The way back

The road there and the road back are one and the same, said the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus. I tested that out twice on Hydra: once on my long westward stroll yesterday evening, and again during a brisker eastward walk this morning, past the gates of whitewashed seaside mansions and monasteries, and down into another cove with a grey sand beach. In neither case was it true, in part because of the need I felt to stop on the way back to photograph the kittens that had taken up languishing poses in the shade in the time it took me to walk down the road and decide to turn back.

After Hydra, I got back on the ferry and was shown to a seat for my lunch, part of the deal for the one-day cruise (which I wouldn't recommend, by the way - it was actually a rip-off). Seated with me was a Greek man in his fifties and a Californian woman of about the same age who had come to Athens because her daughter was participating in the Special Olympics. She asked him why Hydra had so many canons, and then, when he said that they were placed there during the Greek War of Independence, she asked him what that had been about. She also asked him what all the protests were for, and he said that the people were angry because they hadn't seen any of the EU money that had come Greece's way; it had been snapped up by the politicians.

When I got on the bus at the Peiraeus I noticed the same Californian lady sitting

next to me. We were meant to be going back to the Hotel Grande Bretagne, but the bus stopped a few hundred meters away from Syntagma Square, near the south-east corner. Amalias had been blocked off; there was another protest. The American lady looked exasperated and somewhat fearful. But as I walked towards the square bracing myself for more tear gas, I noticed that things were different this time. The low-level protest was not violent; and the square was full of people giving speeches or leading discussion groups or handing out flyers. I couldn't understand much of what they were saying, but I couldn't help but feel glad, and maybe hopeful, about the way they seemed to be saying it this time round.