Linda Gasparello: ‘Smart City’ on the Athens Riviera

Mural across the street from the Wyndham Grand in Athens. The mural’s title is “So many books, so little time.’’

In the Hellenistic age, which began with the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C. and ended with Rome’s conquest of Egypt, in 30 B.C., Greek architects went colossal. The ruined Temple of Olympian Zeus, which stands in the center of Athens, exemplifies the temples, theaters and stadia that were the main features of the towns and cities of the age.

Today, just a half hour’s drive southeast of Athens, on the Athens Riviera, a mega-city is under construction, harkening back to the Hellenistic age cities.

The $8.2 billion Ellinikon project is underway on the site of Hellinikon International Airport, which closed in 2001. The site also housed facilities for the 2004 summer Olympics.

The Ellinikon is supposed to be a “smart city,” with high-end shopping, restaurants, housing, an athletic club, hotels and a sprawling public park.

Now open: the Experience Center, in the largest of the three airport hangars, and Park, where visitors can get an idea of what will be built via a series of virtual exhibitions.

One of the interactive models at the center’s ‘‘Living a New Era’’ exhibition uses more than 25,000 individual pieces to highlight the Ellinikon’s green spaces, next-generation designs and infrastructure projects. Visitors can also cruise the coastline aboard a simulated speedboat at the ‘‘Living by the Sea’’ exhibition or check out the Botanical Library. You can even take a virtual stroll through the ‘‘Night Garden Dome,’’ which emulates the park at night with a series of light strips, sounds and scents, according to the Robb Report, the luxury lifestyle magazine.

The Ellinikon will open in phases. The first phase, including Marina Tower — Greece’s first residential high-rise, designed by Britain’s Foster + Partners — and a retail and dining galleria, is expected to open in 2025. This will be followed by the launch of a sporting complex, marina and next-generation transportation system.

A number of international architectural firms are involved with the Ellinikon. From what I have seen of Foster + Partners’ work in the capital cities of Astana, Kazakhstan and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, they will do the Hellenistic age proud.

Down to the Sea in Ships

Cape Sounion, on the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula, was an emotionally important place for the ancient Athenians. 

According to the myth, Aegeus, king of Athens, threw himself from a cliff into the sea because of a misunderstanding: Aegeus had told his son, Theseus, that upon returning to Athens, he was to fly a white sail if he had triumphed over the Minotaur, and to instruct the crew to raise a black sail if he had been killed. Theseus, forgetting his father’s direction, flew a black sail as he returned. The grieving king fatally jumped from a cliff into the sea, giving the sea its name, Aegean, and his son the kingdom.

The Temple of Poseidon

The ancient Athenians decided to build a temple there, dedicated to Poseidon, the god of the sea, to ensure fair winds and following seas for their seafarers and warriors. The temple was rebuilt three times, the last by Pericles, the Athenian statesman, probably around 440 B.C., but only some of the Doric columns stand today. 

During a visit in 1810, poet, Grecophile and graffitist Lord Byron engraved  “Byron” on one of the columns. 

At a Temple of Poseidon overlook, I watched a sailboat in irons — the sails were luffing, it was drifting. The captain and crew were  struggling to resume forward motion.

The scene was poignant — a reminder that the ancient Greeks feared ships and the sea. But most of all, they feared disappearing without a trace at sea. Death by drowning meant you gained no fame — no one to tell the tale of how you died — and no closure for yourself and your loved ones.

Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, the wandering hero of Homer’s epic poem, yearned to stop grieving and get on with his life.

In the Robert Fagles translation of The Odyssey, Telemachus — now a 20-year-old, but just a babe when his father set sail for Troy — says bitterly, “I would never have grieved so much about his death if he had gone down with comrades off Troy or died in the arms of loved ones, once he had wound down the long coil of war.

“Then all united Achaea would have raised his tomb and he would have won his son great fame for years to come. 

“But now the whirlwinds have ripped him away, no fame for him! He is lost and gone now — out of sight, out of mind — and he has left me tears and grief.”

