an excellent program. A brief video presentation about the Olympics preceded the musical part and Ambassador Eleftherios Anghelopoulos, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Greece, greeted the audience with an invitation to visit Greece during the Olympic Games.
A press release is attached at the last page of this newsletter. Mark your calendarGreek film opens in Washington, D.C.AHI is pleased to bring to your attention the opening of a Greek film, Hard Goodbyes: My Father, which will run from June 18-25 at Visions Cinema in Washington, D.C.
Visions Cinema in Washington DC is opening up the new Greek film HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER on June 18th for a full week run.
10-year-old Elias, a boy living in Athens, makes a pact with his father to watch on television man's first landing on the moon. The two regale each other with stories of Jules Verne and flights of the imagination. They are adventurers and explorers. But chocolate bars left by a father gone on too many business trips are counted, while the countdown to the moonlanding has already begun. The year is 1969. A spaceship takes off, and man soon takes leave of planet earth. And so does Elias' father. It is the imagination and their shared love of storytelling that allow Elias to transcend the unimaginable.
Metropolitan Museum of Art holds Byzantium exhibition (March 23 - July 4)Displays feature rare icons and manuscripts spanning three centuries By Richard Pyle - The Associated Press
New York - The Metropolitan Museum of Art has mounted its third exhibition on Byzantium in 27 years, presenting icons, manuscripts and other works from the final three centuries of a religious empire whose art and culture influenced the world for more than a millennium.
“Byzantium, Faith and Power, 1261-1557,” features some 350 Orthodox Christian masterpieces gathered from 30 countries, many of them never before shown outside the churches and monasteries that own them.
Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, said the exhibition covers the “great artistic flowering” of Byzantium after Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos’ 1261 reconquest of Constantinople from crusaders who had sacked it in 1204, and “the subsequent appropriation of this culture by rival claimants to power.”
The capital of the eastern Roman Empire was seized by the Ottomans in 1453, but its Greek-based culture and art endured for another century, not only spreading the Orthodox gospel but influencing Islam and other cultures.
As the successor to previous Met exhibits in 1977 and 1997, the latest presentation of Byzantine art “will enhance public appreciation of the exceptional artistic accomplishments of an era too often considered primarily in terms of political decline,” de Montebello said at a preview Monday.
“When (Edward) Gibbon described the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, he set an image of the last centuries... as one of failure and sadness, and I hope this exhibition will make people understand the optimism with which the empire regained its capital in 1261 and the cultural exuberance that went with that optimism,” said Helen Evans, curator of the exhibit.
The items include more than 40 icons, manuscripts and liturgical treasures including from a sixth-century monastic outpost of Christianity on the purported Biblical site where Moses witnessed the Burning Bush.
Stunning both in beauty and preservation, the collection includes many handwritten and illustrated manuscripts dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, textiles, painted icons that survived or postdate the iconoclasm (726-843) that saw the destruction of images as objects of veneration, and other relics.
A centerpiece is the “Virgin Pafsolype with Feast Scenes and Crucifixion with Prophets,” a large, painted wood icon from the late 14th century, described as a “powerful evocation of Christ as the savior of mankind,” on loan from the Ecumenical Patriarchate located in Istanbul.
Other noteworthy items include a 13th-14th century copper chandelier made of 1,100 pieces, loaned by a Munich museum, and a 20-centimeter (8-inch)-diameter mosaic of St George slaying the dragon, from the Louvre.
The exhibition, sponsored by Greece’s Alpha Bank and three foundations, will run from March 23 through July 4. Along with a 3-kilogram (7-pound) catalog, the museum published a 96-page photographic essay book on St. Catherine’s Monastery.
Misc Articles of Interest
When It Comes to Athens You've Got to Believe
By Sally Jenkins
Any day now, a prominent American athlete will drop out of the Athens Olympics citing security concerns. Already, some NBA players have voiced a disinclination to go. What should we think of them? You can't blame them if they are put off by the threat of bombs, or other crises, or the sheer inconvenience, the travel, the traffic and the heat. But the ones who don't go will be the unlucky ones -- we hope.
The thing to do with the Athens Games is to believe in them until we're absolutely forced not to. Anyone who has a chance to go to the Olympics is asking themselves a plain question: Is the trip worth it? The answer is plainly, yes, if only because of a principle best expressed in "The Greek Way," by Edith Hamilton. She wrote something that all American athletes should take note of: "Civilization, a much abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights."
This could be the motto of the Athens Games, given the delays in finishing stadiums, roads, and other infrastructure, and the explosion of three small bombs in the last two weeks. Nevertheless, it's not a bad lesson, and it's one that the more cosseted American athletes could use. In fact, maybe we could all do with some Greek culture.
There are two types of athletes in these Olympics -- the ones who have worked for four years for a single opportunity, and then there are those who are simply anointed Olympians and whose desire to be there is questionable.
