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The Greek Key: Gettng Acquanted n Athens Hunter Augeri Eirene Efstathiou Maria Michou Jan Motyka Sanders Arcadia University Center for Hellenic, Mediterranean and Balkan Studies, Athens Introduction Greece conjures up mages of dyllc sland landscapes, turquose seas and venerable mythc deeds set among majestc, f now slghtly runous, monuments . These notons are, moreover, often assocated wth a hstory, relgous culture and language that are ancent . Indeed, the Parthenon stll perches on the Akropols n downtown Athens . Greece preserves a hard-won ethnc dentty strongly assocated wth membershp n the Greek Orthodox Church and a language that has been spoken for 34 centures ., Greece was ruled by the Ottomans based n Istanbul, formerly Greek Constantnople, a cty the Greeks to ths day call Constantnople . The Church and a common language kept Greekness alve for four centures durng the Ottoman occupaton, from 1453 to the 1820s However, ths naïve noton of hstorcal and cultural contnuty, however, dsguses some of the factors that have made Greece and ts captal cty, Athens, what they are today . The Balkan Wars of the early 20th century, WWI, and the first nternatonally sanctoned exchange of populatons n 1923 between Greece and Turkey added to the geographcal mass of Greece and changed the makeup of the Greek populaton . More recently, Greece’s lengthy and porous coastlne has absorbed a sgnficant number of refugees and mmgrants who now make up at least 15% of the nhabtants of Greece . Tourst posters and natonal sentment asde, today the Hellenc Repub- lc s a country that s as much European as t s Medterranean, Levantne and Balkan . In other words, t defies categorzaton . Ths multple dentty gves us a remarkable tool when workng wth study abroad students who find ther way to Greece because, no matter what expectatons or assump- 121 Hunter Augeri, Eirene Efstathiou, Maria Michou, and Jan Motyka Sanders tons a student may travel wth, they are rarely met once the student reaches Athens . In fact, these ms-expectatons are perfectly stuated to act as one half of a double exposure: what do the students expect to see — f they can artculate t at all — and what do they actually encounter? The followng artcle uses The Greek Key: Experencng Athens as a Cultural Landscape, a requred course at the Arcada Unversty College of Global Studes’ pro- gram n Athens, as an arena n whch to address ths queston and suggest pedagogcal strateges for helpng students reconcle the expectatons about Athens and Athens’ realtes . The Problem Gnoth seauton (γνῶθι σεαυτόν), “know yourself” or, perhaps more accurately, “get acquanted wth yourself,” s a much-quoted aphorsm assocated wth Apollo, the ancent Greek god of reason, harmony, musc and lght . When asked to antcpate and artculate ther expectatons, the responses of study abroad students n Athens are eerly smlar to ths dc- tum n ther expresson of an ntenton to seek out challenge and to move outsde a regular comfort zone . The first few weeks of an nternatonal experence are nvarably challengng for all concerned and t s too easy for students to thnk they are learnng about Greece when, n actual fact, they are only scratchng the surface . Whle the unfamlar landscape of Athens, both physcally and culturally, contans the lure of an unexplored terrtory, certan tools and strateges are needed to help the student learners read and attempt to understand ther experences of the new . Inspred n part by Apollo and frustrated n equal measure by the df- ficultes the students encounter n mantanng ther attempts to engage wth Greece, n-country staff at the Arcada Unversty College of Global Studes Athens center created The Greek Key: Experencng Athens as a Cultural Landscape to assst student learners n Athens to get acquanted wth themselves by usng the cty of Athens, and Greece tself, to acheve ths goal . Usng the cty as a landscape on whch a partcular culture s wrtng, rememberng and re-nventng tself, the Greek Key attempts to accommo- date experental learnng not only n the casual transactons of the everyday, but also n the challenge of readng culture on the actual space and constructon of the cty . Not only do the student learners get below the surface of contemporary Athens, whle dong ths they also develop the ablty to rec- 122 Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad ognze ther assumptons, fear and even stereotypes and overcome them or put them asde . Athens as the Classroom Athens, wth ts bustlng traffic, lmted parks and the overwhelmngly sold béton armé structures facng onto seemngly chaotc street patterns, projects at first the mage of an urban world homogeneously unreadable and dfficult to penetrate . The nternatonally exported landmark destnatons of Athens — the Akropols and other bult traces of ts classcal past — often stand out nexplcably