An Athenian Diary

4

What Does Kolonaki Mean?

Kolonaki means "little column." The neighborhood takes its name from a rather sorry little ancient column that stands in the middle of the square. Or used to stand -- the whole square is cordoned off and ripped up with loud, mysterious construction. I haven't seen the column since I arrived. I wonder whether its disappearance, whether temporary or permanent, symbolizes something about the neighborhood. Kolonaki, of course, also means style. You walk down the street and you are confronted with an endless parade of people -- women, mostly -- who exude confidence that they know better than anyone else in the world just what to wear.

Maybe the best symbol for Kolonaki is the shoe. I'll bet there are more shoe shops per square kilometer in Kolonaki than anywhere else in the world. Predominant in the store windows are those "impossibly pointed" shoes that Edie has remarked on in one of her essays. You see them on the feet of those stylish Kolonaki women, too. How they walk in them is beyond me. But shoes dominate also the ads; sometimes, the woman is the shoe.

The main drag in Kolonaki is called Patriarchou Ioachim. It runs from the main entrance of Evangelismos Hospital to Kolonaki square, a distance of perhaps a third of a mile. The square's the heart of Kolonaki, dominated by three or four massive cafes with seating spilling out all over the sidewalk and so expensive that I've never even dared to look at the menus. Patriachou Ioachim is lined with speciality shops advertising their stylishness with signs, window displays, and sometimes even the pulls on the doors -- wrought bronze frames at the glasses shop.

The side streets that peel of Patriachou Ioachim lead to the residential neighbors; to the north, they climb the slopes of Mt. Lykavettos till the grade becomes too steep and they transmogrify into steps. These neighbors are dominated by the typical Athenian apartment building, five or six stories high, topped with a penthouse from whose capacious balconies droop bougainvillea. These neighborhoods have their share of expensive shops too, but they also preserve a few of the amenities of life: grocery stores, fruit shops, bakeries. So Kolonaki leads a kind of double life, with snazzy new shops filled with luxury goods on the face it shows to the world, and a bit of the old life concealed behind the facade. Which isn't to say that Kolonaki is somehow a regular Athenian neighborhood despite the glitz.

Maybe the best part of Kolonaki for us, though, doesn't have anything to do with whether the measure of glamour is short of long, or whether the "real" Kolonaki resides in the display windows of the shoestores or the shouts of the venders at the Friday market. For us, it's living in a place that can be encompassed on foot even by a six-year old. Almost every morning, about 7 am, Caroline goes out -- by herself -- clutching 2.10 euro to buy bread and milk at the bakery around the corner. Nights when homework's done early enough, we may stroll a couple of blocks to the periptera with the best ice cream, where the lady working there introduced herself to the girls and the three of them had a short, but successful, conversation in Greek. The bookstore around the corner carries most of the schoolbooks any student would need, and Aktina, the wonderful stationery store, brims with notebooks, pencils, paper, erasers. The guy who owns the kids' school supply store (this means backpacks and toys, not books and rulers) says hi to the girls whenever they pass, for we got their new backpacks there (and Caroline worried for days about 40 euro cents we owed him on that transaction, till she finally got to go in one evening and pay up). That is to say, this is living in a real city, where there are fascinations right outside your door, where you don't need a car (not even a Smart one) and you rarely even think about one. That's what we like about Kolonaki -- that's (at least in part, and for now) what Kolonaki means to us.

Some people say that Kolonaki has lost some of the glitz. It's "seedier" now, someone said to me the other day. Maybe. But there's still enough style here to make the neighborhood distinctive, even if it is losing out (as in so many other cities) to suburban areas that are attracting people and money. The suburbs east of Athens along Mesogeion, one of the major arteries, are starting to burgeon with money and shops, and once the new Hymettos bypass highway is completed, ease of access to downtown will surely encourage still more growth. Even the area by Byron College, where the kids go, is experiencing a boom -- there's new housing construction all over the place. So the physiognomy of Athens is bound to change, like that of so many other cities, and Kolonaki will no doubt recede.

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