We visit the full size concrete replica of the Parthenon. It sits vast and unapologetic in the sun. Why is it here? Why here, rather than anywhere else? These questions bewilder us.
It's a sign that we belong to Old Europe, for all that we think we don't we agree. Imagine: there are people who have less of a relationship to history than us!
Our hosts are also people of history. They are as baffled as we are by the replica Parthenon. We take pictures of one another posing on the steps. We feel like replica Platos and Aristotles. W. says that I am a replica Diogenes, and that I should strip naked and masturbate in the sun like my forebear.
I should live the rest of my life here, he says, by the replica Parthenon in a barrel, and when George W. Bush visits to ask me what he, the leader of the free world can give me, I can tell him to get out of my sun.
Lars Iyer's Blog 