dstanced from ther mmedate contemporary sur- roundngs . After vstng the Parthenon and the new Akropols Museum, the newcomer wll find herself wanderng between the tourst-orented Ottoman neghborhood of Plaka and the adjacent hstorcal market dstrct of Monastrak, to eventually be greeted by the post-ndustral entertan- ment areas of Keramekos and Psyrr . Here, the wndng streets and low-rse buldngs appear as remans of a cty model from a prevous tme, readly transformed to cater for the stereotypcal mage of a Medterranean paradse . The settng, however, fuses nto a much less legble relef once the sojourner places herself beyond the lmts of a smple trp to the cty of Athens . A vllage untl the 1830s, the captal of the Hellenc Republc bears on ts surface the marks not only of the country’s modernzaton and conse- quent development nto a contemporary European state, but also the efforts of a dverse people to shape a homeland where for the first tme n Greece’s lengthy hstory they would share a common relgon and language . Bult almost from scratch, Athens unfolds on ts streets the aspratons both of her mported approprators — cty planners, archtects educated abroad, wealthy expatrates who sponsored the constructon of the first unversty buldngs, kngs and queens — and the anonymous masses who arrved n Athens longng smply for a better future, ether as refugees from Asa Mnor n the 1920’s, or as nternal mgrants from every part of the Greek country- sde later n the century . Much of the downtown’s present buldng stock orgnates from the definng post-war decades of the 1960s and ‘70s when a system of exchange between small landowners and local contractors allowed for the hasty constructon of entre resdental areas essentally wthout real captal, areas that now define the Athenan landscape as a utltaran urban jungle . Punctuated by older Byzantne churches, wdely used publc squares, 123 Hunter Augeri, Eirene Efstathiou, Maria Michou, and Jan Motyka Sanders the few grand neoclasscal structures of the old Unversty and Parlament, and more recent but less magnficent blocks accommodatng other publc nsttutonal bodes, the Athenan urbanty consttutes a unque amalgam between ntentonal plannng and development out of necessty and prvate wll . Smlarly bound to ts recent socoeconomc and poltcal fluctuatons, Athenan culture also negotates a place for tself . Populated by older genera- tons whose brthplaces are far from Athens, ambtous career followers and youth n search of new opportuntes or markets and a vbrant nghtlfe, and first and second generaton economc refugees of mxed ethc orgns and relgons, the Greek captal s a fusng pot that outlnes a sense of belongng as mult-faceted as t s fragle . Athenan culture appears to constantly re-nvent ts own unque verson of a deeply embedded Balkan cosmopol- tansm, oscllatng between captalst lfestyle models and the omnpresent nfluences of Greece’s Ottoman past . Orentated toward the center of domnant Western cultural producton but physcally located at Europe’s perph- ery, Athens’ socal realty refuses to be reduced to a seamless narraton . The map, a totalzng stage on whch elements of dverse orgn are brought together to form a tableau of a “state” of geographcal knowledge, pushes away nto ts prehstory or nto ts posterty, as f nto the wngs, the operatons of whch t s the result or the necessary condton . It remans alone on the stage . The tour descrbers have dsappeared . (de Certeau,1998, p . 121) The Greek Key attempts to famlarze learners wth Athens’ dynamc soco-cultural envronment, all under the vel of hstorcal symbolsm and nternal mutny . Structured around scheduled group walks n selected negh- borhoods of Athens, as well as ndvdual exploratons of proposed venues and actvtes, the Greek Key ams at engagng learners wth local customs va first-hand exploraton and observaton . In re-vstng Baudelare’s flâneur (Benjamn, 1999, p . 416), a non-partcpatng but hghly perceptve strollng observer of the bult envronment, focus s placed on the ways n whch contemporary lvng has shaped our way of nhabtng and experencng our sur- roundngs . The flâneur can be used as a means to gnore and transgress the seductve mages of gudebooks and televson commercals, the mass-med- ated mage of the cty, and step beyond the rushed experence of habtual 124 Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad walkng or the totalzng flatness of the cty map . Returnng to plan sght as the promnent cogntve sense towards knowng space, and also to expand onto the rest of the senses, smell, sound, tactlty, and even taste (Pallasmaa, 2005, p . 