A trip to Greece is precisely what a kid like Kevin Garnett needs to open his already very good mind and nature -- you wonder what a bright guy like that could have done with a college education, or in lieu of that, some exposure to the ancient Greeks. Garnett declined to play for the USA this year, citing his impending marriage, and it's too bad because he needs some broadening, judging by his silly gunplay analogies before Game 7 of the playoffs between his Minnesota Timberwolves and the Sacramento Kings. "I'm sitting in the house loading up the pump," Garnett said, "I'm loading up the Uzis, I've got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I'm ready for war."
As Mike Greenberg of ESPN radio noted, "genetic-freak millionaires live in a world where Game 7 of a playoff series can feel like a life or death proposition."
At least Garnett, who is one of the more promising young humans in the league, had the wits to quickly apologize, and his tone suggested he really got it. "It was one-sided thinking on my part, but I'm man enough to admit it," he said. " . . . I was totally thinking about basketball, not reality."
Will the NBA players get a dose of reality from a trip to Greece? Not entirely. They will likely stay aboard the luxury liner Queen Mary 2 in the harbor, where they will be protected by the Greek Navy, NATO, the European Union, the CIA and FBI and security organizations from England, France, Spain and Israel, plus additional private security hired by USA Basketball.
Even so, no one can be completely cosseted in Athens. Without question, Greece is both vulnerable and volatile; it shares Balkan borders with Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey, and is surrounded by the Ionian, Mediterranean and Aegean seas, open to all sorts of naval traffic. It will be impossible to make the Olympic trip without getting some sense of this, or of the fact that life in that country can be a cauldron no matter how careful you are. The ancient Athenians, despite the importance they placed on poetry, were not tempted to evade facts or to sentimentalize. "It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country," Hamilton observed. "The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies."
Neither apparently do modern Greeks. Eighty percent of Greeks recently polled said they believe some kind of attack is "inevitable." Fifty-two percent of Americans believe an attack is likely. U.S. Sen. Jon Kyle (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Senate committee on terrorism, said the safest place to watch the Olympics is at home on television.
To date, no American athlete has withdrawn from the Games specifically because of security. But an NBA player is your best bet. "The players are definitely concerned," Jermaine O'Neal, the Indiana Pacers forward and a member of the U.S. team, told the Associated Press. Not even the Queen Mary seems to console Ray Allen, who cited the USS Cole, the American destroyer that was attacked by al-Qaeda in October 2002 and lost 17 sailors. "The only thing I can think of," Allen said, "is the battleship that got blown up."
But Aeschylus, for one, would argue that risk is no reason to stay home. The ancient Greeks, Hamilton remarked, believed that "men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life."
The U.S. athletes who go to Athens will learn this. They will also learn, if they care to, that in ancient Greece, men were more whole; they acted in all capacities, and it wasn't enough to be solely an athlete. Soldiers, sailors, politicians and businessmen also wrote poetry and carved statues and discussed philosophy. According to Hamilton, "they saw what is permanently important in a man and unites him to the rest . . . that what is of any importance in us is what we share with all."
The Athens Games will be a meaningful trip for those athletes who can't afford to pass up the opportunity or those who are curious. It's for the type of competitor who wants to explore the origin of the games and the purpose of them. The Athenians, according to Pericles, were "lovers of beauty without having lost the taste for simplicity, and lovers of wisdom without loss of manly vigor."
All of these things are waiting to be seen, read and learned in Athens if one makes the effort to get there. Hamilton wrote, "For a hundred years Athens was a city where the great spiritual forces that war in men's minds flowed along together in peace; law and freedom, truth and religion, beauty and goodness, the objective and the subjective -- there was a truce to their eternal warfare and the result was the balance and clarity, the harmony and completeness, the word Greek has come to stand for . . . and in all Greek art there is an absence of struggle, a reconciling power, something of calm and serenity, the world has yet to see again." Or as an ancient poem says, "Greece and her foundations are . . . built below the tide of war."
Now, who wouldn't risk something to see that?
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2
In Athens, Work Before
Play By Cindy Loose
Most of the news of Greece's preparations for the Summer Olympics is by now drearily familiar: Cranes still tower over unfinished projects; transportation will likely be inadequate for the expected 5 million spectators and 10,000 competitors; security concerns have contributed to depressed ticket sales, at least in the United States.
But one glance out my hotel window this month portends another way of looking at the situation: Athens will provide a stellar backdrop for the Games, scheduled Aug. 13-29. From the Hilton and nearly every street I walk, there is a view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, both of which are more imposing and beautiful than millions of pictures have ever portrayed. Low-rise buildings, many glimmering white in the Mediterranean sunshine, climb the mountainsides. Tall, graceful columns and other ancient ruins dot the city, which spreads to a deep blue sea where sailboats, yachts and cruise ships bob in view of seaside restaurants.
