Connect and Stretch

I think that is my motto.  Every day I try to connect to people and also push myself out of my comfort zone.  Here I can do that all at once, and today was the perfect example.

I decided to avoid Plaka today and instead go farther afield.  We'd passed the new Olympic Stadium a few times on the bus, and the architecture is wild, so I wanted to see it.  It is one of those "you can't get there from here" spots, though, where it looks like I'd have to go into downtown and back out on another line, so I decided to take a taxi.  I've got residual taxi trauma, though, from when I was on crutches in 1995 and cab drivers didn't want to deal with me, so wouldn't pick me up.  But I recognized that I'd been avoiding the cabs out of that fear, so I faced it and flagged down a cab.  I then explained where I wanted to go in Greek, and double-checked that he understood that I wanted the new stadium in Maroussi, one of the northern suburbs, and not the old one downtown.  He got me and brought us directly there.  7 euros... just fine, no fiddling with the meter.  We got dropped off at a nearby metro station as I figured that was the best landmark.  We walked down and through, and came out in the desolate land of the stadium.  It is a huge area with multiple arenas, including indoor and outdoor pools, a velodrome, and more than one stadium.

Part of the Agora

The arcade

 But the fountains are dark and dirty, the area fenced off with a few gaps to let you in, full of graffiti, deserted and abandoned.

Graffiti

 I was worried -- I was with a student plus Jeremiah and Ellie and we are in the middle of a heat wave, and this began to feel like a wild goose chase, but I remained positive, and we walked through. We heard sounds from one stadium and walked in through an open door (like Phil I am no longer timid about making entry mistakes -- I'll just apologize if I've gone wrong), and we found ourselves in the middle of the mixed girls 400 meter competition! 

There were multiple races going on in three different pools (two outdoor and one indoor) and it was exciting to watch.  These seemed more like high school teams than Olympic hopefuls, but it was still pretty cool.

The swimmers.. about 14 or 15 years old?

Then we found the velodrome, which was pretty neat, as I'd never seen one before.  It was locked, so we couldn't go in, but we peeked in the windows.  At the ends, the track is nearly vertical!

The velodrome through the glass window.

Another view of the velodrome

Finally, we found the main stadium.  Turns out it is from 1982, and only the roof (which is pretty amazing) is new.

Statue of Spiros Louis, the first marathoon winner  in 1896

My boyish-girlish child saw him with his hands up and decided to shoot him with a handy stick.

One of the stands of one of the outdoor pools.

When we were hot and done, we decided to find the commercial street.  I'd read that the Olympic facilities were being slowly turned into malls, and part of what attracted me when we passed on the bus was the ultra-modern mall I could see that seemed connected to the complex.  But when we were walking around from the side with the metro, we couldn't get to where that mall was because of all the fencing that was trying (unsucessfully) to protect the facility from grafitti artists and vandals.    We ended up walking to three of the four edges of the complex, and each way was blocked by a permanent barrier:  major highways on two sides with no stores, pedestrian access or anything, and the metro tracks (which are aboveground in that area).  The facility is entirely cut off from the surrounding neighborhood.  I found this surprising (the neighborhood seems not to have benefitted at all from the existence of the facility) but I've since read that the facility was built in the 1980s and has hosted many events... so it wasn't that the neighborhood was bulldozed and cut off just for the Olympics... it has been that way for a long time.

We walked back through the subway station, figuring that one exit led to the Olympic Stadium but the other must lead to the mall I'd seen, but no.  It led to a narrow empty street with the train on one side and nothing on the other.  We walked through a residential neighborhood with not even a periptero for water (which at that point we needed!).  We walked perhaps a mile and finally found a gas station where we bought water.  I asked if there was a cafe or taverna nearby and was told there was a bakery down the street.  We found it and were buying sandwiches.  I decided we'd earned a chocolate croissant, but the guy ringing us up showed me that he'd given us 4 donuts for free... I think they figured out how out of place we were and felt sorry for us.  The donuts turned out to be the best any of had ever tried... they melted in the mouth.  Much cheered, we hailed another cab and went home.  The cab driver was very nice and tried to teach me the Greek words for right and left (but had them backwards!) and the woman in the front seat (wife or just a customer?  Not sure, as she was still in the cab when he dropped us off, two neighborhoods away!) blew us a kiss... she had been watching Ellie and Jeremiah the whole time and was charmed.

The day ended with the Tour of Cheeses.  I'd arranged with Effie, the woman I'd connected with at the Karantinos Market (our local grocery store), to give the students a tour of the cheese counter with tastings.  I tried to pay her for her time and the samples, but she wouldn't hear of it.  Effie brought us down to Nick, the deli-man and we negotiated a discussion of cheese.  Sheep, goat, cow in various proportions, three kinds of feta and two of graviere, cheese for salad, for the table, for spaghetti, cheese in translation, cheese in transliteration... it was wonderful and forged connections between us and the people we visit every day.

All in all, one of my most satisfying days!