21), students are challenged to observe what s there, the mmed- ately real: to lft ther eyes beyond the street level, descrbe the ways sound s alternatng as they move through the cty, read on the actual buldng matter traces of tme, use, and abuse . Here, the facltator acts as an ntermedary between the cty and learners, more as a revealer of the unfamlar than as a performer of a prescrbed sghtseeng tour . Steppng out of the tradtonal role of the lecturer, the facltator s not there to smply recte the hstory of the neghborhood and pont out detals . Rather, combnng the pedagogy of archtecture, archaeology, art and socology, the Greek Key facltator must conduct herself n a manner that more closely resembles the warm grp of a frend’s gudance . In antcpaton of every walk, learners are assgned readngs, some partcularly related to ther destnaton; others from contemporary theory n reference to the four runnng themes of the Greek Key: socal hstory, spatal narraton, walkng as mappng, memory . Whle most of the readngs are not specfic to the Athenan metropols, each offers a glmpse of a subjectve readng of t as an urban envronment . Some are poems tellng of an ancent Greek journey (Cavafy, 2006), whle others are fictonal accounts of a mult- faceted metropols (Calvno, 1997) . The guded walks take place n selected dstrcts of central Athens, chosen as nstances characterstc or exceptonal to the Athenan urban conglomerate . Destnatons range from the Omonoa Square, the commer- cal center of modern downtown Athens, and the Central Market, where learners are faced wth the extrovert manner of tradtonal trade and the raw experence of fresh meat and fish, to the densely populated neghborhood of Kypsel wth ts mult-natonal ethnc populatons of economc refugees mxng wth old Athenan resdents . Other walks nclude the lower-mddle class settlement Akadma Platonos, an area adjacent to the archaeologcal remans of Plato’s Academy, or the Asa Mnor refugee suburb of Kasar- an where students wtness bullet scars on the faces of stately homes from WWII and the memoral at the shootng range where the Naz occupaton forces executed members of the local Communst resstance . In the het- erotopan (Foucault, 24) llegal settlement of Anafiotka at the foot of the 125 Hunter Augeri, Eirene Efstathiou, Maria Michou, and Jan Motyka Sanders Akropols Hll, the group wanders through the labyrnthne streets of an otherwse typcal sland vllage . In the ambguously alternatve area of Exar- chea, home to anarchst groups, students focus on aspects of state authorty and prvate ownershp and how these affect notons of collectve belongng, evdent n the actvsm of resdents to create publc green spaces n unkempt plots owned by large busnesses or the state . To become acquanted wth the stes, learners are asked to notce and compare Athenan street patterns and buldng types and ther uses wth patterns and types famlar from home . They also are to read and comment on posters and graffit n order to unravel the poltcal dentty of local nhabtants, dscover and name the most promnent actvtes that take place n the area, and dscuss the effects on the tactle materal of publc space . Informed about the soco-hstorcal background of each place, the evoluton of plannng legslaton and domnant archtectural trends, learners are able to comprehend the common necesstes, hstorcal fractures and envelopng legal framework under whch the cty has been formed . Understandng Ath- ens as a dynamc ever-changng metropols, learners become famlar wth the ways contemporary needs and local dosyncrases employ, adapt, and re-approprate exstng structures or unspoken boundares, ether drected by organzed government projects or anonymously — often spontaneously or aganst offical law . Fnally, toward the end of each walk the class pauses to dscuss the theoretcal readngs assgned for the walk n a publc square or mprovsed sttng spot and reflect on ther understandng of the texts’ proposals n relaton to the urban structure, dentty, and atmosphere of the specfic destnaton . At ths pont, the class also s asked to artculate personal thoughts on the experence . The readngs for the Greek Key draw from the extensve genre of theoretcal wrtngs about the cty . In most cases they are not ste-specfic to Ath- ens and as such, they are meant to act as models rather than lteral explana- tons for nteractng wth a cty . As well, they are ntended to be mpetus for reflectve wrtng about ther experences of the cty . The Greek Key begns wth an epgram from Walter Benjamn’s Arcades Project (1999): The street conducts the flâneur nto a vanshed tme . For hm every street s precptous . It leads downwards — f not to mythcal mothers, then nto a past that can be all the more spellbndng because t s not hs own, not prvate . Nevertheless, t always remans the tme of a chldhood . 126 Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad But why that of a lfe he has lved? In the asphalt over whch he passes, hs steps awaken a surprsng resonance . The gaslght that streams down throws an equvocal lght on ths double ground . (p . 