I can't guarantee a stress-free experience for those who travel to Greece for the Games. But those watching from the comfort of their homes will be entranced, if not by the Games then at least by the scenes surrounding them.
Should the media coverage entice you to plan a trip to Athens after the Olympics, you'll arrive to find a city transformed, where several years and billions of dollars have been spent improving infrastructure and tourist attractions.
The government alone has spent as much as $20 billion on public works programs and on sprucing up Athens and other areas of Greece, including four Olympic venues outside Athens. Private enterprise has joined the investment craze, with major hotels spending an estimated $700 million. Fully 90 percent of hotels in Athens have been recently renovated and upgraded, says Dimitris Gemelos, a New York-based spokesman for the Greek Embassy. "All over Greece, the government and private companies have been remaking the nation," he says. The evidence during a week-long trip was everywhere.
The Greeks have been widely criticized for getting a slow start on preparing for the Olympics, and doubts about what will be finished in time abound. But in Washington, embassy spokesman Achilles Paparsenos predicts an outstanding show.
"We know a lot is at stake. This represents a link between the ancient and modern world, and we're going to show our best face."
That best face is on display the minute an overseas traveler arrives at the airport, with its new glass-and-marble terminal. The Athens International Airport can handle 600 flights a day, 16 million passengers a year.
The new tram wasn't completed, and I was confused by the bus system, so I have to shell out about $60 for a cab ride. On the other hand, the notorious congestion on the road to Athens is gone -- we breeze along a new highway and don't hit gridlock until we turn onto downtown streets a mile or so from our hotel.
In a jet-lagged fog, I pull open the curtain of my hotel and am jolted by an unexpected view of the Acropolis and Parthenon -- scaffolding that has been up for years is already starting to come down.
Inspired by the sight, I head to the subway, whose one old line has been fortified with several new lines and sparkling-new subway stations that are a little like mini-convention centers. In the Syntagma station, a cheese company has set up a convention-style temporary exhibit, and a giant flat-screen television broadcasts a show about Greek islands. Before going down the escalator to the train platforms, I spend half an hour looking in glass cases at the bronze, marble and clay antiquities unearthed at this spot during construction.
Nearly anywhere you dig in Athens, you find ancient treasures, Paparsenos has told me. Rather than move the finds to one of the country's dozens of museums, officials decided to display what they found when digging subway stations at the stations themselves. The best displays are at the Syntagma, Akropoli, Monastiraki and Panepistimio stations.
Upon exiting the subway at the Acropolis stop, I come upon perhaps the best improvement in Athens -- the so-called Unification of the Archaeological Sites of Athens. The project has linked major sites with pedestrian walkways that meander past the Parthenon, Hadrian's Arch, Panathenaic Stadium, Temple of Zeus, Kerameikos cemetery and other major cultural sites. To beautify the area, the government has ordered the dismantlement of nearly 10,000 billboards. Along the route, you can stop at dozens of restaurants, many with outdoor cafes. At the base of the Acropolis, the new Acropolis Museum is slated to open in time for the Olympics, and if Britain ever gets a conscience and returns to Greece the Elgin Marbles, they will eventually be displayed there.
Entire neighborhoods in Athens have been rehabilitated: An area called Gazi, where the old gasworks plants stood, has been turned into a mecca of restaurants and nightclubs. A rundown working-class neighborhood called Psirri is now sparkling with shops and galleries. Outside Athens, every museum I visit around the Peloponnese and Delphi areas is closed for renovation, but due to open for the Olympics.
The ancient sites Panathinaiko and Marathon will be used during the modern games. New venues have been built with an eye toward permanent use. For instance, the new Olympic Rowing and Canoeing-Kayaking Centre in Attica will be used after the Games as a training center for teams from around the world. The Olympic Weightlifting Hall was given great acoustics and an amphitheater shape so it can be used post-Olympics for cultural events. Ditto for the new center for gymnastics and table tennis.
The new Faliro Olympic Complex, one of the largest urban redevelopment projects in Europe, sits along the Athens coast. The venue includes a new seafront esplanade that will be open long after the Olympics are gone. And outside Athens, the Olympic Sailing Centre will, after the Games, welcome tourists and residents for a variety of water sports. Both the Olympic Equestrian Centre and the Olympic Shooting Centre are also permanent additions. The old airport outside Athens is being turned into a 21-square-mile park. Nearly everything you see during the Olympics will remain, enriching the cultural and sports landscape for generations to come.
An estimated 12,000 Americans will attend the Summer Games this year, compared with the 18,000 who went to Sydney four years ago. On the one hand, this means that plenty of tickets remain available.
The usual routine is that you order what you want and find out about 15 days later if you succeeded, says Bonnie Keilbach, an Olympic specialist for Cartan Tours, the official Olympic sales outlet in the United States. As of press time, the only events known to be sold out were the swimming finals and the cheapest category of tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies. On the other hand, availability remains so good for two reasons: the weakness of the dollar and, even more critical, concerns about security, says Don Williams, vice president of California-based Cartan Tours.
