Sorry for my silence on the blogosphere lately. I'm currently out of Greece in the UK, leaving just as the rainy weather in Athens was due to end and landing myself in the middle of gray skies and sad faces.
I held up okay until yesterday when the cemented-over skies plunged me into acute melancholy. At least the weather is better today and I am spending time with my family which I never get to do often enough.
In the last month I finally feel like I passed the biggest hurdles in living in Greece. So that took me pretty much one year to get past the tears, tantrums, doubts and hysterics. Athens now feels like home, and I feel I have come back to something closer to what I grew up with.
A lot of times when something about Athens was getting on my nerves I'd say "I don't understand, Greece is in the EU, why is XYZ like this?" until a friend said: "Bollybutton, you have to remember that Greece may be in the EU but it isn't really European. It's more towards the East in location and mentality"
I hope for my own sake that I really am past the hardest bits now. Settling in a new country takes a lot of energy which I'd rather spend writing my future best-selling novel.
This trip to the UK completely snuck up on me, and so on the night before I left Mr Zeus and me could be found in a local taverna moaning about my ogre-sized carbon footprint and how we didn't manage to buy a galaktoboureko for my family to try.
Well I won't let a small thing like that stop me. If you want to make a Greek custard pie (galaktoboureko) here is the recipe I used to impress my family.
2 comments:
can relate to complete.. I completed a year and couple of months. and I too was living in london before moving in here. so every couple of month, used to do touch back trip.. meeting friends, eating curries, and recharge energy levels...
but then.. athens just grows on you. sunny beach, day trip to islands, cheap taxis, all night out cafes/club,..making friends/contact to share time is very difficult once thatz done, its very nice here.
if you start to share your bad experiences with your foreign friends and laugh about it.. then you know, you will be here longtime.
/Yuva
As a Greek living abroad, I really admire u for choosing to live there. But it's good u found ur way around their (our) orientalism :)
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