When it comes to Athens, I'm sure most of you will think of it as the birthplace of modern civilization, democracy and the city of countless historical sights with Palace Acropolis in the lead. More than 18 milions people are coming to athens every year just to experience the beauty of it's ancient greece atmosphere. Though the city has hundreds of interesting touristic attractions to see, we came from a whole different reason, to look for a whole different architectural sights while taking totally different pictures and videoclips than most of the other visitors do.
TEXT: Tomas Carda
FOTO: Milan Tykal
The city of Athens is situated on the south point of Attika peninsula and together with surrounded suburbs creates relatively big agglomeration consisted of more than 4 millions of people. History of Athens begins 3000 b.c. and the city is nowadays visited by tourists from all over the world. The ever-present ancient architecture is combined with modern buildings where one to mention is the Olympic stadium, dominating the north-east part of the city. The terrain of athens is quite hilly, however every street rider knows that with a hilly terrain comes a lot of handrails/stairs and Athens we're no exception. All of the rail setups we have found were seriously incredible and everyone got some heavy clips.
It's last week of March and we are sitting on the plane to Athens, where we are supposed to meet up with local homie Jason Eusthatiou and David Budko both representing Monster Energy during this cooperation project with TBB-bike. Our crew was consisted of Michal Smelko, Vita Kacha and Franta Marsalek so I knew the result was going to be nothing but fire with these guys around. And it was!
First surprise came right after we landed and the collision with harsh reality hit us right in the face. I knew the Greece has been strugling it's economical crise for quite a while now, but I wasn't expecting to see such a mess at all. Everything is dirty, either destroyed or totally painted up with graffity and local shops are offering some kind of weird sortiment (including drugs as we quickly found out when we got offered everything at the shop next doors..). Actually, It is now kinda obvious why is the Greece in such a situation with their goverment not giving a slightest f*** about the capital city and it's popullation. I'm sure We would be all anarchists as well. What we have found most positive about Athens was the rad underground look that some of the districts had. Most of the pictures and clips from this trip looks sick with all that rubbish around.
One of the best memories I brought from athens was the visit of some old University campus. When Jason talked about this spot, everyone thought of it as a classic modern university campus full of marble ledges, rails and other things to ride. Well it was exactly it but when we entered it took a long while until we assured ourselfs that we did't get lost as usually. The half ruined buildings covered in all kinds of grafitty, towered in the middle of completely overgrown and unmaintained area with a groups of students walking around. After the quick look around we decided to explore the buildings too and got instantly shocked once again. The interrior was no different to the look from outside with a grafitty covered walls, fag ends on the floor or empty rooms where only the front board made you think it's kind of a classroom.
" Half ruined buildings covered in all kinds of grafitty, towered in the middle of completely overgrown and unmaintained area "
I almost forgot to mention that we were still rolling on our bikes while exploring those buildings what nobody found suspicious or was mad about. You can imagine the amount of laughter we had as we cruised through that school doing wall rides and simple tricks, it was hilarious! We asked a couple of students what's up with this place and found out out that it's allowed to smoke during classes in here, what a life.. After we got familliar with the whole place, heavy session went down and everyone filmed some sick clips all over the place. Vita always keeps his eye on the roof setups and quickly realised that the main building has a flat one with a lot of visible transitions. Didn't waste a second and together with Franta they went straight in to look for some entrance. Luckily enough it happened to be an elevator and minute later they were looking at us from the top. Franta is a pure savage and when Vita asked him to do the bars of one roof where you had to jump over the edge at the end, plus sketchy landing on the line of bricks, It didn't scare him at all and he went for it like a boss pulling it on the second try. At the end of the day we were all really stoked on the clips and pictures we got there and decided to come back once again before the trip ends, because you don't get to ride places like this every day.
Even though we found handfull of great spots to ride, I feel like this city has a lot more to offer and It is definitelly worthy to stay longer than just one week like we did. Especially because the local police doesn't care about riding at all and all of the people we met were super nice and friendly to us. Only thing you have to get used to is the local lifestyle aka punkstyle, dirt and the cuisine, because basically all you will find to eat is either pita, gyros or suvlaki. If you are able to live with that, then get yourself ready to experience some great times because at some points, athens will leave you speachless.
PHOTO: Milan Tykal
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