Athens (Click to enlarge panoramic pic)

day1: I climbed up to the Acropolis but once I got to the top I realized it was closed because of the strike. These are some stone steps just outside.

day1: On my way back down I ran into some beautiful wall art

Layers of history

day1: I then stopped into a small church. I was happy to see the flower of life etched in the wall much like the flower I saw in the back room at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland 5 years ago. It felt like a nice little reminder.

day1: I made my way back down to the city center. Throughout the whole walk I kept seeing large piles of garbage everywhere.

day1: As I approached my hotel, I started to see lots of people walking in the same direction. Before I hopped in line, I saw this on the side of a building - Here's some advice, Stay alive.

day1: Riot cops waiting near the shopping areas of Athens. One saw me and told me to stop taking photos.

day1: Walking out into the protests. Families of all ages, food vendors, music, slogans being blared across speakers in every square. I lost count at the number of intersections filled with people. I walked with the crowd and stepped into a huge open area in front of the Parliament building. There were roughly 300,000 people combined throughout the area peacefully protesting. I couldn't understand anything that was being chanted or shouted through loudspeakers but luckily many locals could speak English and filled me in. Apparently people were on strike all over the country due to economic woes. The govt has been bailing out the banks, wages are being lowered and taxes are rising. People are not happy.

day1: People of all ages were at the protests. Many of them wearing masks. Some had simple doctors masks while others had full-on gas masks. This was a little kid with his parents.

day1: Guys standing arm in arm protecting the protests w pieces of wood. They were all around the area. Many of them were also carrying motorcycle helmets.

day1: I climbed a small tree and tried to see what was happening off to the side of the Parliament. People began shouting at cops in riot gear who had made a blockade the the previous night. This is where I really started to feel the emotions of the people. It felt like so much was brewing. This pic shows a man kicking a flare back to the cops that threw it over the blockade. In this tree is also where I smelled tear gas for my first time. Not pleasant.

day1: People started to pour around to the front of the Parliament. It seemed like a nervous slow rush of at least a thousand people.

day1: As the numbers of shouting groups started to grow at the steps of the Parliament, riot cops started lining up to guard the steps

day1: Wider shot in front of the Parliament after more people poured in.

day1: Then people started to light pipe bombs and smoke grenades at the Parliament building. The chanting was at a fervor at this point. I was also told by at least 3 people that some people dressed as Anarchists are actually Agent Provocateurs. Their role, I was told, was to mix among the people and create rioting as to break up the protest and cause unfocused chaos instead of focused change. As this happens, then real pissed off youth come into the mix and start burning as well, all the while thinking they are fighting the man. I wasn't sure what to think of that, but I had to leave to meet up with my tour manager Iain. Up until this point I was walking around by myself. We were to find out later that the show would get canceled due to the protests. Plumes of tear gas were hanging outside our hotel and the club up the street.

day1: That night we saw tons more garbage through the streets. Garbage, postal, public transport, airlines, and most public servies all involved with the strike.

day2: We walked back to the Parliament and saw some damage along the way. Broken store fronts, burned piles of garbage and a general sense of tension was everywhere.

day2: Steps of the Parliament, guys w motorcycle helmets standing arm in arm. They were out in more force this second day standing at the steps of the Parliament and around the perimeter of the protests.

day2: The first pipe bombs start to go off in a dense crowd. A woman started shouting over the loud speaker 'Don't let them split us up, stand your ground' in Greek. Large numbers of people started booing at the pipe bombs. Flares started being thrown. Then men with bats started protecting groups of women and children. From here it escalated quickly.

day2: Pipe bombs started to go off every minute, sometimes a few in a row. The day before was a passionate scene of people angry against their govt and authority, but the 2nd day was very different. People started attacking each other. Molotov cocktails started to fly in a cascade of rocks and flares. The men in helmets with bats started running at groups of people wearing black. I saw people being dragged and beaten. For the first and hopefully last time in my life I saw a man running on fire.

day2: Cameraman w gas mask, behind him a man being dragged to police for instigating violence. People were so upset with the cops who were not helping the situation at all and standing by the parliament. From what I saw, they were only making it worse by occasionally walking out to where people were then turning around.

day2: Old man wearing a mask and selling bread during protests.

day2: That night we took a walk through the streets because we were stranded from roadblocks. This was a Starbucks near the center of town. The protests continued to happen downtown and every once in a while we would walk through a tear gas area. It was such a wild scene to see people shopping or in cafes with something like this happening only a handful of blocks away. The majority of higher income areas and shopping districts has teams of cops in riot gear protecting the areas.

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