Athens Adventure

 I am trying to teach the students about the push and pull of novelty and intimacy.  I notice that they tend to explore broadly at first, and then quickly return over and over to the same restaurants and other hangouts.  While novelty is exciting, it is also exhausting, which might be one explanation for the narrowing of experience.  The other might be the intimacy and the sense of ownership you get from colonizing a particular place as your own.  Colonization is exactly the right word:  the students even rename their favorite places within their group -- "Taco Bell" is what this year's group call their favorite late-night souvlaki place which has inexpensive food and speedy service, and previous years talked about the "Round Bakery" (because the building is round) and the "Octopus Shop" (because someone was attracted to an octopus statue in the window).   In the 1990s, our group of students went often to the "Flaming Weenie" or the "Green Door" or the "Beer-aria."  While I recognize the value of that kind of intimacy, it narrows the students' experience and emphasizes their American bubble.  I want them to be comfortable in Greece, and to feel an intimate connection with the place, but I also want them to continue to push themselves out of that comfort zone they have created for themselves and try to move more into Greek culture.  So I try to push myself as an example.  Each trip, I try to take a couple of trips to places that push me out of my comfort zone.  I go by myself, I push myself to ask for directions (in Greek) when I get lost instead of trying to figure out by myself, and try to notice and reject other similar kinds of coping mechanisms.

The Dafni Monastery has been closed since 1999 (earthquake damage), but now is open twice a week in the morning.  It is beyond the last stop at the other end of the Metro line I am near, so always seemed like an ordeal, a sure sign that it belongs on my list of challenges.  The other pull was that it was also near the Botanic Garden, which I tried to find last year in the eponymous neighborhood Votaniko on another of my explorations.  Last year when I finally learned at the end of a very long fruitless search that it had moved up the mountain, I didn't give up until I learned that it was closed mid-July for the rest of the summer, so I'd missed it.  I was determined to finish the quest this year.

I set off by myself with water, a hat, wasabi chick peas, a pear, and my Greek dictionary.  We live two stops from one end of the blue Metro line, and I rode to the other end.  I'd learned a trick from my students -- Google maps will plot a pedestrian route using the "directions" feature that includes bus numbers, which stop to get off of, and estimated time!  I will need to try this in Jacksonville where the JTA website is cumbersome and hard to understand.  So, off the Metro, found the right bus, and ended up finding Dafni in about 90 minutes (had to wait for buses on two ends).

Looks pretty closed up.  Good thing I am an optimist and walked all the way up to check!

I walked to a closed gate, certain that I'd been misinformed about opening hours, and that this was another fruitless quest.  But when I put my hand on the gate, it clicked and buzzed.  The place was deserted, but I'd been electronically admitted -- how high tech!  After going through the arch into the courtyard, a woman came out to me and explained that there was a museum, a video and then she'd take me into the church which was covered with scaffolding.

Yikes, is there really a church under there?

The museum had something like 8 objects in it, and the video didn't turn on by itself, so I strolled back down to the courtyard to find the guide embroiled in an argument with a European tourist who was trying to say that if the Pantokrator mosaic wasn't visible, they should have closed the whole site.  The guide asked me if I'd skip the video and go see the mosaics with the angry tourist, and I politely agreed. The tourist complained the whole way in Greek and English.  We walked into the church which was as full of scaffolding inside as it was outside.  But then we began to climb the scaffold stairs and I found myself at eye level with the mosaics!  True, the Pantokrator on the ceiling was totally obscured, but I was within a few feet of most of the others, at eye level.  If the church had been in pristine shape, I'd be craning my neck trying to see them from the ground, and here I was nearly able to touch them.  The angry tourist finally shut up, realizing that the scaffolding offered an incredible gift.  Sadly we couldn't take pictures, even without flash, so I've co-opted some from the web.

The baptism

The nativity with Jesus as a swaddled  baby.  I love the goats peeking over the side of the crib.

One of the 16 prophets that line the ceiling just under the Pantokrator