Athina in summer is a nocturnal creature, much like its cats. The heat of summer days is intense, dry with a searing sun, the traffic slow moving. Cats lie motionless in the shade while tourists and locals alike navigate the city in an energy conserving eco-mode.
The city-state that gave birth to the concept of democracy and to western civilisation, later taking on many cultural mores of the east during the centuries it fell under the control of the Ottoman empire, has over the last few decades increasingly become a modern outward-looking western city, long part of the European Union, and plugged into current international cultural trends.
Nights are balmy. Cooling breezes temper the humidity. The city comes to life. Athenians live out on the streets, or more accurately on their squares — their plateias. Restaurants are many and are full. 9pm dinners. 10pm dinners. 11pm dinners. Bars sit among them pumping out bass-heavy beats. In tourist-focused neighborhoods musicians play traditional tunes on their guitars, bouzoukia and clarinets — in bars and tavernas or busking on the streets. Gelaterie draw late night crowds. Cats, looking for a meal, saunter and weave through it all.
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