"I am not Akropolis"

I was in Athens on business for the last two days. Last night, I wandered around the hotel I was staying (Imperial, a hotel I have never stayed before) to see what it is like and I soon came to a square (Omnia Square) where there were many drug addicts, drunks and other dodgy types.



I started to take a few pictures (with a small digital camera) when suddenly a fight broke out between some of the guys. Police came and arrested a few of them. When they saw me taking pictures, they confiscated my camera with the words that I was not allowed to take pictures of policemen ("I am not Akropolis, you are not allowed to take pictures of me", one of them kept saying).



After the policeman had deleted the pictures on my camera, he gave the camera back to me. Mind you, the pictures were not that great (so not a big loss) and with the prospect of having to go to a business meeting the next day, I did not want to get into a big argument with the police - after all, I did not want to spend a night at the police station explaining my position that I thought that Greece was a free country where you could take pictures in public where ever you wanted - so much for freedom of expression, after all the incident took place in a public space and not in someone's private house.



As I said, not a big loss in terms of the pictures, I missed others this week in the Ukraine (where I was before) that I am more disappointed about. Just leaves this photoblog entry without images :-(