Last night in Athens was nuts, the rioters did a lot more damage than the other nights. Lots of stores on the major street two blocks from where I was staying got smashed up or burned. Trash cans and dumpsters were on fire on the other side of the same block, I think I saw what was left of someone’s motorcycle or scooter. Several government buildings were burned down, and so was the Olympic Airlines main office building in Athens, who just happens to be my carrier out of Athens.

I was supposed to leave at 1:20 am tomorrow morning and wasn’t really sure what I was going to do today, but I wanted to get out of the city and I didn’t want to try to do a day trip and then have to come back through whatever madness is in store for tonight to get my carry on bag, so I just packed up and left for the airport this morning for another ‘Terminal’ day. Only when I got here and checked my email, I had a message saying that the flight is moved to the next day!.. But apparently its not due to the fire, but another damn strike! I clearly picked the worst time to come to Greece.

So I went into panic mode for a few minutes trying to think “what am I going to do now,” but I was able to book a flight with another carrier out of Athens today that will get me to Tel Aviv earlier than my original flight. I also had a refund form filled out on the original ticket at the Olympic ticket office, where they said I would get a full refund.

But back to last night, it was crazy out, really like nothing I’ve seen before, and a bit more than I bargained for when I decided I wanted to come here. I went out after sundown and walked up some small streets and a path that leads up to the back side of the Acropolis where I had been wanting to take a couple pictures of the city at night since my first day when I found the place but didn’t have my camera with me. And from there I could see about 5-6 different areas of the city with large gray or black smoke columns rising into the night. One area I could see embers from whatever was burning… When the distant shouting, booms and other loud noises seemed to calm down a little I came back down from the hill, which is when I saw what had happened right by where I was staying. I guess the rioters had come right through that area while I was up on the hill, kinda crazy. Thankfully no one has been killed or seriously hurt as far as I know, but I am ready to get out of here, hah. I don’t know how much longer my laptop battery is going to last but I will try to upload and post a few pictures and a video I took on my way up the hill.

Photos

Video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 2:51 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.