There was a riot yesterday.

This is not as bad as it sounds.

Every year on November 17 there is a big protest march in memory of a bunch of students who were killed protesting the Junta way back in the 70s (?) (I can't remember the exact date.) It also tends to be protesting whatever it is that America has done lately to piss people off, in this case the Iraq War, as America was the main supporter of the Junta government. The early part of the march is quite civilised, and by evening the hooligan element descends into open battle. The gent holding down the desk at the hotel told Hamish that a certain part of it is simply young Greek men wanting to go out and cause a ruckus, and this is a legitimate excuse to do so.

We were careful, however. Yesterday was spent in the British School which has nice thick walls, although, unfortunately, the reason for this is because its right next to the American School in the Embassy district where all the trouble happens. Walking there, there were a few less people than usual, coming home at about 3 the streets were dead. That's right, the day of the riot is the one day of the year you can walk along the big 8 lane boulevards when they're empty of traffic. I think we went home through the eye of the storm, if it had been noisier we would have gone along back roads and that, but the opportunity to be in the middle of Athens when its quiet is too rare to be missed. There were police everywhere, in the quiet parts where I was mostly lounging around in clumps of about 10 chatting, snacking or fiddling with their cellphones. It wasn't all quiet though, we watched the news on TV that night, and the area around the American Embassy (and up north in Thessaloniki) was a huge roiling mass of people hitting each other with 2x4s that had started out as the poles for their flags. There was tear gas, and the huge black police buses we'd seen earlier probably came into good use. I'll just repeat however that I stayed well away from the trouble areas and was absolutely fine.

In other news, today we're going out to three sites on the Attic peninsula, Brauron, Thorikos (?) and Sounion. I'm really looking forward to this, partly because we've spent the last three days in libraries and museums and I could do with the exercise, partly because the air will be a lot clearer and the smog and asthma is really getting me down.

Anyway, take care all,

Stephanie