Repeatedly as I traveled around Greece, ordinary Greek citizens would ask, concern on their faces, "Do you think there will be terrorism during the Games?" Of course I had no better guess than they did. All that is clear is that herculean attempts are being made to prevent it. Greece, a country of nearly 11 million, is spending about a billion dollars on security for the Games -- triple what Sydney spent. Even that will be supplemented: Last month, Greek officials asked NATO to provide aerial and sea surveillance. A seven-nation advisory group, including the United States, Great Britain, Israel, Australia, France, Germany and Spain, has been working with Greek experts. An operation called "Hercules Shield" has brought together U.S. and Greek military members for training exercises.
More than 50,000 soldiers and police will be on duty, along with 1,400 security cameras. Olympic venues and many other sites will be no-fly zones during the Games. Surveillance aircraft, a blimp and helicopters are expected to be searching the skies. "It's a challenge to find the balance between safety and enjoyment," says Paparsenos. "We want visitors to feel confidence, but not feel like they are in a police state."
Cindy Loose will be online to discuss this story Monday at 2 p.m. during the Travel section's regular weekly chat on www.washingtonpost.com.
Details:
Athens GETTING THERE: During the Olympics, the lowest ticket from Washington to Athens I found on online booking sites was about $1,200 round trip. For my trip this month, I found a sale price of $460 on KLM. For June, prices are in the $1,000 range, dropping to about $800 in the fall.
OLYMPICS: There are two official ticket outlets for the Summer Games. California-based Cartan Tours (800-360-2004, www.cartan.com) sells individual event tickets and packages; New Jersey's CoSport (877-457-4647, www.cosport.com) offers packages only. Packages that include airfare, accommodations, some meals, ground transportation and tickets are still available. Cartan's least expensive package is a six-night deal, including room, airfare from New York to Athens, airport transfers and two meals a day, from $6,789 per person double. CoSport's cheapest package of $5,464 per person double includes five nights' hotel, breakfast, event tickets and airport transfers. CoSport's packages can be purchased through travel agents. Some packages are selling out quickly.
Most hotels in Athens are already booked or are being held by tour operators. Two agencies in Greece are arranging house rentals during the Games: Alpha Hospitality (011-30-210-327-7400) and Greek Hospitality (011-30-210-327-7403).
U.S. and Greek travel agents and tour operators can help arrange accommodations. Remember that Olympic events are being staged in four areas outside Athens, where accommodations could be easier to find. You can find Greek-based travel agencies through email links at www.hatta.gr and U.S. tour agents at www.astanet.com. The Greek National Tourism Organization (see below) also has a list of tour companies.
INFORMATION: Greek National Tourism Organization, 212-421-5777, www.gnto.gr or www.greektourism.com. The organization also operates a separate site for accommodations: www.greekhotel.com. Athens 2004 has a comprehensive site at www.athens2004.com. For the U.S. Olympic Committee/Training Center: 719-866-4500, www.olympic-usa.org. -- Cindy Loose © 2004 The Washington Post Company
Ancient Greece: The Parents' Choice By Cindy Loose
Here lie the remains of the Temple of Aphrodite, where Greeks once paid homage to the goddess of love by romping with "sacred" prostitutes, male and female. It outraged the Apostle Paul, who spent 18 months here encouraging the Christians and condemning the sinners, writing so many letters to the citizenry that they take up two books of the New Testament -- Corinthians I and II.
By Greek standards, that's modern history. Earlier still by 600 years or so, Corinth was one of ancient Greece's wealthiest cities, the gateway to the Peloponnesian area famed by two long-running wars. According to legend, it was here that Zeus condemned Sisyphus, the king of Corinth, to spend his life rolling a boulder up a mountain. But we spend our limited time in Corinth choosing colorful barrettes and ponytail holders, and having lunch.
This, after all, is a family trip, and concessions must be made to the 11-year-old in our party. We've just come from ruins, and are on our way to more ruins, and if the kid needs a break from history, she needs a break.
We are testing whether a family trip centered on the interests of adults can survive without revolt or meltdowns; no need to push the limits.
My husband and I began taking our daughter around the world well before she could walk -- but until now, we've dedicated major chunks of time to her entertainment. All trips have involved compromise: Be quiet while we're in the museum and then we can go feed the ducks, or visit the amusement park, or whatever, depending on her age. All previous trips have involved parental swapping: You watch Maddie while I visit the cathedrals; I'll take her swimming while you see a show.
This time, we've planned nothing but togetherness tours of ancient ruins and museums in Athens, the Peloponnesian peninsula and Delphi, home of the oracle of Apollo. So what if we miss the bema in Corinth where Roman rulers used to issue edicts?
