Merry Christmas! As you probably have guessed by now, I have returned home safely and have risen back into consciousness after several days of being in a semi-catatonic state. In honor of the holiday, here are some photos of Christmas decorations in Athens, both those that still exist and those that haven't made it.
This is the first Christmas tree that they put up in Syntagma square. On the weekend that the riots broke out, I was in Athens, going around and seeing the city. This is the situation as it was on Friday- the tree itself had just gone up, and they were decorating it (with cranes.) That's the Parliament building that you can see in the background.
Here is the first Christmas tree as it was on Sunday morning! The riots broke out on Saturday night, but because I didn't get to the internet between Saturday morning and Sunday evening, I actually didn't really know that anything was wrong until later. At this point the tree was decorated, and there were a lot of lights all over the streetlights and trees of Athens.
This is a window decoration from Omonia, and I'm reasonably certain that it doesn't exist at the moment, since it was in the center of the riot zone. Athens gets decorated for Christmas a lot these days- since my mother says that this wasn't really the case thirty years ago, I'm going to assume that this is an instance where other countries have influenced Greece.
And this is the second Christmas tree in Syntagma Square, which was put up after the first one was burned down. As you can see, the decorations aren't exactly the same as on the old one, but this one was still quite large and festive. It is still around, I think- in the riots they have thrown things at it, but it hasn't been burned down yet. 
I hope you are having a lovely Christmas (or other holiday of your choice) and I wish you a happy new year! Expect more posts soon!
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