Being a tourist in Greece

Inspired by "The Light and the Poverty" article.

It's actually a challenge to find what you are looking for as a tourist in Greece. Maybe that is why I have never been. 

Nothing of what I would like to discover is there: no philosophical debates in the Athens stoa, no gymnasions to get fit in the proper way, no symposia to show off your wit and skills, no Olympic Games, not even a decent oracle at Delphi. 

Creating a theme park featuring all that would terrify any casual tourist (and today's Greek) as much as it did foreign visitors 2,500 years ago. 

But it would also be my favourite holiday destination. 

I'm busy choosing my Gannymede

And now for a news story that is warming my heart: the Greeks have re-legalized the ancient Greek Olympic pantheistic religion headed by Zeus. And not before time. The ancient religion was made illegal by the Christians in the Roman Empire, then in its last throes in the West.
I have always been a bit sceptical by the Christian claim that they "preserved civilisation" through the Dark Ages. Light at the end of the Dark Age tunnel was not provided by the Church but by the Renaissance, which specifically harked back to the pre-Christian era, and by the revolutionary Enlightenment, which brought us modern science and a relief from superstition.
So now in this new era of desert religion upsurge and fundamentalism it is good to see the old crew back. And what a jolly inspiring bunch they are!
The old Greek religion brought us fun and games that are still with us and cherished by millions around the world: the Olympics, soap operas, democracy, a healthy sense of self, gymnasiums and butt-fucking. The Orthodox Church simply can't compete with that.

I'm off re-reading all those wonderful myths and legends - so much more fulfilling, interesting, inspiring and a bloody good read than those interminably moralistic dirges of the Bible or Koran.
And while they're at it, bring back the Norse gods, myths and sagas back too. Nothing like a viking sailing up my fjord!

Real Olympics, anyone?

I lost interest in sport around the time the Romans conquered the Hellenic world and thoroughly Romanised the Olympic Games - you remember Emperor Nero rescheduling the events so he could partake in all of them and could win all of them.
Nowadays any organised sport is so completely a showcase for corporate apparel, pharmaceutical innovation and sorry jingoism that it is really a complete waste of my time.
Some attempts are being made to bring the spirit of individual sport and glory back to its roots with the Nemean Games, a worthy but only partial successful attempt.
The Gay Games (if they can get their shit together because there has been a schism resulting in two different Games held in Montreal and Chicago in 2006) have missed the opportunity to go the whole way and recreate and non-Roman, non-Christian and completely pagan version of the Olympic Games: no clothes, no women, no teams.
A Campaign for Real Olympics anyone?

Troy, but not as we knew it

"You had no consideration for my pure reverence of your thighs, ungrateful after all our frequent kisses".

Achilles to Patroclus's corpse (in "Myrmidones" by Aeschylus).
It could have been Brad Pitt's role of his life!
Some real Trojan War stuff, plus putting some good old Greek loving into war.