Still, I feel a little negligent, and while in Corinth, insist that Maddie listen while I read aloud about how Nero brought 6,000 Jewish slaves here to dig a giant shipping canal. But we don't take the time to look for the remains of that failed effort, or visit the 290-foot-deep canal accomplished in the late 19th century.
Children, you see, are a wonderful excuse to skip or skimp on some of your itinerary's "must-sees."
If it's really you who needs the break but you don't want to appear to be a Philistine, blame it on the child.
Lessons Before
Leaving A friend prepares elaborate but kid-friendly history and culture lessons for every family trip. I plan to emulate that. I gather books and announce that I'll be reading aloud Greek myths before bed each night until the trip.
"But we just spent three months studying ancient Greece. I know that stuff already," Maddie complains. So I test her. Turns out Mr. Fourney in Social Studies has beat me to the punch. She recites the major facts of Greek history I've just dug up, corrects my pronunciation of Mycenaean and tells me all about Odysseus and Homer and Pericles. Of course she's no expert. But she does know what I was going to teach her, and I'm not going to study even harder in order to drill a reluctant pupil.
That's my first tip: If you want to play teacher, pick a place your kid hasn't already studied.
Our itinerary, however, designed with the help of a Greek friend raised in Corinth, turned out to be worth copying: overnights in Athens, Nafplion and Galaxidi, with visits to Delphi, Corinth, Epidavros, Mycenae, Delphi and the small mountain town of Arahova, famed for woolens, especially distinctive Greek Flokati rugs, about six miles from Delphi.
We would have needed a few more days on the seven-night trip to avoid pushing it. An extra week or two for some of the 1,400 Greek islands would have topped it off about right. But if it's history, scenery and authenticity you seek, this itinerary should delight.
Kid-Friendly
Athens Any reasonably behaved child should be able to endure even a long plane ride if you've brought books, games, perhaps some new wrapped toys and lots of snacks. It's the long layovers that are the killers, especially on overnight flights. In Europe, Amsterdam has to be the worst -- the airport was filled with cigarette smoke that had Maddie coughing and holding wet towels to her reddened eyes.
Nonstop flights are the first best option. When that's not possible, my husband always recommends we stay one night in the stopover city. I always argue that's a waste of time and money. To his credit, when we find ourselves suffering exhaustion and tedium in the layover airport, he never says "I told you so."
We arrive in Athens ready to collapse, but as usual, the excitement of a new place revives us all. We can see the Acropolis and Parthenon from our hotel window, and head there. For Maddie's benefit, I repeatedly marvel about standing in the footsteps of people such as Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. She knows about Pericles's fabulous building projects. I add editorial content about how war destroyed in seconds what it took artisans years to create.
I think she most enjoys climbing the slippery rocks in the shadow of the Parthenon. We are all rewarded with a stellar view of the city. Maddie shoots a lot of pictures -- a new interest that has exponentially increased the amount of time we can spend at adult-centered locations. She was, incidentally, at least 9 before she showed the slightest appreciation of even the most dramatic scenery -- that's the lower range, I'd guess, that you can expect beauty to occupy a child's mind.
Athens is filled with renowned museums. But with only two days to spend in the city, the only glass cases we stand before are in the new subway stations. Antiquities discovered during excavations for new subway lines built for the Summer Olympics are exhibited at the stations where they were found. The displays, far short of what you'd see in, say, the Louvre, are just about the right size for a kid.
We spend both of our days in Athens walking in search of ruins. A new project, the Unification of the Archaeological Sites of Athens, links ruins with signs and pedestrian walkways, so you can meander from the Parthenon to Hadrian's Arch, the Temple of Zeus, an ancient stadium and other important sites.
Maddie doesn't parrot any of my exclamations of wonder at what we are seeing. She is sufficiently engaged not to complain, whatever that's worth. Several weeks after the trip, though, I realize from her laughter that seeing the ruins of the Parthenon probably helped her understand a Jay Leno joke I shared: When the president of Greece shows President Bush a picture of the Parthenon, our president growls, "Don't worry, we'll help you get the scum who did this."
Epidavros on a
Dime Maddie has been looking forward to our getting a car for the drive to the Peloponnesian peninsula because she'll finally be able to fire up her Game Boy. Unfortunately, the car's cigarette lighter is broken, so the Game Boy remains dead for the duration of the trip. That just means, though, that we have to talk and play more old-fashioned car games. Yes, we give short shrift to Corinth. But if you do stop there for an archeological tour, look for the signs for the local woodworking shop. They have some awesome hair ornaments, made of olive wood and silver.
About an hour after our stop in Corinth we arrive in Epidavros, a definite highlight. The archeological site includes a lovely small museum and the ruins of a healing sanctuary. Tiers of seating climb the mountainside, offering a view not only of the stage but also of mountains and splendid green plains studded with wildflowers, olive trees and tall, fragrant pines.
