Seeing the Parade

Friday morning I woke up early (well, kind of), in spite of the holiday. Then I walked through the nice and quiet streets of a sunny nonworking day in Athens. The 28th of October is a national holiday, it was the day that started the 2nd World War for Greece [1]. The day is commemorated with a parade in front of the parliament and the grave of the unknown soldier. Lots of politicians and generals are assembled to watch, but on the other side of the street there is also a crowd of normal folks. (The building on the left side of the photo is the parliament.)

The parade was completeley non-military, schoolchildren and some boyscouts, together with some bands were marching. In the crowd were the parents, schoolmates and relatives of the children, and they were applauding when they saw "their" school marching by. Most of the school groops were wearing some uniform like outfits (dark blue skirts and white blouses being the classical style for the day). But others wore traditional greek folk costumes, and these received extra applause.

Also big applause received a group from the Athens 2004 Special Olympics and the very small kids from the boy scouts. As for the bands, I learned that a glockenspiel makes a big difference in the sound of a marching band, which of course reminded me of Neal Stephens Cryptonomicon (where one of the main characters gets to play the glockenspiel, because there is no way he can play a pipe organ in a marching band). I'm no fan of marching music, but the glockenspiel sounded sweet inside all that humptata.

[1]: Actually it was the day that the Greek general and dictator Metaxas refused the ultimatum of Italian generalissimus and dictator Mussolini. Mussolini had demanded free passing of Italian troups through Greece to north africa, something that would have amounted to surrender of the country. After the "No" ("όχι") of Metaxa, hostilities started between Italy and Greece, later resulting in the involvement of Germany and the occupation of Greece. October 28th is called "επέτειος του όχι" ("epetios tou ohi", "annyversary of the no") in Greece.