On June 14, a fishing vessel carrying hundreds of refugees, the Adriana, sank off the Greek port city of Pylos. About 600 people, including children, drowned. Investigations by numerous organizations are close to concluding that the Adriana was towed by the Greek coast guard towards Italian waters and then, when this was unsuccessful, capsized.

Hundreds from Africa and the Middle East — mostly from Pakistan — are lost and gone, and their loved ones have been left with tears,

From Dereliction to Destination

The Metaxourgeio neighborhood around the Wyndham Grand in Athens, where my husband and I and a friend stayed for a week, is tumbledown.

It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Athens. The upper class lived there until the opening of the Athanasios Douroutis silk factory, which gave the neighborhood its name (metaxourgeio means “silk mill”) and brought in the working class. 

When the silk factory closed down in 1875 (it now houses the Municipal Art Gallery), the neighborhood started its long slide into dereliction.

Some tourism Web sites describe it gently as a “transition neighborhood” in the city center, which is gaining a reputation as an artistic neighborhood, due to the opening of art galleries, theaters and cafes. Others say is known for its large number of cheap brothels, drug addicts, transsexuals and Middle Eastern immigrants.

One cab driver fumed about the ticky-tacky tourist shops on a street near the Wyndham Grand. 

“They are owned by the migrant criminals from Pakistan. Their gangs rob people on the streets and in the metro,” he said, referring to the Metaxourgeio Metro Station.

Such anti-migrant sentiment has been growing in Greece, and lead to the biggest surprise in the country’s parliamentary elections on June 25: The little-known, far-right Spartans party, which campaigned strongly on the idea that Greece was threatened by uncontrolled migration, won 4.7 percent of the vote, becoming the fifth biggest group in the 300-seat parliament, according to newspaper reports.

I must report that I had an encounter with a criminal in Athens: A Greek cabbie whose preposterous fare from the National Archaeological Museum to the Wyndham Grand gave new meaning to the Golden Fleece.

Metaxourgeio Murals

Athens has some of the finest street art in the world — and it has brightened up the blighted Metaxourgeio. 

On the side of a building across the street from the Wyndham Grand, there is a mural of a young woman sitting on a window seat, reading a book and revealing a knee. There are books piled up behind her. The title of the mural, painted by SimpleG, is “So many books, so little time.” 

Across the circle in front of the hotel, there is a mural, painted by Leonidas Giannakopoulos, that will stop you in your tracks. It depicts a fish disgorging a woman, upon whose wavy hair a twin-masted ship is sailing. 

As noted on a bottom corner, the mural was painted during the Petit Paris d’Athene, 2021 — the eighth year of a 10-day art and culture festival in underserved areas of the city, co-organized by the Athenian Art Network and the Cultural, Arts and Youth Organization of the Municipality of Athens, and supported by the French press and the French Institute in Greece.

Alexander the Great

There are great restaurants all over Athens. And there is the Alexander the Great: a restaurant where performance art meets culinary art. 

While the owner, Alexander, greets and gabs with the customers, applause-worthy traditional food — taramosalata, grilled fish, moussaka, pork souvlaki and lamb chops — comes out of the kitchen. Dinner theater — and so reasonably priced.

On the day we arrived in Athens, we ate there for convenience — the restaurant is across the street from the Wyndham Grand and has tented, sidewalk seating on the same side of the street as the hotel. But we kept returning for what was some of the best food — and often just for Alexander’s great coffee — and fun on our trip. Bravo, Alexander!

Linda Gasparello is co-host and producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS. She is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

 whchronicle.com

Linda Gasparello: Postcards from Greece -- joyous and tragic

Eretria, Greece, where we met.

— Photo by George E. Koronaios

All other photos by Linda Gasparello

Distomo, Greece — site of great beauty and great barbarity

I know -- through my education and experience -- the Latin phrase, “In vino veritas.” But until recently, I didn’t know the Latins lifted it from Alceus of Mytilene, a 6th-Century BC lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos, who said, “Wine, window into a man.”