The theater, built in the fourth and second centuries B.C., holds 15,000 spectators. Corinthian pilasters flank the entrance to one of the best preserved buildings of Classical Greece. The natural acoustics are renowned: It's said that from the highest seat you can hear a coin dropped on the stage, or the lighting of a match. Maddie hikes up the stone stairs to the top of the theater; I'm the coin dropper in the test. Turns out even a dime creates a racket.
Fortresses and
Shopping So far, our only major concession to childhood has been that my husband and I take turns having dinner alone, since our jet-lagged child gives out well before what is considered a respectable dinner hour in Greece. (One restaurant we visited at 9 p.m. graciously offered to seat us while we waited for the cook to arrive.) By the time we reach Nafplion, our third night in Greece, she's back on track.
The suggestion that we make Nafplion our base for seeing the remains of Mycenaean civilization was a great one. Once the capital of Greece, the port town begins along the Argolic Gulf and spreads up the mountainside. It is presided over by a massive Venetian fortress, the Palamidi, whose walls stretch atop a rock that hovers more than 700 feet above the town.
We climb narrow winding streets to find our hotel perched on the mountainside, overlooking the sea and the red-tiled roofs of neo-classical mansions and Venetian houses built by conquerors of old. The hotel is simple and cheap, but overlooks an idyllic scene so like what you'd expect from the balcony of an expensive Italian villa that I'm constantly reminded of the movie, "A Room With a View." We spend two evenings and a day wandering around this lovely town without boredom or complaint. You must know your child in these situations. If I had a rambunctious child, I would have encouraged a climb up the 999 steps to the Palamidi fortress. (We instead drove the winding road to the top.) Or we'd have taken the short ferry ride to the Bourtzi fortress to see where officials used to execute prisoners before throwing their bodies into the sea. (Maddie found that gross.)
We instead shop. When allotted a certain agreed-upon-in-advance stipend, Maddie tends to be very judicious in her purchases, which means we need to see most everything in town before deciding. One of the great joys of foreign travel is the odd things you can buy that you'd never find in a mall. I'm glad I've trained my child to agree.
Outdoor
Classroom Many scholars didn't believe Homer's accounts of the mighty kingdom of Mycenae. But in the 1870s, amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered a grand citadel made of stone 23 feet wide and 42 feet high. Homer's Cyclops giants might not have been around to lift the stones, as the ancient Greeks believed, but nonetheless, there they were. According to Homer, it was here that Agamemnon lived before rushing to Troy to rescue his sister-in-law, Helen. While he was gone, his wife took a lover. On his return, the disloyal wife and her boyfriend murdered Agamemnon in his bathtub. Agamemnon's son then avenged his father by killing his mother.
And here we are at the entrance, before a gate embossed with the relief of two lionesses likely carved more than 1,400 years before the birth of Christ.
It's an immense ruin, with tombs, a treasury house, a fort overlooking the plains and sea below, and a palace that includes the room believed to be the chamber where Agamemnon was murdered.
You can also think of it as a hiking spot, where kids can clamber all over the stones. We spend that night several hours away by car and ferry in the magically lovely seaside town of Galaxidi. The town of a few thousand souls barely rates a mention in most tour books, but I'm grateful to my friend for recommending it as a base for exploring Delphi. It has a small naval museum, but the real draw is its simple, authentic beauty. The next day, we head to Delphi -- tired from our ambitious itinerary but enjoying spectacular views of mountain and coast. We stop repeatedly to allow shepherds to guide their flocks across the road.
Delphi is perhaps the granddaddy of Greek ruins -- a massive site that could easily take an entire day to explore. It was once considered the center of the world. Pilgrims and even great rulers came from faraway lands to seek the advice of a famed oracle. The Temple of Apollo is here, along with a theater, a stadium, monuments, a treasury, a council house, a Castalian spring, a sanctuary and the chapels of Dionysus.
We pull up to the entrance and Maddie asks if she can stay in the car. "All the ruins are starting to look alike," she says.
Oddly enough, at this moment, these are my sentiments exactly. My husband goes inside while I pretend to make a great sacrifice and stay with Maddie. After we play a couple of card games, we go into the Delphi museum. It turns out to be closed for renovations, set to open before the Olympics. We content ourselves looking at postcards showing the museum's treasures and the archeological ruins we might have seen, had we not shoehorned too much into a too-short trip.
Despite our two lapses, at the beginning in Corinth and at the end in Delphi, I like to think that the trip contributed to Maddie's education. That it made history come alive for her. That it sparked an interest that could one day lead to great things.
But really, I have no idea what she got out of it, or what she'll even remember. I do know we had a rollicking good time.
Details:
Greece GETTING THERE: For my trip in April over the Easter and Passover holidays, I found a sale price of $460 round trip from Washington to Athens on Northwest/KLM. During the summer, fares jump to $1,000 and well beyond, before dropping again in September.
