Exarchia

Exarchia is the anarchist-intellectual quarter north of the Polytechnic, graffiti-walled, no chain stores (a deliberate refusal, not an accident), the city's bookshop density, the cafés where the academic and activist class settles in for three-hour conversations. The dining is unpolished and good: cheap mezedopoleia, the tsipouro bars, the late-night souvlaki on Themistokleous. The traveller uses Exarchia as the contrast hood, the version of Athens that refuses to be Kolonaki, and for the lunch in a square where nobody asks what you do for a living.