Alceus was a contemporary of Sappho, known as the “Tenth Muse” and “The Poetess.” Scholars believe they exchanged poems and ideas – and, as both were Lesbian aristocrats, quite possibly they shared many amphorae of wine.

According to scholars, Alceus was involved in politics and frequented the fine wine-tasting events of the time: orgies.

In late October, as my husband Llewellyn King and I traveled north by bus from Athens International Airport to Eretria, a port town on the island of Evia, I tried to decode the some of the technicolored tags on the wall of the suburban railway that runs alongside the highway. There was one repeated tag in all caps that I, or anyone, could decipher: ORGY.

We were enroute to the Association of European Journalists (AEJ) annual congress, and the tag reminded me of Nora Ephron’s quip, “Working as a journalist is exactly like being a wallflower at an orgy.”

Greek Wine: It Is Drinking Better

Retsina, retsina, everywhere, but I didn’t drink a drop of it in Evia, which is one of the three major production centers of the resin-infused wine.

Isaia Tsaousidou, AEJ international president, and president of the Greek section, who organized this year’s congress, wanted to acquaint us with some of the excellent single-varietal and blended wines from Evia. She arranged a tour and lunch (an al fresco, typical Greek lunch of salad, pasta, grilled meats, French fries and very drinkable red and white wines) at the family owned Lykos Winery.

Enologist Vicky Avramidou Vassiliki told journalists that Lykos wines are made with Greek and international varietals, grown on Evia and the mainland. “Our Kratistos, a red wine made from 100 percent Agiorgitko grapes, and Malagousia, a white wine made from 100 percent Malagousia grapes, are very popular,” she said, adding that the bottling of Malagousia vintage 2022 has started.

In the Lycos Winery

The winery is decorated with wine barrels brightly painted with the wisdom of ancient and other sages.

Lykos means “wolf” in Greek, and the winery’s logo depicts the silhouette of a wolf howling at the full moon. One decorative barrel has the image of Little Red Riding Hood cuddling a wolf.

The winery, which is medium-sized, exports 50 percent of its production to the European Union, China, Japan, some U.S. states (North Carolina and New York are two) and Canada. Its wines range in price from 7 euros to “premium.”

There is a Greek saying that “Wine pleases the heart.” It also pleases the face: The winery now has a cosmetic line made from grape seed oil, which contains polyphenols. These plant compounds have been known to not just slow the aging process, but reverse signs of aging, like sun spots, fine lines, and wrinkles. Pip pip hooray!

All You Need Is Love

On the grounds of the Miramare, the seaside hotel in Eretria where the AEJ was holding its congress, I noticed an elderly man who I thought was headed to a local bocce match. He sported a white fedora trimmed with a black-and-white ribbon, a white shirt, and white pants.

Turns out, Nicos Papapostolou is a philanthropist and honorary member of the association’s Greek section.

At the opening session of the congress, he spoke about the Kaith Papapostolou Foundation, a charity which he founded in memory of his late wife. The foundation’s work is based on “charitable love” and supporting others in need, whether emotionally or materially.

The group’s latest effort is a 2022 calendar card, which asks, “Did I offer love today?” Every seventh day of a month is highlighted in red. On those days, “Double the happy, the one who offers!”

As translated, Papapostolou told the congress,  “Our organization is imagining a society that feels its need for the right to be happy. … We want to remind people of the need of the government that people should be happy.”

Interestingly, the ancient Greeks didn’t believe that the purpose of life was to be happy but to achieve. Eudaimonia, a word used by Aristotle and Plato, is best translated as “fulfillment.” And Aristotle believed that citizens must actively participate in politics if they are to be happy — i.e., fulfilled — and virtuous.

At the Distomo Museum

Those attending this year’s AEJ congress in Central Greece had the chance to visit both the glorious museum at Delphi, the site of The Oracle, and the grim one at nearby Distomo, where the whole village was slaughtered by the Nazis in a few hours on a June.

The Distomo Museum of the Nazi Victims of June 10, 1944, contains a photos of the victims and paintings of the massacre — a large, Guernica-like one hangs in one of the rooms.

