ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Heavy snowfall covered the Acropolis and other ancient monuments in Athens and halted vaccination against COVID-19 in the Greek capital on Tuesday, as the weather stopped many services across the country .
As Western Europe received some respite from the winter weather, temperatures plummeted in the southeast of the continent and winter storms also ravaged Turkey.
Snow, an unusual spectacle in Athens, a city of more than 3 million residents, also stopped most public transportation services, while fallen trees caused blackouts in several mountain suburbs.
Snow is frequent in the mountains of Greece and in the north of the country, but much rarer in the capital. Some Athenians cautiously went outside, taking photographs on balconies and streets.
The snow came when Athens and several other parts of Greece remain blocked to curb coronavirus infections. Schools and most shops are closed and residents must stay indoors during the night curfew.
Some kids skipped online classes Tuesday to play in the snow. Adults also went out to play, with some skis dug for use on the mountainous slopes of the capital. A man skied along the hill of Pnyx, in central Athens, near the Acropolis.
Norwegian Ambassador Frode Overland Andersen has tweeted a video about himself skiing down a hill in the suburb of Filothei with his teenage daughter.
“Challenge accepted,” he wrote, after a friend in Oslo challenged him to prove that it was really possible to ski in Athens.
“It was the best day in my home office during closing so far,” the ambassador told The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, my skis had a pretty tough beating, so I’ll be waxing and getting ready for next season.”
Outside the parliament building, orange snowplows cleared the streets of ice and snow, while presidential guards, dressed in traditional pleated kilts and pompom-tipped shoes, received heavy wool coats.
The cold, which has already caused snowstorms in much of Europe, kept Girona temperatures in Athens on Tuesday, but was expected to rise sharply with highs of 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit) forecast for Thursday. In neighboring Turkey, heavy snowfall and storms forced the closure of a road in northwestern Turkey. About 600 vehicles were stranded on a nine-kilometer (six-mile) stretch of snow-covered road and another 800 vehicles were stranded elsewhere, the state’s Anadolu Agency reported.
Sections of Greece’s main road were also closed on Tuesday and most ferry services to the islands were canceled, while flights from regional airports to Athens were disrupted.
Greek Fire Service spokesman Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis said the service had received more than 600 calls for assistance in Greater Athens.
“The calls mainly concerned felled trees and transporting people trapped in vehicles to a safe place, but also transporting patients on kidney dialysis for treatment,” he told state television.
“Vaccines have been postponed, but we have helped transport doctors and medical staff where needed and we have helped electrical technicians reach damaged electrical pylons in areas where access was difficult,” Vathrakoyiannis said.
Power and water cuts were also reported in central Greece. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with emergency response leaders to help residents in dark areas and snow-cut villages.
“Obviously, we recommend that great care be taken in all movements, all unnecessary movement should be avoided,” Mitsotakis said after the meeting, adding that the authorities were doing everything possible to keep the roads open and to restore energy to areas without electricity.
“I think we will all show patience as we face a truly unprecedented phenomenon,” he added. ___ Follow Becatoros at https://twitter.com/ElenaBec and Gatopoulos at https://twitter.com/dgatopoulos ___ Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey and Thanassis Stavrakis, Petros Giannakouris and Srdjan Nedeljkovic in Athens contributed.