#vyronas

Athens. Vyronas

I was walking down Byron Street one day this past spring, heading to the post office in downtown Athens (an allowable outing under the lockdown—reason #2). It is a pleasant street, with one- and two-story neoclassical buildings in various stages of renovation or dilapidation, plus the odd souvenir shop and little hotel, leading up to the square of the Lysicrates monument, which was once used as a study in the Capuchin monastery. Lord Byron and his friend John Cam Hobhouse had stayed at the monastery in 1809. Byron Street abuts Shelley Street, both not far from the road known as the Street of the Philhellenes. Normally the area would have been thronged with souvenir-purchasing tourists, but Covid had left it strangely empty.

Byron works so nicely in Greek that it even has a declension. (The “Byron” of Byron Street—Vironos—is in the genitive.) Shelley, though, cannot even be written phonetically, since Greek lacks a “sh” sound. It takes a moment, looking at the street sign, to figure out what it is: Σέλλεϋ, “Selley.” Shelley remains distinctly foreign and un-Greek.

Vyronas 1924-2010 " City of refugees, ...city of national resurrection and social struggles."

Vyronas is a suburb of Athens, named after Lord Byron, that was populated with refugees escaping the Asia Minor debacle.

Six months ago I received the sad diagnosis: there was nothing they could do. My dependable moped, which I’d relied on for the last 18 years, finally gave up the ghost at the neighborhood repair shop. And so I had to turn to public transport. For me, that meant the 212 – a tiny bus connecting the neighborhoods of Karea and Dafni.