Although I shared my dynamic weekend with you, a couple of exciting events occurred last Thursday that I will now impart. As a class, we received the great privilege to visit the Greek Parliament. Twice over the last few years, I've had the amazing opportunity to sit on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.; when visiting the Veuillez (governing body of Greece), however, I knew not to expect such strict security measures. Not only did we approach the entrance as a group without a sighting of any armed officers (except those guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers), but we walked right in to the building, an entrance devoid of metal detectors and bag checking.
We first walked into the chamber where the 300-member parliament meets regularly to discuss and enact legislation. The prime minister, Costas Karamanlis, suspended the government a couple of weeks ago in preparation of the upcoming European Union elections on June 7, so we literally had the building to ourselves, minus the few guides meandering about ready to answer any of our questions. In the chamber, we sat in the first few rows of seats, and the main guide gave us a brief history of the building after the prime minister's aid welcomed us. The building first served as the palace for King Otto after Greece won independence from the Ottoman Empire. The guide also pointed out where the prime minister sits and his cabinet, and also where the president sits (in presidential parliamentary systems, the president merely serves as a symbolic head of state). I found it interesting that the president now always sits down on the floor with his colleagues, rather than from a balcony area where the leader did when the nation operated under a constitutional monarchy. A large gallery behind the seats provides space for hundreds of spectators; the chamber is always open to the public when the parliament is in session.
The guide also pointed out where the different parties are arranged in the chamber; there are currently four or five major parties, but an ecology party is emerging that may gain a number of seats in the next round of elections. We then walked through the museum area, containing items from King Otto's reign, as well as display cases about previous prime ministers. I found pictures of Greek prime ministers with U.S. presidents and learned that George H.W. Bush was the last U.S. president to visit Greece. From one of the windows in the museum area you can look out directly above Syntagma Square, where a majority of the protests you read about occurring quite frequently commence
Before we left, we were kindly treated to coffee, tea, juice and muffins, and we received a little gift bag with books addressing the history of the Greek Parliament and a tetra-lingual translation of Pericles' funeral oration. Overall, I found sitting where the Greek legislators discuss the matters of the state fascinating, and learning about a governmental system far different from the one we're accustomed to in the states is always interesting, and even more so when you have the privilege to observe the very institution in which the government operates.
Keeping astride with the perpetual connection to the past, we then spent the afternoon visiting a number of archaeological sites around Athens--the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Areopagos Hill, and the Kerameikos, all of which I've visited before on my own time, but it's always more interesting to have professors point out major areas or provide anecdotes. One site we visited that I had not ventured to yet before, though, and the Pnyx is now my second favorite spot in the city. My favorite areas shift on a daily basis, though, between the National Gardens, the Agora, and Antifiotika. The Pnyx is the hill just to the west of the Acropolis where essentially democracy happened in antiquity. On a regular basis, the Athenian Assembly, consisting of all male citizens, met on the Pnyx to pass legislation and decrees. The orator's beam is still visible; after sharing some of the history of the site, Professor Hurwit told us to simply imagine ourselves as the Athenian Assembly, standing where we were, listening to Pericles' proposition to rebuild on the summit of the Acropolis (of which you have a full view) after the Persians destroyed it in 479 B.C. Hands-on history does not get much better than that.