Greece, birthplace of Western civilization. Greece which introduced in more full-form more than anywhere else the idea of Democracy and Rational thought, where Man not God determined Law. As much as Greece has influenced Western civilization since antiquity, this succession is not a clean, uninterrupted reign to modernity. Even Athens, as a city, is a new phenomenon younger still than even New York city. What we know as Athens grew up and over the very bones of a city that stretches back right the mists of written history. The soul of the city is not so much found in the heritage of its buildings, nor even its co-location with its ancestral city that bears the same name. Athens lives in its cafe and boulevards, in the people who come to sit under the shade of the Greek Apollo and find cool solace through shared conversation and the clink of ceramic cups heavy with the grinds of coffee. Read more here.