I don't know what impressed me the most about Greece, whether it was the 2,500-year-old relics that remind us democracy was born here or the angry demonstrators who remind us that it isn't completely dead yet.

[caption id="attachment_1225" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Old Socrates sure built him some purty buildings."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/20110702_42.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1225" title="20110702_42" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/20110702_42-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

The three weeks I just spent in Europe on my sixth trip to the mother continent probably weren't the most exciting. Indeed, once or twice this trip tended to take on "vacation from hell" characteristics, and I was pretty sure I saw Clark Griswold at least once. But these days, any opportunity to escape the land of Dancing With the Stars, Double Whoppers and the Kardashians is a welcome one and after all, I had never been to Athens.

Greece, that is.

<em>Swimming pools and movie stars ...</em>

Sorry, wrong segue.

I have been to Athens, Georgia, on a football Saturday in October, and if life gets any better than that in Greece, I'm pretty sure it involves Ouzo.

We spent two weeks in Greece, and the best part of it was spending time with our wonderful son Virgile and his lovely wife Sterling. They took us to a beach near Marathon one weekend and to the Temple of Poseidon on the southern tip of that part of the country the next weekend. Since they worked during the week, we did some sightseeing on our own the rest of the time.

It was wonderful to climb the Acropolis and see the Parthenon, although I was a little disappointed that the sight didn't move me as viscerally as when I turned a street corner in Rome in 1977 and saw the Colosseum. Of course, I think that might be the fact that my sense of wonder isn't as strong at age 61 as it was when I was 27.

[caption id="attachment_1226" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Even the Greeks protest in English."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/20110702_116.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1226" title="20110702_116" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/20110702_116-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

I was thrilled to see the young Greeks trying to stand up to the combined wrath of their own government, the IMF and the European Union. The spirit of the folks in <a title="Syntagma Square" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntagma_Square">Syntagma Square</a> is something we could really use in the land of the dollar bill, intelligent design and best-selling author Bristol Palin.

It's definitely nice to see people standing up around the world and saying to rich folks, "No, you don't get to have <em>all</em> the money."

And in Greece, they don't respond by saying that Mitch McConnell told them it was OK.

Yes, it was definitely nice to be in Athens, but after three weeks on the road, it is good to be home.

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