Athens, Greece
Latte
Straight to the source. Best coffee in Athens.
Cafe Taf, Emmanouil Mpenaki 7, Exarcheia
Our research on Athens began with this nice, 36 Hours in Athens by who else - Le NYT. The 36 Hours format is great because it basically bitch slaps you with the few things you need to do, which is a great starting point. We already knew we had to go to a few places, including Cafe Taf and Six d.o.g.s.. We spent our morning hitting these places up for good coffee and food.
Greece has been a central and tragic character in world politics and events - its financial crisis, its political turnover, its prominence in the global refugee crisis, and Syria. Though we don’t live here, we know a lot about it and we have been paying a lot of attention to it, too.
We follow Ai Wei Wei on Instagram. For over a year, he has been documenting the refugee crisis, visiting Lesbos to interview and learn from Syrian refugees and survivors of this wicked passage into the European Union. He has partnered with the Cycladic Art Museum on a small exhibition of his famous works and new works that implore us reflect and to do something.
We were privileged to see this exhibition in Athens. Though there were far more crowdpleasers than new work, his new work packed a punch. Tyre, 2016 is a monument to the peril and journey of refugees to Lesbos. It is a lifering - what he found scattered on the shores of the island, made in marble. Though at times, his work seems too accessible (unlike most contemporary art), we understood that the message is quite simple: people are dying in pursuit of freedom and safety. But, the problem is complexified to abstraction. We stop short of doing something, only looking and watching a social monument, like a marble life-ring. 😔
With such a sobering message, we found ourselves aimlessly wandering through the city, walking along busy and empty streets in the downtown area of Athens. We passed by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, guarded by stoic evzoni, who were holding some pretty gnarly weapons whist wearing Puffy Shirts and shoes with pom poms - a textbook juxtaposition (whoa, we haven’t used that $10-word since college - LOL).
We spent the afternoon cooling off with spreeetz, a nice drink we only ever find in Europe. USA, the time is now to serve Aperol Spritz everywhere. Yennie left to spend grab dinner and drinks with her friend, Nirvani at Noel Bar. Nirvani has recently moved to Finland, where you can’t watch Game of Thrones without VPN, so dinner turned into a quick tutorial on how to get clever with IP addresses. 😎
Aperol Spritz
Spreeeeetz!
Bartesera, Kolokotroni 25, Psirri