At the museum entrance, there is a blown-up photo of Maria Padiska, who has come to be known as the "Woman of Distomo,” and who died in March 2009 at the age of 84.

Her image became a world symbol of grief since the publication of an article in LIFE magazine, “What the Germans did to Greece,” on Nov. 27, 1944. The photo caption reads, "Maria Padiska still weeps, four months after the Germans killed her mother in a massacre at the Greek town of Distomo.”

Our visit to this museum was as gut-wrenching, as the documentary on Ukraine, filmed by Greek journalist Lena Kyropoulos, that we were to watch later at the congress.

The visit to the Distomo museum and the viewing of the documentary proved Winston Churchill’s point movingly, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

Linda Gasparello is co-host and producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS. She’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

whchronicle.com

John Kiriakou: Pride's big role in Greek crisis

Greece is in dire straits. As a Greek American, it hurts me to watch.

Without emergency loans from its European partners, Greece will default on its debts and likely be forced out of the Eurozone. That means tougher times ahead for Greece, Europe, and international financial markets.

In exchange for a short-term loan, European powers led by Germany want the Greek government to impose brutal new austerity measures on its people. So why won’t Greece take the deal?

First, some background: Past Greek governments are largely to blame for the country’s fiscal woes.

In 1981, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou famously told his finance minister to “spend it all.” And that’s exactly what he did.

Greece became the first European country to allow all workers to retire with a full pension at the age of 55. A worker in a “dangerous industry” could retire even earlier. But “dangerous industries” ended up including everybody from hairdressers to radio disc jockeys.

In the meantime, the government hired everybody who wanted or needed a job. The public sector ballooned to unsustainable levels, and practically everybody was retiring early at full pension.

Later on, conservative governments jumped on the bandwagon too, handing fat government benefits to their supporters. Tax evasion ran rampant and the entire political system was corrupted.

The system was bound to collapse, and collapse it did. A few years ago, Greece’s neighbors and the International Monetary Fund loaned the country money to make ends meet.

But instead of eating the losses on their banks’ bad investments, the Europeans — and especially the Germans — demanded harsh austerity cuts that shredded Greece’s social-safety net, gutted the public sector, and plunged the country deeper into despair.

Fed up with the resulting poverty and unemployment, Greeks rejected their mainstream political parties in the last election and replaced them with the left-wing Syriza party. Led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Syriza campaigned on protecting Greece’s now-huge underclass from Europe’s dictates.

Why would the Greeks risk losing everything by not continuing with a well-defined program of pension cuts and layoffs?

The answer isn’t hard to understand.

First, Syriza rejects balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Over 40 percent of Greeks now live at or under the poverty level. Middle-class people who worked all their lives have been thrown out of their jobs and have no hopes of getting another. Unemployment for young Greeks hovers around a whopping 50 percent.

Tellingly, suicides in Greece are up over 35 percent since the economy fell apart in 2009, and a “brain drain” of educated professionals to other countries is running apace.

Second, Europeans are ignoring the concept of saving face. The European ultimatum to Greece doesn’t respect the country’s election results or allow the government to claim even a partial victory. Add in the Greeks’ lingering resentment toward the Germans over Nazi atrocities in World War II, and you get an even more difficult situation.

There’s still hope for a last-minute breakthrough. If that doesn’t happen, though, the money will dry up and the Greek economy will fall further apart. Yet compared to endless austerity, that might not be the end of the world.

It may be ugly for a while: Stock markets will slide, Greece will have to re-invent its currency, and the economic depression Greece has endured may last several years longer. But the Greeks will survive, and so will everybody else.

And despite their pain, the poor will know that their government did this for them. The Greek people will know that they weren’t beholden to the Germans or to the International Monetary Fund.

It’s not just about the money. It’s about pride.

John Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies,  former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This piece originated at OtherWords.org.

Eurozone better without Greece

Greece is in many ways a corrupt Middle Eastern country (but I repeat myself) that should never have been admitted to the Eurozone. It would be better for  the Eurozone if Greece left. And thank God that the European Union has not admitted Turkey. -- Robert Whitcomb