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Last
Day in Greece—A Visit to the Museum
Our official plans for Wednesday started at 10:00 am
with a trip to the museum in Greece. I personally got
up at 8:00 to do a little more last minute shopping.
I had left my sandals behind at Paros and wanted to
replace them. Alas the Plaka (the plaza at the base
of the Acropolis where we liked to shop) turned up nothing
suitable.
Anyway,
at 10:00, a group of us met to walk to the subway to
the museum. When we got to the museum we waited for
a little bit while Dr. Shelton Alexander, professor
of geophysics, bought the museum tickets. While we waited,
a group of protesters showed up. In addition to many
signs in Greek, they had one banner in English that
said "No more employees with expiry dates." We were
confused as to what was going on, but they didn't bother
us so we went in to the museum.
Our
intent in visiting this museum was to see the wall paintings
from Akrotiri (the town we visited on the island of
Santorini that is being excavated from the volcanic
ash). The paintings had fallen off the walls and laid
as slabs on the floor of the buildings making them easy
to transport to Athens. But when we reached the section
of the museum where the slabs were supposed to be, we
were told they had been sent to Santorini to be displayed
in the museum there. So our main purpose was defeated,
but is was ok as there was plenty to see.
The
museum held mostly marble statues, tombstones, and building
pieces, with a few bronze sculptures mixed in. (The
bronze were my favorite.) Many of the pieces Dr. Elizabeth
Walters, professor of art history and one of our leaders
on this trip, had studied when she was working on her
dissertation, so she could tell us specifically about
the history of the people and gods depicted on the objects.
My favorite piece was a bronze statue of a horse running
with a boy of his back. The statue was meant to go beside
a race track (I think Roman) and the boy was a jockey.
It was a very dynamic piece. There was another bronze
statue of either Zeus or Poseidon. The figure had a
beard and was throwing an object, which narrowed it
to one of those two gods (who are incidentally brothers).
But what he was throwing was lost. If it was a lightening
bolt it would have been Zeus; a trident, Poseidon. What
I thought made the piece particularly interesting was
that is had been found under the water.
After
the museum we shopped a little, visited an Internet
cafe and found some dinner. We meet at 8:00 p.m. to
travel to the airport for our trip to Egypt. Dr. Walters
had tracked down some interesting news. The people were
planning to strike tomorrow. When I say people, I mean
those who work on the subway, taxis, ferries, planes,
and museums. We were making it out of Greece at just
the right time. Greece is currently planning on raising
the retirement age from 60 to 65 years of age, and the
people are a little bit upset. We now understood why
the protesters were at the museum.
I
can say nothing about our plane trip; I was dead tired
and slept soundly. We arrived safely in Egypt, went
smoothly through customs, and took a shuttle to our
hotel at the lovely hour of 3:00 am. We are now in Cairo
and happy to be away from the strike.
Vicki Christini
Mining Engineering, Sophomore
Greece—May 16, 2001
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