It is a kind of habit in Athens that I know, every year, at the beginning of December, municipality starts to build a huge Christmas tree in the middle of Syntagma square. Additionally, they decorate around it with some huge present boxes, that I did not like this year, and small houses, in where they sell some candies, that they did not build this year on Syntagma square. Every year this huge Xmas tree witnesses all the Christmas spirit of Athenians. After taking some photos of soldiers who wear traditional costumes, include a special skirt with 500 creases which represents 500 years of Greeks under Ottoman rule, in front of the parliament, tourists start to take the picture of the tree. And, all locals come in front of it and pose to cameras. However, this year was not so happy for the faith of Xmas tree. Just after few days of its installation to the middle of the main square of Athens, tree faced with anarchists attacks and was blasted totally! Athenians who were watching the fire, were sure that it was the brightest Xmas tree of the world! At the end of the all events, while Athenians were thinking that all decoration and celebration events would be cancelled for this year, they met with the new Xmas tree one day, again in the same place with the previous one but with older ornaments on it...Probably, municipality would not want to spend another extra money for the new decoration which would be again under the risk of another attack.
However, hopefully new tree was more beautiful than the previous one, even though it has a meaningless purple colored star at the top, and it was safe until the first days of 2009. I am so glad that this tradition did not stop this year and I had many pictures with Athenian Xmas tree :)
Καλή Χρονιά Αθήνα μου...Happy New Year my Athens...(even though I cheat on you with Istanbul, who even does not have a Xmas tree!)
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