"Acropolis Now!" a Athens Travel Page by johngayton

.........goes to: Whoever is charge of putting the Acropolis back together!!

At the time of writing (May 2006) the Acropolis is a building site and looks as if it will be for many years to come. Unfortunately it doesn't show up on this pic but the piece of column at the forefront has a number engraved on it as do all of the other stones here in the pic.

Now this is a jigsaw puzzle to beat all: you have no photo of the finished puzzle, a huge percentage of the pieces are missing, other pieces are scattered over an area of hectares - you don't even have the 4 corner pieces to give you a start. Now, just to add to the confusion, you find that several other people have attempted this before and finding themselves frustrated have just joined up the pieces wherever they sort of fit, if necessary loping an odd corner off here and there, smoothing out the rough edges with a bit of fresh cement.

Xaoc is the nearest I can get with an English keyboard to the Greek word for chaos (despite several cut and paste attempts) and was originally the term for the primordial state of the universe before the creation of the Earth and the birth of the Gods. Perhaps it was the arrival of the Gods and the subsequent introduction of mankind to the world that led to the word changing its meaning to describe disorder: disorder; as in a total lack of logical progression from cause to effect, and that was my initial impression of Athens - it just seemed totally chaotic!!

However the word Chaos is now also used in a more modern, mathematical, sense to describe a system which actually IS logical and well-defined, but where small variations can result in unpredictable effects, even though the effects do still follow the rigid rules. It is still Chaos, but does conform in a systematic manner, and the apparent unpredictability can in fact be predicted had you run the parameters through the model first - out of order comes Chaos and from Chaos comes order!

If this last paragraph makes any sense then you must have Greek blood!

That is modern Athens: where the Metro runs like clockwork but the train from Patras stops at the wrong station to meet it. Where the taxi driver at the city centre station spends almost half an hour trying to get an extra fare into the cab for a 10 minute journey. Where the cafe owner lays my table, having taken my food order, delivers my beer and it is only about 1/2 an hour later when I enquire as to the whereabouts of my dinner that he informs me that the cook has gone home! Nowhere else have I found a hotel's in-room safe operated by your own credit card - that'll be the safe that you left your spare cards in just in case you lose your wallet!

I'm kinda looking forward to my next visit:)