Knee-stomping (really), whirling dancing fools.

When one is given a chance to attend a full orchestral performance in a theatre some 1,900 years old, one doesn’t turn it down. Thus it was that I found myself buying a €5 ticket to gain access to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, in the shadow of the Acropolis, there to watch a performance by the Azerbaijan National Orchestra and several other Azerbaijani performers, notable among them a troupe of dancers.
Whether or not the ticket seller was offering a dramatic flourish of his own when he said that I had bought the very last ticket, I can’t honestly say, but the Odeon was probably as full as it could be while still being safe. Likewise, I’m not exactly sure what the cultural links between Greece and Azerbaijan are – perhaps my attention wandered during the introductory speeches that took up a fair chunk of the evening. Still, there’s no arguing with the fact that the orchestra’s performance was very warmly received, whether they were accompanying other acts (including, incongruously, a tenor offering up his take on “Nessun Dorma”). The dancers turned out to be the stars of the night though, their kinetic leaping, whirling and shouting inspiring the audience to clap in time to every flourish as light and sound illuminated the inside of those ancient stones.
Sublime history of another kind was the order of the day the next morning, as I made my way to the National Museum of Archaeology. With such a resource as the history of Greece to draw on, this could hardly fail to be spectacular, and as much as I may have seen more statues in the past two days than in the course of my life to date, I haven’t tired of them yet. The museum contains the Death Mask of Agamemnon (so called by Schliemann), several rare and exquisite bronze statues (far fewer of these survive from ancient times than their marble equivalents), and items both unspeakably ancient and of such quality of manufacture and art that you can’t help but linger over them.

Possibly Poseidon, probably Zeus, definitely striking.

Perhaps the most fascinating piece that the museum now holds is a relatively recent acquisition. In an ancient shipwreck off the tiny island of Antikythera were found not only a collection of sculptures (probably looted and on their way to imperial Rome) but a nondescript lump of fused bronze. That lump, carefully studied over decades, now has an exhibition all to itself and is known as the Antikythera Mechanism. An intricate clockwork device, seemingly constructed to track and predict the motions of celestial bodies, it’s a glimpse into the little guessed complexity of ancient craftsmanship, forgotten for centuries afterwards.
So much for the sublimity: whence comes the ridiculous of this article’s title? Well, I’ve supplied most of that myself as I’ve come to the last few days of this trip. For example, on my way to the museum, I managed to get completely turned around and found myself wandering through a mostly deserted park until I figured things out.
The main ridiculousness though has more to do with where I am as I write this. I’d always planned to head to Crete for the last two days of the trip, but following my thus-far successful plan of booking things at short notice has caused me a few problems this time around. First off, I went ahead and booked accommodation without checking ferry times. Bad idea – the only ferries from Piraeus, Athens’ ancient and modern port, are overnighters. Still, I get in early enough that I might be able to use breakfast and a shower before I have to check out. As a final insult, trying to book a ferry ticket online resulted in a lost connection somewhere between the agency and the ferry company. And then it turns out that I could and should have bought the ticket at a booth at the port for half the price! Sigh. Lesson learned for now. Time to try to get some sleep while hoping that the boat doesn’t sink and that the guy behind me stops snoring at some stage…

Antikythera – A mechanism’s mechanism.