My first night in Athens, I walk the pedestrian promenade to stave off jet-lag and keep myself from falling asleep too early.
Children play ball on the marble walkway, as they have for millennia, their voices ringing out in laughter from the shrubbery of the southern slope of the Acropolis.
A tightrope walker manages the distance between two trees, ten feet apart.
Elegant couples make their way down the Grand Promenade to a concert at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
Flashes of light and a flurry of photographers follow the prime minister of Greece as he calmly makes his way through the ancient entrance gate. He has a kind face. It must be difficult to be a politician with such a kind face.
Designer blondes in tight white skirts and four inch heels stop for ice cream before the concert. Click, click, click… their heels on the marble steps.
An orthodox priest sings his haunting sermon down from the hills.
A man playing the lute greets me with compliments in Macedonian.
A young Roma woman sits near the entrance to the plaka, shaking a tambourine and singing an old slavic folk song. “Jovano, Jovanke…” My heart tightens, and suddenly I want to go to Yugoslavia, but then I remember that there is no Yugoslavia. I tell myself that I’ll visit it’s ghost soon, but not alone, to go alone would mean certain heartbreak.
That night it rains — big sheets of rain that turn the marble walkway into a slip n’ slide.
The next morning, I make my way to breakfast. Still half asleep and bleary eyed, I sit down to a rainbow over the Acropolis.
This is how Athens keeps me hooked.
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