High Kicks in Athens

ATHENS--It’s raining all over Greece. Umbrellas blossom over cafe tables around Syntagma Square. The rain cools the morning, but it makes life hazardous for the evzonos who are guarding Parliament.

Evzonos are an elite military group, like the guards at London’s Buckingham Palace. Except evzonos wear battle skirts.

There is a ceremonial changing of the guard on Sunday mornings. Evzonos are big fellows. At least 6 feet, 2 inches tall and 185 pounds. They march leaning back on their heels and give an exaggerated high kick. Dangerous maneuvers on wet pavement.

“You must march with your back straight as an arrow,” says Vasali Papadatos, a retired evzono. “It’s difficult. I fell three times my first day.”

Evzonos are selected from the Greek army for this special duty. They are picked for their promise as soldiers. Not for their shapely legs, as tourist women suppose.

In their pleated skirts and lace-up shoes festooned with pompons, tourist ladies find them irresistible.

“You must stare straight ahead,” Vasali says. “Never smile. Never wink. It would bring dishonor to Greece.”

Greek soldiers wore battle skirts when they ran off the Turks in the 1820s. They wore them when they held off Mussolini’s troops longer than the world thought possible.

“The skirt is more like a long shirt with a belt,” Vasali says. “It gives a soldier great mobility.”

Vasali won a Fullbright scholarship. He left the ranks of the evzonos to study architecture at Princeton. Now he runs the Greek National Tourist Organization in Los Angeles.

Tourism from the U.S. was down more than 60% last year. Greece is working overtime to bring Americans back. Security has been tightened at the airport, where you see soldiers sitting on tanks. They wear khaki pants, not skirts.

Syntagma Square, or Constitution Square, is in the heart of Athens. The first king of modern Greece granted the constitution from the palace steps.

It is surrounded by stately hotels, Parisian-style cafes and airline offices.

The cafes are hoping Americans will return. They are busy with German and Japanese tourists. But the waiters say it is not the same.

Our waiter, Dimitri, says: “Americans savor life like Greeks. They like to sit and drink ouzo. There is a special bond between our peoples.”

The square is where you watch Athens go by. You see a bearded Greek Orthodox priest rushing somewhere. His legs pumping hard under a long cassock. His hat perched on the back of his head. A crucifix bouncing on his chest.

Carts full of strawberries--big as tennis balls--are pushed into the market streets.

And in the rain, Athens is brushing up the ancient ruins for the summer rush of tourists.

Traffic is congested. There’s an odd-even license plate system to determine when you can drive in the city center.

In 50 years, smog from cars and industrial soot have done more damage to the Parthenon than 2,000 years of wars and weather.

Rates at the Hotel Grande Bretagne are $115 to $175 (U.S.) single and $145 to $215 double. Breakfast at the hotel is $8. Lunch at Dionysius, across from the Acropolis, is $20 to $30. In the Plaka district, dinner at Kalokerinos is about $25, including entertainment.