This short trip, besides being the most boring and uneventful weekend of my life (nothing happened), did a lot to change my impression of Athens. I saw public buildings and entertainment spaces informed by contemporary ideas, including this bank by Mario Botta, and Karim Rashid’s renovation of Hotel Semiramis in Kefalari. Works to improve public transport (we are getting trams!) are not only progressing at speed, but also with proper care to detail and quality. The coup de grace was the slick white and chrome renovation of the Divina billiards hall, the sunless subterranean haunt of my high school years, whose interior surfaces where now devoid of the familiar dirt encrustations which seemed to date from the late seventies.

The changes are of course spurred on by the upcoming games. Much like Barcelona after the reconstruction of the city for the 1992 Olympics, Athens is becoming a hip, cosmopolitan European hub (with proper ethnic ghettos to complement its waxed and polished swanky parts) and it’s shedding its third-worldly image. If you find yourselves in London next month you might want to visit the Athens-Scape exhibitions at the RIBA, for a more pictorial account of the changes in the city.

In short, I felt like my design agenda might actually have a market in the New Athens, and I am very keen to return and work there.

Although the decision was fairly straight-forward, I hesitated before I checked the “I decline Yale’s offer…” box.