A Quiet Beer Interrupted by Tear Gas

My unexpected misadventure in Athens

This is kind of how the police I saw looked. Photo by Mathias Reding, no copyright

I was tear-gassed this weekend. What did you get up to?

I just got back from a week’s holiday in Greece. On our final night in Athens, my friends and I went to a bar for a quiet beer and sip of tsipouro before a delicious lamb dinner.

We were staying in Exarchia, which is an anarchist neighbourhood in downtown Athens.

Police officers, who all appeared younger than 25, stood around dressed in riot gear. We wondered what they were up to as they seemed to just be standing about doing nothing. Our accommodation hosts told us to ignore them and our taxi driver gave a sniff of derision as we drove by earlier that day.

As we were finishing our drinks, we watched a group of people gathering in the street. They wore mostly black and some had gas masks.

“Are you ready for the tear gas?” a man sitting at a nearby table asked us.

The bored-looking police officers snapped to attention. They assembled in a line, with their shields and tear gas canisters at the ready.

We were slow to react, looking on with interest but not moving from our table on the terrace.