Greece was absolutely amazing!!! (I'm sure I don't have to tell you that though since everybody who goes there falls in love with it, but still!) I spent a week there and met some really chill people and ate some really dank food and had the first taste of what it is like to travel alone- aka incredible...
athens
When I arrived in Athens, it was really late at night and I was feeling very nervous. I was holding my bag very close to my chest and had 10 different screenshots of directions on how to get to my hostel. (I didn't have wifi and really, really didn't want to get lost.) But even when I arrived and climbed up into my bunk bed, I was still feeling anxious.
I knew that people make friends in hostels all the time, but I wasn't sure if I could be one of those people. For most of my life, I have been very comfortable and confident doing things by myself and for myself-- a likely result of my only-child upbringing. I knew I would be totally fine figuring out where to go and when to leave and what to do and I knew I would be totally fine doing them alone. But I also knew that sharing these new and exciting experiences with others would be all the more sweeter.
So I woke up on my first morning in Athens, put on my pre-planned first day of traveling outfit, and headed downstairs for the free breakfast. I quietly filled my plate with the best tomatoes I've ever eaten and some pretty decent by comparison cucumbers all while keeping my eyes down. I made myself a cup of instant coffee and worked up a little courage to make a sarcastic remark about it's decadent, robust aroma to an innocent tea-drinker standing next to me. And with my hands full of both food and drink, I began to freak out about where I should sit.
My mind started to enter its crazy, clinging, chaotic blackhole where it wants to consider all possible options and future scenarios and potential maneuvers in which I embarrass myself and never recover. I felt this mind avalanche starting to churn and quickly, on an almost auto-pilot setting, directed myself over to a calm-looking girl also apparently by herself. I sat down, started eating, and didn't make eye contact. Instead, I jolted to my escape hatch: my phone. It took about ten minutes of silence and scrolling through Instagram to realize that this wasn't the experience I wanted to have, that this fear and anxiety wasn't what I was seeking.
I lifted my head, set down my phone, and made the same not-so-witty remark about the instant coffee and she laughed. We went on to do a half-day tour together, meeting a couple of other people who were also very down to make friends and spent the rest of our time in Athens exploring the city and playing American style drinking games on the hostel rooftop bar and trading stories about our various adventures.
This is so cliche it almost hurts to type it out, especially on a public platform, but wow I was so proud of myself that night. It only took one day and one small, poorly thought out comment to blast me miles outside of my comfort zone and actually really enjoy it. It set the tone and my mind space for the rest of my travels to take the first step, even if its just a small baby step, and put yourself out there. (I warned you of the tragic clicheness!)
Before I left a lot of people told me that Athens wasn't worth the trip and to that I completely disagree, although I'm not sure what I would have done there for more than two days... I hit all of the touristy historical sites on the first day- in part due to a very efficient tour the hostel ran in the morning, in part due to the fact that you kinda just go to the site and see it and take a photo and that's it.
The Acropolis and the Agora and most of the other historical sites were obviously breathtaking and totally worth braving the heat to experience. With each site we visited, I imagined the overwhelming devotion of thousands of humans thousands of years before me who felt so strongly compelled to put so much care and energy and effort into these spiritual and community centers. The grandeur of the stones and the structures coupled with the intricacies of the embellishments and designs let me experience the passion and sweat and livelihoods of so many people before me.
And the modern parts of Athens are filled with just as much culture! On my second day, I sought out the more human side of the city where I could experience what Athens was like today. This led me to an underground (literally and figuratively) record store, a market of cheap fruits and friendly people, and the anarchist neighborhood of Exarcheia. The streets were smaller and dirtier and the walls were more colorful, coated with artistic and political graffiti. I stopped in a park to get lunch among several other young people, some chilling with their friends on a bench and some screaming some chaos in Greek to anyone who would give them eye contact.
One of the most intriguing parts about Athens is how these ancient ruins are so intertwined and intermingled with modern life. The most famous ruins and political centers sit next to homes, grocery stores, churches, and office buildings. Pretty much everywhere you go in Athens, a decent view of the Acropolis is nearby, allowing the legacies of Greek history to overlook and remind the blooms of Greek modernity.
ios
I went to Ios with the sole intention of partying. I saw the videos online of people getting hammered in the sun by the water with thousands of other people with huge smiles on their faces. I was really ready to get down and have a crazy time- plus it was cheap so I figured, why not?
Little did I know that these raging videos were taken during peak season (about a couple weeks before I got there) and that pretty much everything on the island was either closed or preparing to close. The self-declared party hostel I was staying at was basically empty and the club onsite was shut down for repairs to accommodate next year's travelers. The restaurants and clubs in Chora, which in its glory days is bustling with people drunk enough to pay to get slapped in the face, were hollowed out.
So instead of being 1 of thousands of other party-goers, I was 1 of maybe a hundred. I became very good friends with my bungalow-mate, a very chill and sarcastic gal from Melbourne, and together we made several other friends from around the world. We drank beers and screwdrivers in a giant rainbow inflatable unicorn and all played 'most likely' even though we had only known each other for a few hours.
It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was better. I had the opportunity to meet and connect with 6 or 7 different people of different ages from different places, and still managed to drink quite a bit too. While the raging party scene would have been fun, I wouldn't have been able to talk as much about the meaning of life and aliens in outer space without the laidback vibes the island carried.
santorini
After long nights of drinking and longer days of sightseeing in the hot sun, I arrived in Santorini both drained from the lack of sleep and exhilarated from my cafe freddo addiction- which by no means is as good as Dunkin coffee, but it was quite close.
But after few days, which actually felt more like a few months, of traveling by myself and constantly meeting new people, meeting back up with my friends from before, from TAU, felt really odd. My heart was swollen with confidence and my clothes were stained with dozens of stories from the places I visited with the people I met. I already felt like a different person than the person I was when I left.
All the sudden, I was back where I was a week before: a part of a group, making group decisions of where to eat, how much alcohol to buy, and how to spend the day. The strong independence that I'd cultivated felt suppressed. The groundedness and love from them seemed mutually exclusive to the growth under pressure that I craved.
Of course, on the second day I learned that this was not the case and that their compassion and companionship was simply a different path to growth. Together, we trekked down the long and winding and slippery donkey trail from the cliffs of Oia to the shores of Amoudi Bay. When we finally reached the bottom, about an hour later, we were greeted by the smell of donkey poop and the sound of the water rocking fishing boats and slamming into the black rock underneath us. After squeezing our way through fancy restaurants and engagement lunches, we came to a dirt hiking 'trail' that wrapped around the edge of the island, cutting through tide pools and thrilling us with the faint, but very real, possibility of falling off of the edge.
As we rounded the corner, we saw a large boulder cast in a golden aura from the coming sunset. It was right off of the coast surrounded by this insanely blue water and these insanely blue skies and swarming with a couple of insane people who wanted to jump off of it. We were some of these insane people.
My friends and I stripped out of our fancy "I'm on a Greek island" rompers and jumped in the water. And holy heck, you could see so far down below you- your tiny little toes dancing and hovering what looked like miles above the rocky bottom. It was so beautiful and a little cold and I couldn't help but have the dopiest-looking smile on my face the entire time.
We scaled the side of the boulder to reach a few other adrenaline seekers ready to jump. And even though I never did something like this before, I ran and flung my body over the edge and deep into the water which cradled me back up to the surface. I had so much energy and spirit and life flowing through me- I was absolutely elated to do something that made me so uncomfortable and freaked out. And the best part was that I got to experience it with my friends.
We all got to jump and be uncomfortable and have really, really big smiles together.
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