A Square in Plaka
Filomousou Etaireias is a popular square in the centre of Athens, also known as the Plaka Square, which, despite Lonely Planet's reputation as touristy in the extreme, is a pleasant place with curious details.
Plaka neighbourhood extends below Acropolis north-eastern slope around the ancient agora, its urban structure was developed along Ottoman period when it was the Turkish quarter and seat of the Voivode, the governor. The name of Plaka was only popularized after Greek independence and probably comes from the name given by the Albanian community that inhabited it: Pliak Athena, ancient Athens. Etaireias Square is located in the heart of the neighbourhood, surrounded by Kidathineon, Farmaki and Geronta streets. The name of the square, Φιλόμουσος Εταιρεία, Filomousou Etaireias, recalls the society of friends of the muses, founded in 1813, which was created before independence, during the Ottoman occupation, to restore Hellenic culture in Athens and promote phyllohelenism.
The square is filled with taverns, Vizantino, Acropol, Plaka, a trattoria, two cafes, Kylathinaion and Oionos, a fashioned restaurant, the gastro-pub Seven Food Sins and a new French place: Wine and Food. Tavern’s furniture corresponds to what they are supposed to be: simple tables and wooden chairs, chairs with wooden back and wicker seat that can be removed to prevent them from getting wet on rainy days. The tables are covered with tablecloths, sometimes red and white, sometimes blue and white with more or less large squares. Everything depends on the tavern’0s boss will. The menu is usually almost the same everywhere: the long-suffering chicken or lamb souvlaki, tomato, onions, green peppers and olives salads decorated with feta cheese, moussaka or pastitsio and some kleftiko-type stew.
Noon, 12:30. Tourists take their trying to choose a table where to eat. A woman in a blue shirt crosses along the tables trying to keep in balance a glass of water in her left hand. Advertisement of a well-known refreshment, or alternatively of a popular brand of beer, supports two copies of the day’s menu, one necessarily in Greek, the other, predictably in English. Local customers are easily distinguished from outsiders. The first chat frantically as if it were the last day of their lives when they had the opportunity to do so. The outsiders sit by couples, almost immobile and quiet in their chairs, watching with parsimony the verbal incontinence of the locals. Waiters serve glasses of water before requesting the order that will come with some snacks: olives, cucumber and carrot. Now crosses a man loaded with two pots while in the restaurant Akropol sounds the boutzouki music played by a pair of musicians.
The middle of the square, soulless and devoid of interest, seems hidden from the stealthy glances of diners at the tavern tables. It is an empty space where there are two pairs of benches facing each other where it seems that there is never anyone, but it is not true and next to these there are two relics of another era of human communication: a yellow mailbox with the Greek post logo. It seems as disused as the pole that holds three telephone booths.
At each end there is a pillar with a bust on top. The one that remains towards the east, towards Oionos Café is the one of the journalist and writer Dimitrios Kabouroglou (1852-1942), who was an Academy of Athens member. The opposite is dedicated to the composer Nikos Chatziapostolou (1884-1941), principal representative of the Greek operetta.
The kiosk, on one side of square’s centre, almost camouflaged between the tables on the terraces, offers, as might be expected, the press of the day and weekly magazines but also serves refreshments and some snacks to provisionally kill the appetite. A couple passes with a single bicycle, he is a kind guy and embraces her while walking he drags the vehicle.
Unlike Saint Sulpice Square in Paris pigeon colony is small in size, just some bird which comes up from time to time under the tables looking for some crumbs to take to the beak.
Square activities are completed with Cinema Paris. In the twenties of the twentieth century it was the first movie hall with open-air screen, on the upper terrace. It was opened by a Greek hairdresser who lived in the French capital, closed for a couple of decades until it was reopened in 1986 offering its original screenings with subtitling in Greek.
Two girls, one with arms and shoulders exuberantly tattooed, lift, pay and leave. A balloon seller passes by with plastic swords. He opens his mouth to advertise the merchandise displaying a golden smile, literally at least the four upper incisors are made with gold and can be seen in the distance glowing as in Mike the Knife song. The waiter, retreating, stumbles upon a pedestrian. The girls with the exuberant tattoos come back. The grandparents seated until now in the besides table get up and leave.
Two years later the pandemic has done some damage: the Seven Sins and the movies are temporarily closed, the French restaurant has changed its name, the square is much less crowded, it seems lighter. At one of the tables two grandparents, who adding their ages looks like to reach about a couple of centuries, talk animatedly, perhaps about the weather, whether present September is colder or not than others, perhaps about the August wildfires, perhaps about missing friends. The one who looks older lights a cigarette and wears sunglasses that he must have bought forty years ago. At least. They calmly have a coffee accompanied by the mandatory glass of water and continue arguing while the youngest adjusts the oxygen tubes that reach his nose. The future exists. On the next day and the other two they come back to the same seats and resume their conversation in the same tone.
Two more years have gone, it is 2024, the former Seven Food Sins, closed during the pandemic, has been transformed into the Rom, another gastronomic space; the French restaurant seems to be closed forever, there is no room for foie-gras among so much souvlaki and moussaka. The Paris cinema, which has reopened, has cleaned up its façade and continues to show feature films in their original version; today it is Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Now there are four or five grandparents who gather around a table where there used to be a bakery and now the Pantheon bar is open with its black and white portraits of film celebrities. They drink ouzo at the right time, noon, accompanied by a light meze: black olives, cheese and tomato. One of the grandparents still handles with his left hand a komboloi, one of those rosaries. This one, shorter, has eleven beads.
The mailbox still stands in the same place but the telephone booths have disappeared. The busts in the middle of the square are still there, staring one at each other, undaunted.
© J.L.Nicolas
