[Leica] Addendum to Greek Woes

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Don't get me wrong. My wife and I love Greece. We spent our honeymoon there
in the summer of 1965, invited by a university group that was restoring the
Agora at the foot of the Parthenon. Greek antiquities were very poorly
monitored then. Ancient fallen carved marble fragments littered the
Parthenon site. There were no guards and restrictions and we could wander
anywhere. I am sure that somewhere in our memorabilia collection we have a
hand sized marble fragment from that temple. It was our personal version of
the Elgin Marbles. We hardly felt guilty. Greek entrepreneurs were carting
fallen stones off by the wheelbarrow load to fashion into trinkets for
tourists. It was much the same at Delphi.

Because of our university connection we were invited to a private
celebration of  government party ministers anticipating the reelection
victory of Prime Minister Georgios Papendreou. The wine flowed like retsina.
When it became apparent that Papendreou would lose big time, the wine
changed to scotch, consumed by the tumblerfull. Fortunately a number of the
ministers had the foresight to marry American wives so they could leave the
country immediately with their ill gotten gains. The Greek political
instability hastened the military takeover in 1967.

But I must sat that the Greeks were very civilized about the low key
revolution. By agreement of all parties, fighting took place only after
midnight and always outside of the tourist district. Some bad pictures
follow, if I can find them.

Larry Z