Exarchia

For my Greek Key class, which is completely pointless as an orientation course, we sometimes go on walks.  This walk was to Exarchia.  We met up at the Trilogy, which is composed of the Academy of Sciences, the 1st University building which now houses Administration, and the National Library.  I grabbed the trolley to get to Syntagma, 5 minutes into the ride, all of the passengers including the passengers on the two trolleys in front of mine, were kicked off.  There was a protest blocking the streets and since trolley cars are attached to cables they can't really go around.  So I continued my walk to the Trilogy, which is exactly where the protest was heading...no worries it was only about 75 students walking in the middle of the street chanting something I couldn't understand.  I finally arrived at the Trilogy and my teacher told me that people who were unhappy with their employers were protesting in front of the Administration building.  Most of these people were teachers, hence the students in the street.  I thought it was fairly exciting.  Anyways, these pictures are from the walk.  The first few are from the Trilogy.  I had to make a photo haiku so most of the photos have to do with rebellion and graffiti. I have only a few pictures of Exarchia because my camera died.  But, I thought it was a really cool place, it was somewhat comparable to New Haven, so obviously I could never go back alone or at night. Exarchia is home to a few of the University of Athens buildings so the area is associated with students and rebellion hence the policemen who are always on guard.  The police of Kolonaki keep coming further into Exarchia to protect Kolonaki and also thereby expanding the borders of Kolonaki.  Exarchia is or was also home to many drug attics, again it reminded me of New Haven.  There was some awesome grafiti in Exarchia that unfortunately I did not get to photograph.  So here are the pictures...O and just in case you're wondering, I'm pretty sure Exarchia means Anarchy.

 These two pictures are the protest

The above two pictures are the Administration building where the unhappy employees stood and protested.  Pictured below is the Academy of Sciences....a thousand pictures of the building for its architecture

Pictured below is the poet Kostas Palamas.  It is said that he was originally sitting up straight but slumps down  with all the unrest of the economy.  The faint graffiti says "revolution not desperation"

The two pictures below are ones that I found interesting and sort of comical.  The one on the left says "Fuck the Euro" and "Fuck the IMF".  The one on the right says "Fuck the System"

Police Bus that chills on the street



The two pictures below were taken in the Department of Education building, for those studying to be teachers.  The pictures are of the political posters encouraging students to join a group that is either socialist, communist or, new democracy.  The posters below are for the KKE which is the communist party.

These last two photos are just some crazy graffiti around Exarchia, there was lots more but my camera died