GETTING AROUND: Greece's rail system is not as developed as many other European countries. Major destinations are well-served by the bus, while small towns might see a bus only once a day. Tales of woe about car traffic mainly relate to Athens, and we found it quite easy to find our way around the country by car (signs are in English and Greek). Once arriving in even the smallest towns, though, we'd get lost and have to ask the locals for directions. (English is fairly widely spoken.) Car rentals, including those from major American companies, start at about $30 a day.
WHERE TO STAY: • In Athens: Ninety percent of hotels in Athens have been renovated in preparation for the Olympics, so chances are you won't find yourself in decrepit circumstances. For convenience, choose a hotel in the Plaka area (streets near Sintagma and the Acropolis) or downtown near Parliament. We found a Web sale price of $119 for a double at the downtown Hilton Athens (46 Vassillissis Sofias Ave., 800-HILTONS, www.hilton.com), but regular rates this summer begin at about $350. For something more reasonable, try the Acropolis House (Kodhrou 6-8, 011-30-210-322-2344), on a quiet street near the Acropolis, with rates from $85.
• In Napflion: We found it most convenient to book through a local, English-speaking travel agent at Palamidi Travel (011-30-7520-99160, www.palamidi.20m.com). We were happy with the budget choice he recommended, Hotel Leto (28 Zigomala St.), where rooms begin at about $65 per night. At twice the price, the gracious and romantic Ilion Hotel (4 Efthimiopoulou St.) is still worth the money.
• In Galaxidi: Ganimede Hotel (20 Gourgouris Rd., 011-30-22650-41328, www.gsp.gr/ganimede.gr) is a small, charming inn centered around an open-air courtyard. Doubles start at about $65.
• In Arachova: The Santa Marina Hotel (Voiotias 320, 011-30-22670-31230-4, www.santa-marina.gr) is a beautiful new luxury boutique property perched on a mountainside, with fabulous views from every balcony. Arachova is a short drive from Delphi and the base for a popular Greek ski resort. Weekday rates from $120 double are a bargain; weekends jump to between $181 and $265, depending on the season.
WHERE TO EAT: Our best meal was in the small town of Galaxidi at Bebelis, on North Mama Street , where local dishes like stuffed onions and pork and plums were cooked and served by the owner and his mother. The restaurant's English name doesn't appear on its signs, so ask a local once you get to North Mama Street. In Napflion, try Noufara (3 Syntamatos Square), which serves Italian and Greek foods. Entrees range from $7 to $30, but most are about $12. In Athens, for divine spanakopita, stop by the modest Gerofinikas (10 Pindarou), where entrees begin at about $10. For fish, try Phalasinos (36 Tsakalof). Entrees begin at about $15.
INFORMATION: Greek National Tourism Organization, 212-421-5777, www.gnto.gr or www.greektourism.com. For accommodations, try www.greekhotel.com, or the new private Web site, www.nyloo.com, which lists 16,000 lodgings, along with other tourist info. -- Cindy Loose © 2004 The Washington Post Company
MOVIE REVIEW | 'TROY'Greeks Bearing Immortality By A. O. SCOTT
CANNES, France THIS war will never be forgotten. Nor will the heroes who fight in it." This line of dialogue expresses a thought that recurs frequently, with various inflections and in the mouths of various heroes, over the nearly two and a half hours of Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy," which had its world premiere here last night and opens nationwide in the United States today. In one sense, it is less a prophecy than a statement of the obvious, since the names of Achilles, Hector, Odysseus and the rest have endured for 3,000 years. At the same time, though, the endless talk of immortality seems to express the picture's anxious, naïve ambition, which is to rise above the welter of summer blockbusters and ascend into the pantheon of movie classics.
This is most unlikely. "Troy," which cost something approaching the gross national product of modern Greece, will be lucky to survive the arrival of "Shrek 2" on Wednesday. But for what it is — a big, expensive, occasionally campy action movie full of well-known actors speaking in well-rounded accents — "Troy" is not bad. It has the blocky, earnest integrity of a classic comic book, and it labors to respect the strangeness and grandeur of its classical sources. Some moments may make you rue the existence of cinema, or at least of movies with sound, since the dialogue often competes with James Horner's score for puffed-up obviousness. But there are others — crisply edited combat sequences, tableaus of antique splendor, a hugely muscled Brad Pitt modeling the latest in Hellenic leisure wear — that remind you why you like movies in the first place. From its opening scenes, "Troy," freely adapted by David Benioff from "The Iliad" and other sources, plunges you into a world shaped by complex codes of honor, loyalty and military virtue. Or, rather, it plunges you into a world where people talk about such things incessantly, and where every speech is punctuated by booming timpani and the ululations of an apparently tongueless female singer, her inarticulate moans announcing that this is not just a movie but an epic. Still, for once there really is a solid epic architecture underneath all the pageantry, and not just a very long movie set in the distant past. Mr. Benioff's script, for all its line-by-line infelicities, shows a real fascination with Homer's great characters, and with the nexus of divided loyalties and competing ambitions that led to so much death and destruction. Unlike movies that take war as a simple contest of good and evil, "Troy" remains faithful to Homer (and to human nature) by understanding war as a political event, with plenty of viciousness and virtue to go around. Like his screenplay for Spike Lee's "25th Hour" (based on his own novel), "Troy" is fundamentally a story about treachery and brotherhood — about the fallibility and fragile nobility of men.
