Moving To Greece.
Well friends, it’s happening. I’m moving to Greece. It’s been four years in the making, and it’s here.
Towards the end of 2017 I went through another horrendous cycle of depression, anxiety, and career upheaval. This was the third time I had felt completely lost in my life. I felt like a total and utter failure. I knew couldn’t go back to a 9-5 job. I knew I had to start taking better care of my mental and emotional health. I knew enough what I couldn’t do, but I wasn’t sure what I COULD do. I was trapped in a capitalist mindset of basing my personal value on my productivity, and tying my entire self-worth to the quality of the career I had pursued for over a decade. And for the third time, I found myself at the end of this road, broken, lonely, devastated, and with no one to blame but myself. Oof.
It took me a long time to sort through my life, intellectually and emotionally, and find some semblance of a path forward. I started going to acupuncture and doing a specific kind of therapy focused on somatic theory. It was a time of thorough self-reflection, self-realization, and all-around revision of my life as I had known it.
Then came the fall of 2018. My parents offered to pay for my ticket to Greece so that we could celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday together with all of our family in Greece. I jumped at the opportunity, and booked a flight from Philly, a short drive from Baltimore where I was living at the time, to Athens for early September. I packed a carry-on roller bag and a backpack, took my cat to the fanciest cat resort in Baltimore County, and I was on my way.
The first week of the trip we all spent time in my dad’s village surrounded by family and enjoying the pace of life. I remember my allergies knocked me on my ass, and every single aunt brought me her special remedy; one sent dried chamomile and mountain tea from her garden, another took me to her pharmacist to get whatever I needed, and the one I was staying with squeezed fresh oranges for me to drink every morning. I never felt so good being sick. For my dad’s birthday, my mom and I organized a family dinner at a taverna in the center of Tripoli and everyone had a riotously good time.
The second week of my trip I went out on my own. My parents headed for the Cyclades, and I flew from Athens to Crete where I would visit and stay with close friends. I had a couple of days on my own before two friends from the states were coming to visit for a quick four-day trip. Before they arrived, I spent time sitting at the beach, relaxing in the quiet apartment, drinking coffee, and having grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Life seemed to change right here in front of me, like I was so close to something I could feel it but couldn’t see it, I could smell it but not taste it. My perspective shifted; I had been living a life others wanted for me. A life that I thought was mine, but I was playing by someone else’s rules.
And as suddenly as that realization came to me, my friends flew in and I was scooping them up in a little hatchback and we were on our way to the western end of the island. We arrived in the small village where our house rental was, and woke up the whole village trying to park in the narrow, uneven, 45 degree angle driveway. Luckily, we survived and the neighbors forgave us.
I spent the next few days with my friends in this beautiful home in a secluded village. I took them around the island, we found empty beaches for swimming in the sea, we ate and drank all the best things, and generally just spent time together experiencing Greek life outside of the crazy touristy areas. I couldn’t have asked for better people to travel with; we all had the same go-with-the-flow mentality and just wanted to soak up the life we found around us. It was then that I realized I could make a life out of this. I could share Greece with people who wanted to experience something besides windswept sunsets in Santorini or beachside raves in Mykonos. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those. I just knew I wanted more, and I had to figure out how to make it happen.
So I started putting together my thoughts: I don’t want to live a “normal” life. I love connecting with people through experiences. I have a unique perspective as a Greek-American in Greece to share with travelers. I naturally seek out authentic culinary experiences. These are all things I’m really good at and I really enjoy. Why not figure out a way to build a life around that, but focus on living a life first, and having a career second. Granted, in America, this is not really possible for the 99% of us living paycheck-to-paycheck. And even in Greece, where we wouldn’t say there’s a robust economy, normal people don’t live lives of complete leisure. And to be clear, a life of leisure sounds great, but I’m not completely delusional. I have to work to support myself, and there’s not getting out of it. (Unless I marry wealthy, in which case, you’re all invited to the wedding.)
The difference in Greece is their perspective on the “work-life balance” that Americans are so keen on talking about. In Greece, they do more than just talk about it; they live it. Everyone, regardless of economic status, spends time with friends at coffee shops, or goes for walks around their village or city. This is the main way people socialize. They’ll get a coffee for a couple of euros, and sit and chat or walk around for two or three hours. This is the norm, not the exception. They don’t wait for the weekend to enjoy themselves, and tend to spend free time with friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, theyfriends, and relish in going out into the world together. Of course, this was in pre-panna cotta times, when we hadn’t a care in the world. Once the spring of 2020 hit, as you know, everything changed.
So in 2019, I decided to change everything. I left my job as a cafe manager, I gave up my gorgeous Baltimore apartment and packed all of my belongings into two storage pods. I pawned my cat off on my best friend in NYC, and I left for Greece on August 15th for three months, not sure what I was going to find, but knowing I had to start somewhere. As an American, I could only stay in Greece for 90 days without a visa, so I spent exactly 89 days there, then came back to the US. I picked up my cat, spent a week saying goodbye to friends in Baltimore, then flew back to California to see family and attend a celebration for a close friend who had recovered from a serious injury. I planned on staying with my parents for a few months, celebrating the holidays together, and then I would go back to Greece after the New Year.
I knew I had to get proper paperwork in order to stay in Greece longer than 3 months. So I went down the winding road to apply for my Greek citizenship, after all, my father was born in Greece, and by rights I should be granted citizenship. Needless to say, the Greek consulate in the United States works much like the bureaucratic government agencies in Greece, that is to say, not very well or efficiently. I submitted my application for citizenship in January of 2020, then two months later, as you might recall, the whole world shut down, and all my best-laid plans went awry.
But whatever. We don’t need to talk about the last two years and the heartache we’ve been through and devastation we’ve seen and the loss we’ve experienced. We need to talk about 2022, and how we’re going to remind ourselves that we have one life to live, and that every day is an opportunity to live as our most authentic selves. So here we are. Mid-April 2022. I’m writing this on Greek Orthodox Palm Sunday, which happens to also be Western Easter, as well as Passover and Ramadan. It’s a big day, spiritually speaking, and fitting I think to write about these big changes.
I am still waiting for my citizenship papers, unsurprisingly, but I was able to apply for and receive a digital nomad visa. I have sent boxes with my cookbook collection, my cast iron dutch oven, winter clothes, photo albums, and other necessities to Greece on a pallet. I left a suitcase of summer clothes at my uncle’s house in Athens when I was there in 2021. I am packing two more suitcases with the rest of my clothes, the laptop I’m currently typing on, a few bars of natural deodorant, my chef’s knife, and I’m crossing my fingers that my bags come in under the airline weight limit.
On April 30th, I’ll leave the comfort of my parents’ home, my perfect cat, my darling nephew, my sweet brother and his lovely wife, my mom and dad/roommates for the last two years, close friends, and the town I grew up in, and I’ll start fresh, again. I have a lot of hopes for the year to come, not just for me, but for you and the world. You can read about hope - elpida - in another post I wrote a while back. I plan on posting pretty regularly from Greece once I get there, and I do hope you’ll follow along. It’ll nice to have you with me, dear reader, to comfort me in those inevitable times of homesickness, loneliness, and self-doubt, but it’ll be even better when you see the real, new, me, thriving and living.
Feel free to share my website or social media with friends who might enjoy my ramblings, recipes, and Guides to Greece.