A very long time ago, still in my teens, I knew a beautiful Athenian girl whose eyes were green and her hair golden blonde, and she was madly in love with a friend of mine. He loved her just as passionately but then he went away to school in Switzerland, and you can guess the rest. It sounds a bit opportunistic, even shabby, but I stood by her, listening to her laments late at night, and then, one evening under a moonlit Acropolis, we kissed. She told me she felt guilty for having done it, but on we went, the moon, the ruins, the Attic breezes all helping me along. It was a case of patience and perfect timing. (The retsina also helped.) Which brings me to the point I wish to make.
Now is the time for all of you to visit Athens. She is down and out, abandoned and feeling sorry for herself, and that means, like the girl on the Acropolis, she will welcome you with open arms and then some. Greek tragedy goes hand in hand with the ever-ready handmaid of fate.
Myth and reality are what the city is all about. The myth that has been filtered through European imagination has let the city reinvent itself time and again. Now more than ever, Athens needs people to visit, shore up her confidence, breathe a bit of life into one of Europe’s oldest and most iconic cities.
My first memory of Athens was 28 October 1940. I was four, and awoke to the sound of sirens. War had been declared that night, premier-cum-dictator John Metaxas and King George II having refused an Italian ultimatum to allow Mussolini’s troops to cross our borders on their way to the Middle East.
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