Family life in Athens

Our first family sightseeing Athens. Metro is 10 minutes walk from our house, and in half hour we're in the center, Sintagma or Monastiraki square. VERY convenient, considering that car drive could take hour(s)! Driving through Athens is repeat of the Old Greek battles, every meter done is a small victory. MOSTLY drivers obey rules, but streets are narrow and irregular, and cars parked virtually everywhere...also, there is southern tendency to use the sound signal if you are (in opinion of the driver behind you) disturbing the traffic. In addition to it, Athens streets are paranoically complicated web, very often one-way. A nightmare!

The city is OLD. Very old. Means, when your city, in whichever you are, was not more than pasture for goats of some unknown people (your own nation did not define yet then, most probably), this city was already old. Do not forget that Acropolis was protected as a City of Gods 500 years B.C.!

Nice streets below Acropolis:

Some of the views are Bizantine, here Wolf mountain:

and some are Roman, they came muuuuch later:

Icons are still omnipresent:

New house

Here is our new house, parter and the garden behind :-)

Colors are as usual for us, owners were VERY nice and left the choice of colors to us:

Some fruits are literally popping in:

Welcome!

Weekend, beach

Waiting for move to out new house, which is to occur tomorrow, we went to see northern side of Attica peninsula, near the Marathon, to try if Aegean sea is warmer than our Adriatic.
It is :-)

Weather was not ideal, but we could not resist:

We were not the only ones to swim (as we'd be in Croatia), there were also some locals swimming. Water is about 22 cels or so, but it was a windy, cloudy day, so outside of water it was quite fresh.

The beach is very nice, and it is referred to as one of the Athens beaches (it is 35 km from the University campus), I think in summer it is full. Now it was ours :-)

Background of the beach was nice

but mostly the coastal line was not so pleasant, as it was not possible to reach the coast. It seems here it is possible to own the beach behind the house, as mostly there was no way to the beach in the populated areas, ugly fences and walls separated the beach from the road. Different than in Croatia-good to learn that the rule imposed in Croatia, that the beach is a public space, is not a stupid one. One plus for Croatian government(s).

Tomorrow we move to our new house. Here I document our temporary locum just below the telescope in the Physics building:

or, rather, atop the Physics building here:

Interesting transparent hanged on the Physics building these days, funny to see such things here in Europe. These students could (but not "should") TRY some beauties of life under communist government, as we did in (rahmetli) Yugoslavia and Poland, I think then they'd be more careful with iconography:

Kalimera!

New posting place, but Miki is the same-well, here I became Mikic (read MikiS), as appropriate. I will try to maintain the attitude from mikidtaiwan, where blog was effective pictorial addition to emails for my friends/family around the world.

We arriwed to Athens-this time whole bunch-week ago, evening 4th of October 2005 (for my memory, not to lose the account). Final part of the line was Kolan-Zadar-Ancona-Patras-Athens, and Ania had month earlier Warsaw-Kolan, and week earlier I had Taipei-Amsterdam-Zagreb-Kolan. Sounds as an interesting family reunion, and I can assure you, it was :-).

Here is Miki in front of the House, short occasion to make the pic, between Taiwan and Greece I was here only few days.

As appropriate, Don Kreso, our Kolan priest, was one to say us farewell from Zadar, where we boarded Big White Ship :-). Here we have Zadar at night, behind Inka and me in violet light in rear of the ship:

Crossing the Adriatic to Ancona, in the silent autumn night was pleasant, even for the deck passengers, although some were bored before they managed to sleep:

Morning we landed in Ancona. We had some 7 hours to explore it a bit, and it is a nice city, here are some pics. It is unjust to see it only as a ferry stop.

Continuation to Patras was by the beauty 'Hellenic Spirit', where we 'luxuriously' took a cabin (it is 22hrs trip).
Here are ships in busy Ancona harbour.

We crossed the Adriatic from Croatia with the twin of the 1st plan one, and to Greece we boarded the rightmost one.
Here are some morning views of Ionian islands, starting from Corfu, and Albanian mountains (now it is clear where from comes the name Alba-nia).

Views are quite similar to the ones along the Croatian coast. Here we approach Corinth:

Famous Corinth bridge, I remember pictures of it from the books in the school:

200 km to Athens from Patras is a pleasant drive along Corinth, and, except of getting lost in Athens-what seems to be the usual state of matters here even for the Athenians-we had a pleasant landing in Greece.

One week of search for the apartment-really a good choice is here!-resulted in finding (BIG thanks to Ms. Tsinganos who found it for us!) a nice house in the Koritsas street.
It is in the (interior) renovation so we have to wait a little to move in (Monday 17th is the day). Thanks to the Astrophysics dpt. we can temporarily use the locum near the telescope atop the Physiscs building, where we have a magnificent view to the northern Athens (Acropolis is just hidden by the corner of the building on the left side)-this is also the view from my working room. You will agree it is breathtaking:

Finally I managed to achieve my dream: to live south of Pag during the year :-). It will be funny to go North for holidays :-).

For those who did not follow my Taiwan "blog": this is not a real blog, it is just pictorial addition to the emails for my friends and family around the world. If you are interested in more reflexive accounts, please feel free to contact me. Here I will not go philosophical-although, so close now to the Academia and the original Arcadia, who knows ;-).

Yasu!

Miki d'Hellas