Monday, February 27: Orientation and Agenda

Post date: Mar 03, 2017 8:0:46 AM

By Robert Yon

We have now been in Athens for over two whole days. However, due to Clean Monday, we have yet to hold any meetings with policymakers. While the timing is somewhat unfortunate, we have not been idle. On Saturday night we celebrated Meghan’s birthday with a traditional Greek meal in our neighborhood, before most of us retired early to recover from our long journey. On Sunday a group of us ventured to the Acropolis, perhaps the most famous hill in the western world. After touring the ruins of the Parthenon and other temples, we stopped for lunch at the Acropolis Museum. In the afternoon we wandered around the Plaka. In the evening a group of us took the metro to Pireaus to see a Greek Super League soccer game between Olympiacos and Panionios. While the home team was not able to pull out a victory, it was still quite the experience. The fans in the area behind the home goal lit flares throughout the game and supported their team with many loud cheers. In order to buy tickets to the game, four of us had to become members of the Olympiacos Club. The perk of membership was a card with our full name, so we are now card-carrying members of Olympiacos.

Today we split up into a few different groups. Those who did not see the Acropolis yesterday spent a leisurely day exploring in the city and continuing to recover from the journey. The rest of us ventured out of the city on a tour of the ancient oracle at Delphi, which we found out is pronounced Del-fee, as opposed to Del-fi. While the tour required us to journey several hours via bus, the tour guide spent much of the time informing us about Greek history and mythology, which lulled some of us to sleep, but helped others to pass the time. Overall our first two full days in country have served as a great introduction to the people and culture of Greece, and have energized us for the week ahead.

Tomorrow we begin four busy days of meetings. The photo below is a snapshot of who we will be meeting with. The blue meetings indicate refugee meetings, while the yellow represent economic crisis meetings. The meetings in green are with experts whose policy knowledge overlaps both areas. In the coming days we will be posting in greater detail about our meetings. However, since most of the meetings were set up to encourage the maximum candor on the part of those we are meeting with, we may be limited in the amount of detail we are able to provide. We hope you will continue to check back for more updates in the days ahead.