living like a local in Athens

Κάλο μηνα! (That’s Greek for wishing you a good month, which we do at the start of each month (and season, and week, there’s a lot of wishing for the good in Greek.)) April was a whirlwind of a month, with two sets of visitors in town: my parents and then my best friend from the US!

It’s always a thrill to have people visiting me — I get to show the people who I love what my life is really like here every day, unmediated by screens or social media or Hollywood images of what life in Greece is like. I also got to show off the apartment that I finally own, after a painful 2-year period of purchasing it and then a less-painful few months of renovations. “There are NO weird holes anywhere anymore!” I proudly announced to everyone multiple times. It’s true, and it’s glorious, and I’m so glad I did it and also so glad it’s all over and I can just host an Easter feast and drink coffees on my balcony and cook in my beautiful little kitchen.

Since both my best friend and my parents have been here before, we didn’t do any typical touristy things this time around. We lived the real Athenian life — my life — together.

We went to the laiki, my local weekly farmer’s market, and bought the first melon of the season, which was perfect. The guy who grew it cut off thick slices with a little knife in his big hands for us to taste. We went to the bakery on my street, where the lovely woman who runs it exclaimed in joy when I told her the people next to me were my parents and she immediately pressed some Easter cookies on us, and she did the same with strawberry-filled ones a week later with my best friend. We brunched at a chic Pangrati place, and drank spritzes in a tucked-away corner of Koukaki while we munched on little cuts of meats and cheeses when we could flag down the surly waitress. We walked over the broken sidewalks through the faded crosswalks into the insanely vibrant green of the National Garden in late spring and shopped on Ermou and went to Hondos Center, my version of Mecca.

These are all lovely things to do when you’re visiting someone who actually lives here or planning a trip here and want to do something other than stare at the Acropolis (although I do this all the time, I did this last night on a walk home from dinner with friends and the moon was almost full and it was as heavenly as it always is).

I’ll even drop you a few of my favorite recommendations that I took my visitors to, please don’t make me regret this by making them go viral on TikTok:

• Pnyka is my local bakery, it’s family-run and this is their most central location — everything is delicious, they grind their own flours for their breads too! Get a koulouri to eat with your freddo espresso while you stroll for a real Greek breakfast (cigarette optional).

• Drupes has a whole menu of perfect spritzes, and definitely get a meat and cheese platter to go along with them. It’s peaceful in the daytime and quite a scene in the evening. Good coffee too!

• Mavro Provato, which means Black Sheep, is a slightly modern take on the traditional Greek taverna and always, always delicious with great service.

• Ohh Boy is always busy for a reason, and that is all the chic brunching Pangrati residents obsessed with it (it me). Archelaou, the street it’s on, is also great for a post-brunch stroll and shopping.

• Breadman is deeper into Pangrati and on a busy street, but the bread and food are delicious.

• Balcony in Cyclades was where I took my bestie for a romantic dinner and it was lovely and something different! The view from this quiet little corner of Vyronas was insane (you can see past the island of Aegina to the Peloponnese and all of Athens is laid out in front of you), the sunset was gorgeous, and the food was delicious. It’s about a 15 minute cab ride from the center.

But there are less glamorous sides to my actual Greek life too. One night we got home from dinner and my best friend went to wash her new tattoo (we got matching ones, inspired by my favorite ancient Minoan fresco, get yourself a best friend who does not roll her eyes at your ancient obsessions) and ran the water for more than two minutes.

She eventually poked her head around the bathroom door and said, “There’s no hot water!” Oh yes, I explained, since the boiler had been on in the morning and we had both showered and then been out all day and hadn’t turned it back on, there’s just no hot water in the tank. If we want some, I have to flip the switch back on and we got a 10 minute wait ahead of us. I’m so used to this, as it’s really common in Greek homes, that I’d forgotten to explain it.

And yes I’m saving to get a solar-powered water heater that lives on the building roof and delivers me hot water on demand every day that it’s sunny (300+ days a year), which will mostly eliminate that waiting issue, but otherwise it’s just a fact of life for most people here, including me. That’s living like a real Athenian. The only time it’s particularly agonizing, once you’ve adjusted, is when you’re fresh off a 10 hour flight from the US in the winter and dying to scrub the plane off your tired body and you have to wait at least 20 minutes in your disgusting state while your ice-cold boiler struggles to heat up enough water for a satisfying shower.

These are interesting experiences to have as my friend in town for a few days, but they’re essential ones if you are even considering living here for more than a month. Sure, you can avoid this if you’re renting a very high-end apartment or house, but that’s not the typical living experience here.

Will it drive you insane to wait those 20 minutes every morning when you need a hot shower? Will not having access to every imaginable kind of produce year-round prove to be an interesting experiment or something super frustrating? Can you live in a country where Amazon does not exist? Can you adjust your life to the way shops here do not open on Sundays (yep, including grocery stores), and holidays (they’re all closed today), and small ones often have siesta hours so they close early on Wednesday and Saturdays? Or all the strikes — everything is on strike today as well, as it always is here on May 1 for Labor Day. Would you survive a ride in my elevator? (It is actually much safer than it used to be lol.)

These are all very small things when you read about them, and perhaps you are thinking that only pampered, excessively comfortable Americans would consider not being able to buy fresh strawberries in October and having a whole day every week with no shops open a deal-breaker. But while yes, America is an excessively comfortable place that worships at the altar of convenience, it is also what we are used to when we live there. It’s a big adjustment, if also in many ways a healthy one, to live in a very different way.

Greece has its own particular comforts and conveniences, of course. Coffee is very good and very strong and literally everywhere, and my best friend is now fully addicted to the joy that is freddo cappuccino. Bakeries are on almost every corner, fresh and delicious and there when you neeed a little snack (there are even 24-hour ones for the late nights and early mornings). I can walk into a shop and talk to a person and walk out of the shop with what I need, unlike in the US where the physical retail landscape is dying because of online shopping. And those 300+ days of sunshine…

But what is charming on vacation can turn into a constant irritation if you want to live here. So be sure to try before you buy and see what you can and cannot live without. For me, I will trade 24/7/365 access to freddo cappuccinos for shorter showers with a preheating time needed, no question. I highly suggest doing a trial run here for a few months if you’re thinking about making the move too!

on options for moving to Greece

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Jan 30

So, you want to move to Greece. You are imagining eating gyros every day and drinking crisp white wines on a balcony as the sun sets on a perfect summer night. Fortunately this is my life (although there’s tradeoffs, as I often discuss — wine is cheap, flushing your toilet paper is impossible, life is complicated). The gyros are indeed incredible, as ar…