In other words, it was not all Helen's fault. Helen, played by Diane Kruger, a German model, is perfectly lovely, and it is easy to see why she prefers the boyish Paris (Orlando Bloom) to grouchy Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), the ruler of Sparta. But their puppyish romance is the trivial pretext for the war rather than its true cause. Menelaus's jealousy is exploited by his brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox), who uses the insult to further his imperial ambitions. His chief weapon is the sullen Achilles (Mr. Pitt), who in an early scene strolls out of his love tent, like a petulant movie star summoned from his trailer, to dispatch an enormous Thessalonian warrior with a single stroke of the sword.
Achilles' temperament — a volatile mixture of vanity, cynicism and sentimentality — is the key to the movie, and Mr. Pitt attacks the role with the same vigor and agility the character demonstrates in combat. Yes, his accent sounds a bit like Madonna's, perhaps in deference to the mostly English and Australian actors who make up most of the cast, but for once he does not seem embarrassed by his charisma, or driven to subvert it with actorish tics. Achilles' narcissism is like that of a modern celebrity: he fights because it will bring him fame, not to serve the gods or the glory of the Greek nation or, least of all, his corrupt king. His true loyalty is to individuals — his beloved cousin Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund), his ruthless Myrmidons and his love interest, the captured Trojan priestess Briseis (Rose Byrne) — rather than to causes.
His Trojan counterpart is Paris's brother, Hector (Eric Bana), who is constrained by the bonds of kinship, duty and patriotism that Achilles disdains. If Achilles is a kind of existentialist rock star, Hector is a stoical family man, protective of his wayward brother, respectful of his father, Priam (Peter O'Toole), and devoted to his wife, Andromache (Saffron Burrows) and their infant son. The events leading up to Hector's duel with Achilles — a tempest of failure, deceit and unappeasable emotion — are the beating heart of Homer's poem, and the filmmakers approach them with respectful sobriety, even going so far as to lower the volume on Mr. Horner's music. Mr. Bana, after his tentative superhero turn in "The Hulk," shows more confidence here. His brooding, bearded countenance plays against Mr. Pitt's gleaming blondness, and the visual contrast emphasizes the differences between the characters.
Meanwhile, you can savor a generational contrast in acting styles whenever Mr. Cox or Mr. O'Toole appears onscreen. Mr. O'Toole, frail and pale-eyed, quavers and whispers his way through the movie with regal panache, and with that sly knack, common among British actors of a certain age, for seeming utterly aloof from the movie and at the same time utterly committed to it. Mr. Cox, for his part, never misses an opportunity to toss his impressive hair extensions and bellow like a beast of prey. If Odysseus hadn't thought up the Trojan Horse, this Agamemnon would have chewed through the walls of Troy all by himself.
Whether "Troy" will spur a revival of Hollywood interest in ancient literature remains to be seen, but the Greek and Roman canon is full of franchise potential, since it consists mainly of sequels, prequels and spin-offs. Some are signaled near the end of Mr. Petersen's film as the Greeks overrun the city. (What's your name, kid? Aeneas? Here, take this sword and go found another city somewhere else. Penelope? Yeah, it's Odysseus. Yeah. Bad connection. Listen, I'll be home soon. Who were you just talking to?) One notable sequel, however, has been foreclosed, by a killing that is certainly merited but that will nonetheless be surprising to scholars. I won't spoil it, but if I were Aeschylus, I'd call my agent.
"Troy" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for intense violence and brief nudity.
TROY: Directed by Wolfgang Petersen; written by David Benioff, inspired by Homer's "Iliad"; director of photography, Roger Pratt; edited by Peter Honess; music by James Horner; production designer, Nigel Phelps; produced by Mr. Petersen, Diana Rathbun and Colin Wilson; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 140 minutes. This film is rated R. WITH: Brad Pitt (Achilles), Eric Bana (Hector), Orlando Bloom (Paris), Diane Kruger (Helen), Brian Cox (Agamemnon), Sean Bean (Odysseus), Brendan Gleeson (Menelaus), Peter O'Toole (Priam), Garrett Hedlund (Patroclus), Rose Byrne (Briseis), Saffron Burrows (Andromache). Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Solace on the Site of
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