Athens!

Wow, that was a lovely trip to Greece! The flight to Athens, and subsequent bus trip to Volos gave me a 7-hour meeting with my boss... Totally awesome, because now I could make him read everything I wanted to and we could discuss it in extreme detail. It was great... Anyway, when we got to Volos finally, the workshop was actually pretty interesting. It was very small (like, 8 people), but it was absolutely interesting. On Friday, Fedor arrived (he flew directly to Volos, without having to do the Athens thing) and we had dinner at night. We had hoped to be able to go to Delphi on Saturday, but it was simply too complicated, so instead we took the 6.15 train to Athens. Unfortunately, it turned out that everything closes at 3pm (every day, apparently), but we managed to tick a few boxes, including the Acropolis, which was Fedor's 37th Wonder of the World). On Sunday, we did Keraimikos and then went to Delphi after all.
That is, on the way there the bus broke down. When we finally did arrive, we quietly ambled to the actual site, to hear there that it was closing at 3pm too (we arrived at 14.35). PANIC! Unfortunately, it also started pissing it down: an absolute deluge! Anyway, we ran across the site anyway (to generic disappointment: the views are great though), doing Fedor's 38th and my 41st Wonder of the World. The weather cleared up again, but we failed to get onto the 4pm bus (full). Rather, we hid from further deluges by drinking beer in a local bar and made it back in the evening.
Monday, we started by going to the Monastery of Daphni. Very cool, particularly because it was being reconstructed and somebody took us up onto the stands and scaffolding and we were able to admire the mosaics from very close. It was super! And a UNESCO World Heritage site... Unforunately, our trip to the Archeological Museum was useless, as it was closed... It felt like dejá vu to me, with the Museum having been closed for my entire period of living there, back in 02/03. It was great to be back though...
I am writing this in the airplane back to Berlin, and will post it on Blogger later. Laptops are good... Tonight, we will be saying goodbye to Carlos, my Argentinean colleague and coauthor. It is a sad day :-(((((((

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Photos to follow