416) In many ways, Benjamn’s epgram encapsulates the learnng objectves of the readngs . It speaks about the learners’ subjectve poston n relatonshp to what they are lookng at and t encourages ths lookng to be an excavaton of the possble hstores embedded n the cty tself as well as the hstory, expectatons, and memores that the students themselves brng to the nvestgaton . Benjamn’s epgram further suggests to the students an ntmate relatonshp to a hstory that may not necessarly be ther own and renforces the dea that ths hstory can be understood and experenced smply by walkng . The order of the readngs roughly follows the learner’s process of becom- ng famlar wth her new envronment . An early readng assgnment, for example, s Edward Sad’s essay “Reflectons on Exle,” whch emphaszes the sgnficance of leavng the famlar terrtory of home . Although not exles per se, the learners are asked to look both backwards and forwards, thnkng about what consttutes home and ther emplacement wthn t . Sad provdes an nvaluable framework for thnkng about the socopoltcal as well as emotonal mechansms of belongng to a place and a people . Most sgnfi- cantly, Sad suggests that there are lessons to be learned from exle — whch agan can be extended to learners, despte ther voluntary dsplacement . The exle learns to “see the entre world as a foregn land .” (Sad, 2002, p .186) Ths juxtaposton of creates a pluralty of vson, whch, n ts smultaneous awareness of habts, places, and cultures dmnshes orthodox judgment and elevates apprecatve sympathy/compasson for the unfamlar or new . Subsequent readngs n the course focus almost exclusvely on the cty and emphasze walkng . Partcularly when read together, Guy Debord’s essay Introducton to a Crtque of Urban Geography and excerpts from Mchel de Certeau’s The Practce of Everyday Lfe suggest practcal strateges for readng the cty as a socal space . Debord proposes and descrbes a number of useful terms, ncludng dérve and psychogeography . Dérve s a Stuaton- st game, whereby . . . one or more persons durng a certan perod drop ther relatons, ther work and lesure actvtes, and all ther other usual motves for movement and acton, and let themselves be drawn by the attracton of 127 Hunter Augeri, Eirene Efstathiou, Maria Michou, and Jan Motyka Sanders the terran and the encounters they find there . Chance s a less mportant factor n ths actvty than one mght thnk: from the dérve pont of vew ctes have psychogeographc contours, wth constant currents, fixed ponts and vortexes . . . (Debord 1958/2008) Begnnng from the premse that the walks are a knd of dérve, learners are encouraged to vew cty space usng the prncples of psychogeography, a technque whch emphaszes the ndvdual poston of the observer, and prvleges ntutve readngs of the ambance of a place, but wthout rely- ng on tradtonal aesthetc readngs or the usual nterpretatve sgns, such as archtectural styles, décor, and housng condtons . What Debord proposes nstead s a seres of ntentonal msreadngs and magnatve leaps . For nstance, one mght wander through Harz, Germany whle followng a map of the London underground, or one could magne all the equestran statues of the whole world accumulated n a desert as a monument to the great mas- sacres of hstory (Debord 2, p . 1) . De Certeau smlarly dsrupts the expected methodology for nteractng wth cty space . Extendng the metaphor of cty as text, de Certeau suggests rhetorcal operatons as walkng practces . One such operaton s the asyndeton — a collectng of fragmentary mages that seeks to elmnate a consecutve readng of the cty fabrc and “open gaps n the spatal contn- uum” (de Certeau, 1988, p . 101) . For de Certeau, these gaps or ruptures are crtcal to emplacement, that s, beng somewhere nstead of nowhere . They also facltate an understandng of experence that extends beyond the “tech- nologcal system of a coherent and totalzng space that s lnked and smultaneous” (de Certeau, p . 102) . The narratves that result from experencng such fragmentary mages are based on the dosyncratc, the local, the subjectve as opposed to the mythcal, the homogenous, the corporate . De Certeau further lnks ths approach to readng the cty to the hstory of map makng . Before the panoptc map as we know t, there was the tnerary, essentally a lst of landmarks, dstances, ponts of nterest prmarly for travelers on foot . The map here represents the statc totalzng of space, whle a revsed dea of the tnerary can be used as a practcal tool for representng some of the rhetorcal operatons suggested above (de Certeau, pp . 