After the two of us went to get some food and a well-deserved rest we made our way towards the close Greek War Museum. To be honest I did not expect too much of it at first glance because it looks fairly small on the map.
Nevertheless, we went there because the topic was something we were really interested in and not only the Greek buildings are legendary but at least since recent Hollywood blockbusters, the Greek warriors are too.
The Outside
When we arrived there, we could not enter, unless we had taken a tour outside first. In fact, you can do this even without paying, just the inside will demand a ticket. So if you are in the Area, don’t want to spend money but need to waste some time, have a look at the guns, planes, and equipment around the place.
Around the outside, there is a mix of equipment ranging from AA-Guns over cannons, howitzers, torpedoes and launchers, planes up to some surreal looking armored guns on odd-looking vehicles.
A little bit further to the back there is a selection of sea mines, targeting “computers”, which is basically a mechanical table where you enter the parameters on top and get a resolution. This thing was state-of-the-art in the 2nd world war and was in case of the US-Battleship Missouri built to such a perfection that no upgrades to a modern computer were needed since the accuracy was still within the requirements for a 20th-century war.
As soon as you turn around the corner it takes the scenario into a new element, the air to be precise. There are some aircraft on display and you can climb up to the cockpit of each and every vehicle. The only downside of it is, that they are not protected from the weather so the canopies are in a bad condition, which makes it hard to look inside. At least for me, myself who was interested in the topic since I first saw a Jet, soaring through the sky and the thunder that you can feel in your whole body that comes a little bit later this was quite a display. The Aging warbirds have still some curves to show off and, at least in my mind are sexy AF. Those are machines built to perfection, for their specific purpose. Hahaha, well, I might have gotten carried away a little bit here.
As we finally managed to turn our heads around and head inside, which was at the back of the building I’d like to add we went through a hall of famous Greek soldiers. Then we hit the entrance area which did cost us four euros each, which is not much for the whole building since it is bigger than it looks at first glance.
Inside the Museum
Here’s a small alert/reminder that almost everything here is behind glass and with lights inside so the photos had reflections and I did not go over the details as much as outside because the effort of getting a single “perfect” shot would have been just too much since we had not a whole day for the place.
Well, it is overall a museum so you get what you expect. Weapons of all different time periods and origins on display. History of all big wars the Greeks had fought, from the Persian invasions up to the second world war.
A little side notes here for the helmets, shields, and weapons: none of them would fit me, they are way too small to fit on my head and the weapons are right between deadly and toy. That is because I’m an average sized European guy from modern times and the diet I received my whole life was well balanced and more than sufficient. Back in the days, the people were much smaller so the pictures we get out of films like 300 and such are completely wrong. Well, the Spartans used to be really big guys for the time with a height of 1,72 meters and an average weight of 75 kg. The Persian Immortals were close to that but the armory and weaponry on display give away that the average foot soldier must have been somewhat tiny, compared to those highly trained fighters.
The mix extends over the middle ages, where I found another fun thing on display, at least for me as a Carinthian.
Disclaimer: Every guy who cannot stand black humor, please skip the next textbox. Thank you.
So, when I was reading that an Austrian Lord came to defend Greece of foreign invaders I found it quite funny, since, well we came here (or tried) from time to time but with different things in mind. The Greek hospitality is legendary, the Austrian hospitality too, but not on the same level concerning food, drinks and such. In other cases consider the Austrian hospitality bigger because we invite everyone, and not only for food and drinks but especially when we wage war.
Safe to read again, for those who like knock-knock jokes.
Moving on through the history we obviously arrive at the first and second world war.
It took us quite some time to check out everything and there were things on display as captured swastica flags and such. I am not quite sure how the law on this topic is so I’d rather not show it on the blog, but let you know they have all different kind of things that might be of interest to some of you.
Obviously, this is a very specialized topic here and will not suit every audience but I”m interested in it and I make the rules here.
Leaving Athens
There were still a few things on our bucket list so we had to leave Athens, which meant driving the subway back to the airport, get in the van and head off to visit Delphi, which was the next hotspot.
EU - Adventure 