Athens, First Impressions

“There will be another protest today. Yesterday there was 20,000 people, it was peaceful, but more are coming today, I think,” my cab driver says in a thick accent, the reflection in his aviators showing the endless sea of buildings as we make our way into the heart of Athens.

“Why are people protesting?” I ask, having only a vague idea. My neck was stretched so that I could see outside into the city.

“The economy… it’s screwing everyone over. We should just sell off some islands, we have so many already!” he says. I laugh, and he adds, “They’re just some rocks! We have like 1,500 islands!”

He teaches me some basic Greek on the way to the hotel, laughing occasionally at my accent.

“I thought I was doing pretty well with my accent! Is it that obvious?” I ask, somewhat disappointed that my accent was so far off that I roused laughter.

“No, no, it’s not that bad. You just sound unsure of everything,” he says, still chuckling. My inflections, that’s what gave it away. That, and I was speaking at the pace of a sleeping sea cucumber.

I feel like I’ve been to Athens before. The familiarities are unsettling. The city looks like it was plucked out of India—the apartments and houses are remarkably similar to those you’d find in large Indian cities. The geography looks just like Arizona, Athens is in a valley surrounded by sloping hills and the drive from the airport was eerily similar to rides home from Sky Harbor. The physical similarities land me at quite literally the midpoint between my two homes. And the parts that don’t look like Arizona or India—the Acropolis, Hadrian’s Library, et cetera—are still connected to me. A lot of it, I’m sure, is because I’ve studied them for so long, but I also feel like I know them.

But Athens, I’ve come to learn, is a city of contradictions. It’s so familiar, yet completely unfamiliar at the same time. The smells are completely unique. The combination of food, people, locale, humidity... it's very unique. The color is a pale yellow, not as bright as I was anticipating. The language barrier isn’t as bad as I anticipated either, because almost everyone knows English. Reading signs, however, is extremely difficult because I can’t read Greek. I don’t know how to pronounce signs when I see them, nor would I be able to identify places on a map if I became lost. The subway system here is fairly straightforward, but not being able to read any of the signs is still a handicap. I’m still getting a feel for the culture here, I’m watching people interact with each other to get a better idea of what it means to be Greek, and the painting is filling itself in slowly.

Oh, and it’s been raining off and on all day, but the weather is fantastic. The light patters of the raindrops against out balcony door sound like applause. I’m sitting in my hotel room, comfortable, warm. After an uncomfortable week at a hostel and hectic week making sure everything (and everyone) was safe, I am at peace. 

I am in Greece, mere kilometers away from the Acropolis, and I am at peace.