Before this trip, I thought I would’ve cried at the sight of Acropolis, the same way I was so awe-struck by the Eiffel Tower when I first visited Paris four years ago. But there we were, up on Filopappou Hill with Athens below us, the Mediterranean Sea glinting in the harsh sunlight, and Parthenon in the distance. I thought of the first time I learned about Acropolis – probably in my college architecture 101 class – and how it had always been on my never-written-down-but-still-very-real list of places I’d like to see before I die.
Impressive? Yes, of course. I thought of how others have stood on this same spot for thousands of years and admired the same vista. Well, Athens would’ve looked very different back then, and the Parthenon would have been more majestic and complete at some point, or razed to the ground at others. But amidst all the thoughts that came to mind, awe was noticeably absent. There were no strong emotion bursting out, no lyrical moment screaming to be immortalized into words.
“Damn, babe.” I bemoaned loudly. “I thought I would’ve been more excited about finally seeing Acropolis.”
“Me, too,” came Gabriel’s reply.
Perhaps we’ve become jaded over months of traveling. I’d like to think not. We’re still as sensitive as ever (if not more) when it comes to appreciating the wonders of the world. What’s changed, I think, is our definition of what constitutes a wonder. For some curious reason, the worlds’ wonders that we’ve heard and read about all our lives are now no more interesting than mundane things like drinking coffee on the balcony of our tiny studio in Athens watching the morning light and shadows playing on the walls of the alley, or watching a Romani family playing on the beach near Piraeus port with Greek folk music from a nearby wedding party in the background, or watching street buskers playing laoutos next to an old man who dressed like a hobo but gave the buskers a generous 5 euro bill at the end of their performance. As it turns out, when travel becomes your “full-time” life, the wonders of the world cease to be the highlights. Instead, it’s ordinary moments that thrill and enchant and hold your attention for hours on end. It’s ordinary moments turned extraordinary by serendipity and ephemeral bits of life. How fleeting these moments are… I could not come back and recreate them even if I want to.
We still shelled out the €50 to visit the “must-see” sites up close, the Acropolis complex, the Agora ruins, and all the places tourists are supposed to see when they’re in Athens. Perhaps they would be way more interesting to us had we known Ancient Greek history a little better. Instead I was left marveling at the little details, like how the marbles at the Acropolis have become so slippery as the stone is polished by thousands of years of weathering and people trampling all over the place. Or how bits and pieces of the ruins are being meticulously kept, numbered and catalogued in different piles throughout the site as we hope one day we’d be able to put the puzzle pieces back together again.