120–121) . As the semester progresses the students are encouraged to consder the poltcal stakes nvolved n walkng and the knds of nvestgaton dscussed 128 Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad here . The readngs, moreover, reflect ths shft . Texts such as Mchel Foucault’s Of Other Spaces and Frederc Jameson’s Postmodernsm, or, the Cultural Logc of Late Captalsm employ a methodology of readng famlar to the students from prevous texts . These nclude mappng, walkng, the nstruc- tve nature of memory and so on . Jameson n partcular suggests that as late captalst subjects, our understandng of hstory has become spatal rather than temporal . The new knd of alenaton we encounter n the postmodern metropols thus acqures a heghtened sense of poltcal urgency . Although Athens s not n the strct sense a postmodern metropols n the way that certan Amercan cty centers are, (havng erased every trace of ther prevous lfe), learners easly magne postmodern space by recallng ther own experences of other urban areas . The tools for dsalenaton that Jameson suggests, among others the complng of cogntve maps, bear a strkng resemblance to de Certeau’s methodology . Puttng nto practce the crtcal propostons of the texts, student learners begn to understand how urban spaces provde a scaled down model of ther own relatonshp to domnant deology, and, emphaszng the subjectve, a way to thnk ther own experence . Foucault, n Of Other Spaces, provdes an mportant counterpont to the methodologes and strateges of emplacement suggested by Jameson . In contrast to Jameson he suggests that space, as a domnant theoretcal model, s not our epoch’s nnovaton and that, hstorcally speakng, emplacement also mpled a strct socal herarchy (Foucault, 1986, p . 22) . In response to the fludty of our epoch, n whch space s more a “network of connectng ponts” (Foucault, 1986, p . 23), Foucault cons the nvaluable term hetero- topia . Heterotopas are “[stes] that have the curous property of beng n relaton wth all other stes, but n such a way as to suspect, neutralze, or nvert the set of relatons that they happen to desgnate” (Foucault, 1986, p . 24) . The text provdes an opportunty for learners to return to the dea of how space s socally coded and to reconsder ther own emplacement n such publc stes, the way they navgate urban space, and how these knds of decodngs can provde tools for understandng more abstract concepts such as ther own relatonshp to hstory and deology . Fnally, Walter Benjamn’s Arcades Project and One Way Street provde both a practcal model for the “fragmentary spatal stores” we ask learners to comple, as well as a hghly nsghtful descrpton of the cty, n ths case 19th century Pars . It s noteworthy that the secton on the Flâneur does not seek 129 Hunter Augeri, Eirene Efstathiou, Maria Michou, and Jan Motyka Sanders to define the flâneur, but rather reads as the notes of a practcng flâneur, and n ths t s partcularly nterestng that Benjamn s not descrbng hs own tme . Nevertheless, the secton teems wth mages of crowds, street vendors, and archtecture, reads as f the cty were one’s prvate space, wth the arcade one’s drawng room . Ths process of makng famlar or makng ntmate s the learnng objectve of the readngs . The Greek Key walks operate as field classes wth a number of mmedate outcomes . By travelng on ther own to the walk’s set meetng pont, students learn to navgate the cty n lmted tme . As well, they come to better understand how publc transportaton works and are able to observe the behavor of commuters durng peak mornng hours . When local facltators share hstorcal knowledge, personal memores, and collectve urban myths about a ste’s background, the foregn envronment quckly acqures the tactlty and famlarty of the everyday . Further, an nsstence on observaton of mnute detals of socal lfe and the bult envronment, combned wth the facltator’s narratons, teaches students to learn the unfamlar by walkng, lookng, and sensng . Ths learnng methodology helps students step faster out of the shock and awe of seeng a foregn land to truly engage wth urban space and everythng nsde t . Observatons and questons durng Greek Key walks create a fertle ground for group dscusson; seeng somethng wth fresh eyes welcomes nsghts, com- parsons, and proposals about ssues that often seem ordnary and nsgnficant to natves but may be strangely mpressve to non-natves . Dscussons durng the walks cover a varety of often overlappng dscplnes, supplemented wth personal anecdotes from home and other occurrences n Greece . Through these varous forms of nterpretaton learners begn to make sense of the space around them and to brng together once dsparate mages to form a more cohesve pc- ture of the real Athens . In the short space of the semester and ther resdence n Athens, the students have become learned walkers, both sagacous and nte- grated, escapng the status of wanderng tourst . “Always keep Ithaka n your mnd . / Arrvng there s your destnaton . / But don’t hurry the journey at all . / Better f t lasts many years, / and your moor on the sland when you are old, / rch wth all you have ganed along the way, / not expectng Ithaka to make you rch . / Ithaka gave you the beautful journey . / Wthout her you would not have set out on your way . / She has no more to gve you . / And f you find her poor, 130