choosing Athens as my home, again and again

Athens is not an easy place to live. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, or been here for more than a week, you know this. It’s not a nice, tidy Western European country with bike lanes and walkable sidewalks and wide, tree-lined boulevards. It’s so much more insane than that.

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This past week alone, the taxis were on strike (they have been on strike off and on again for months now). The winter winds blew in dust from the Sahara desert that covered the sky, and then it rained so there was literally mud rain for a few days and the whole city was coated in it, and Athens is not the cleanest place to begin with. The skies were grey for a full week, combining with the grey of the overbuilt concrete density of the city center so everything was just one big wash of grey and mud. I had to wait longer than usual for my water boiler to heat up after I switched it on in the mornings because of the cold, and then I have to remember to switch it off again once it’s hot (I miss the endless wasteful hot water of American showers). I had to go to IKEA and had to walk 20+ minutes each way from the metro to the store because the bus that runs that route never came, and part of it is a somewhat dodgy walk. The power to the whole block randomly went out at 11pm one night, for absolutely no reason, for more than 20 minutes, and the water at my co-working space also randomly went out for more than an hour.

Athens is not a very convenient or comfortable or organized place to live, these days or any days really. It’s covered in graffiti and crumbling buildings and too many cars and infrastruture that’s still suffering from the neglect of the days of the financial crisis.

But even so, just beneath the surface, this city is incredibly compelling. Sometimes I find it hard to explain (“why do you live… here?!” is a question I’ve been asked too many times to count), but since I am literally a professional writer, let’s give it a shot today.

Wednesday was a holiday here, celebrating the anniversary of Greece’s independence from the Ottoman empire. There were fighter jets roaring overhead and cannons firing and parades and the tavernas were filled with families eating cod and skordalia. I worked in the morning from home (I am still American, after all, and so are my clients) but in the afternoon I drank a coffee and took myself for one of the long, rambling walks I love on quiet days.

As I tripped over the narrow, broken sidewalks of Pangrati into Vyronas, the traffic lightened and I aimed for the mountain that looms over our side of the city, Ymittos, without a clear plan in mind. It was more of a ramble than I intended, but the holiday spirit was infecting me too. I walked through neighborhoods I hadn’t seen before because there’s always something new to see in Athens, even in your own backyard. The bitter orange trees that line the streets are blooming now, and their blossoms smell like neroli and the streets are wildly fragrant with every breath of wind. Between the old cars with their bumpers duct-taped together parked on the sidewalks, the street cats trotted around like they were late for a meeting (even on a holiday! It’s hard work to be so cute). I spotted the tall, tall trees of the Ilisian Grove peeking over the buildings after 20 minutes and detoured in to explore another part of this huge, peaceful park.

I ambled home after a while, on a quiet side street in the shadow of the mountain. I could hear the Greek flags flapping in the strong March wind against the blue sky. When I arrived, I went out to my balcony and checked on all my plants including one my next-door neighbor gave me a week ago, because hers are huge and she knows I love plants like she does. I could see my olive tree coming back to life in its clay pot, my aloe exploding as the sun gets stronger, the pomegranate tree in the courtyard between the buildings on our block starting to leaf out.

As night fell, I went out again to the balcony and saw the lights of my neighbors on too, tucked inside against the cold spring wind. Our homes are packed together tightly, layers of 6-story apartment buildings wedged in cheek by jowl, window looking onto window and balcony facing balcony. Privacy is rare and I shudder to think of how many people can hear me singing along to Phoebe Bridgers in the shower, but the sense of being close to so many other people all going about their lives just like me even as I enjoy the apartment that is all mine, all the time, means I never feel lonely.

I climbed into my bed finally and finished my latest book: The Bull From the Sea, the second part of Mary Renault’s historical fiction series about the ancient Greek hero Theseus, king of Attica. (It’s for sure going on my list of my favorite books about Greece.)

The places he lived and reigned look different now, covered by all that concrete and urban sprawl and car exhaust and nail salons and trendy cafes. But the feeling of Athens — the view of the Acropolis shining out from a corner where you weren’t looking for it, the peculiar and particular sunlight we have here that turns the surrounding hills pink and gold at sunset, the ancient sacred mountains that tower above the flat plain of the city center, the view to the shimmering sea you can get if you know which steep streets to climb up in any neighborhood, the swallows that swoop back in every spring as they’ve done for thousands of years, the olive trees with their silvery leaves shining in the sunny groves on the Acropolis slopes and in the narrow modern streets — that does not fade, has not faded, changes all the time even in ancient times but still remains essentially itself somehow through wars and kings and societal collapses and fire and flood and the wear and tear of the relentless passing of weather and of time.

And that, in a few words, in just one day here, is why I live here. Why it’s home, and not just a place to live.

When you’re thinking of moving abroad, lots of well-meaning and well-informed people will tell you you should look closely at all the practical realities of a life in a new place: taxes, transit, traffic, if you can put your toilet paper in the toilet. And they’re correct.

But it’s also not the entire story of how you will live in that place either. The feeling you have when your flight starts descending into the airport of your new home, the feeling when you arrive in your neighborhood, when you get out of it briefly to explore something new, when you walk into your home — these all actually matter just as much. That feeling will get you through those days when you’re deeply sad and you have to go to IKEA and the bus never comes and the metro is too full and the skies are grey, grey, grey. You’ll have those days anywhere, so you have to choose the home that makes them all worth it.

For me, that home is Athens. I hope you find yours too.