Ode to Athens
Ode to the city that saw me start my year and accompanied me at the end of it. Many people do reviews to close the year. To have a feeling of freshness, of starting from scratch with new purposes and objectives. Athens did that for me last year.
A city is just a collection of people who live in an area. They create an aura. An atmosphere that breathes a certain energy. I imagine it like round little particles that float around the air. When you are living in that place, you get a bite from those particles. It is like a very big cloud formed by connections between little bubbles. You get to live your own version of that. Grabbing some of those bubbles. Partially choosing how you live there, partially the city and the energy of its people choosing for you.
When I first arrived to Athens on January 6th of 2024, a man from the area where I am from in Spain welcomed me with a pretty energy. He showed me around the apartment. He had been living for years in Greece. He told me that the whole building was like a family, that pretty much everyone could speak Spanish and that the doors were open. It felt warm to receive his lovely words. He was proud of being Basque. He had a revolutionary aura of those who want to change the world to be a better place. The toughness of those who migrate needing to make their way in a foreign country, ending up in a place where you are an individual from both places and at the same time from neither of them.
It felt like a breeze of fresh air to spend some days on my own after the common effect that my hometown has in me of shaking my foundations and leaving me feeling uneasy. As if you are turning in circles very fast and need some time to recover afterwards, to stabilize your reality.
One week after, the person who I thought back then was the love of my life, landed in Athens. Or maybe something inside of me knew that we were not meant to share a project of life all along but I kept trying to lie to myself.
Some people come to your life to teach you many things. Their role isn’t to stay. It is to pass by like a breeze that enters your house when you open two windows. It surrounds you. You feel it. It has an impact in you. And then it leaves. You close the windows. The person has entered your soul for good and you choose how to place that in your inner world.
After a month in the neighbourhood of Plato's Academy surrounded by cats and motor shops, Athens welcomed us in a gorgeous apartment. It was way colder than the first one, the heater was broken. I sometimes felt that I was walking around like an ice cube with a heating system that warmed me up in the moment but the walls wouldn’t hold the heat. Growing up in a cold place and living in Germany for one third of my life, I had made a romantic idea in my mind that the Mediterranean areas were never cold. Well, I was wrong.
All the coldness from the house, was counterbalanced by the feeling of home I felt there. The girl that was renting out the place for us had decorated the house with attention to the detail. There was a lot of light coming through every window. The views were astonishing. Even though it was February, the big terrace filled up my energy from the outside and from the inside with its strong constant Greek sun.
The neighbourhood, Vironas, had a different local vibe. Access to meat or fish without talking to a human being wasn’t really possible, so we started going to markets and butchers communicating with my limited Greek skills. My partner was doing a huge exercise of patience to accompany me to the markets which he hated because of the amount of people and the noise. I guess he saw the excitement in my eyes every time and that gave him enough energy to come with me.
Laiki means farmer’s market. Athens is filled up with them. They appear in streets, with its characteristic orange and green tents that get filled with fruits, vegetables and fresh Mediterranean food. People yell prices, trying to get people’s attention. Sometimes there’s music. The merchants gift you warm smiles.
That apartment saw me read in French a novel that made me travel to another reality, The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas (Le Bal des Folles in français). I was getting more strength to share my emotions by the day. To observe them and let them in, not blocking the hard ones to navigate which were behind a wall I had built for myself. This whole deconstruction of my persona and building it brick by brick was fast forwarded thanks to my 15 therapy sessions with my lovely therapist Sandra. She saw me open the doors of the dwell that I was holding inside and how I was advancing in big steps directing light to all the dark corners that were long forgotten inside but I was dragging everywhere.
Little did I know how all that process was going to transform me. How I built up the courage to leave a relationship where we were drowning since almost day one. How her lessons live in me. They help me navigate through life at times. Other voices in my mind come to the rescue when life gets tough and the inner dialogue and stories we tell ourselves blur the mind.
I spent two months in Athens where I barely saw Abed, one of my closest friends there. The last time I saw him during those two months, I cried, not even understanding how it was the second time in my life that I ended in that deep loss of myself when dating a person. How can it be if I consider myself a strong person.
The last couple of days in Athens were intense. I said a final goodbye to my partner. This time for good. That relationship felt more miserable than coming together as a team, that’s not how love looks like. I spent time with friends, healing my broken soul. And I went around with a sense of gratitude and a slow trust on myself that was placed on a turned off stove before but started to pick up heat now.
Arriving to Germany, my ex rock band came to pick me up from the airport. Chicks Rule in the house. It was the best welcome I could have. And with hugs and laughs, the stove kept warming up.
Little did I know, that five months later I was going to come back to my chaotic sunny Athens.
It all started with an innocent call from Abed. With his constant river of excitement for life, he convinced me to work from the office of the coding school where he was. It was going to be like a camp with awesome energy. That was the pitch.
That’s how I ended up landing in Athens at the end of August. Without realizing, that city was seeing me grow.
When I was living in Germany, there was a Greek team in the company where I was working. That’s where I met Abed. We became very good friends and I occasionally was visiting him in Athens. Abed showed me his world with his integrative nature. As if he was opening the curtain from a stage and telling me “see, this is the cool show we have here, come and join”. If you ask me where I was in every visit, I have no idea most of the time. I just remember long nights talking with friends. Walking non stop. Going around. Sitting in the back of a motorcycle and feeling the fresh air in my face. Seeing the Acropolis unexpectedly every now and then, reminding me that I was in Athens and that there were many years of ancient history the city had seen.
That early August morning after getting off the plane, I headed to my apartment. I remember writing in the bus, connecting the dots, feeling happy for feeling a bit of a sense of home. Remembering memories that were kept in the city aura. The landlord welcomed me in the most Greek style one can get, coming 40 minutes late even though we had discussed multiple times my arrival time, and with a big warm smile.
In that apartment where everything was broken, I met Emna. She gave me a lot of light in my life and more life lessons that she even realizes. We talked in French and I was surprised that after not using it for a long time, it was not rusty like an old metal piece. I was surprised how the conversation was always flowing so easily. We discovered life through each other. She made me laugh non stop. She inspired me. And she made me gain trust again in housemates and friendships.
The office was very fun. I realized how much I was missing working with people, with human beings. My two work colleagues, Abed and Ion, filled my daily life with joy and craziness.
It seemed unreal that the same Athens that saw me at the beginning of the year was the same one seeing me a few months later. With a very different energy, with a different relationship with myself. It was interesting how the same person can be in the same city and have a completely different reality.
Kipselis was my new neighbourhood. I loved having the park so close to my new home and going there often to liberate the knots that get tangled silently inside. The gym was also nearby and I enjoyed lifting weights to disconnect and connect. To see how I was improving day by day. It was beautiful to be able to communicate with the man from the coffee place down from my apartment in the unknown language of those who don’t share a common one. His name is Christos, he told me that the mother of his son had passed away. That his son had won many medals from swimming. That he was having a hard time with the loss of his mother. That he was giving swimming lessons nearby. His eyes filled with excitement as a proud father. Transmitting the pain through his eyes from his grieving son.
I loved taking the bus. Jumping in the river of life through the metro sharing that space with strangers. Seeing some people make the cross sign when passing by a church. Dancing in the car with Abed on the way to work. I had never thought I was going to enjoy my commute that much.
At the coding school, I felt like hugging everyone all the time. Just thinking about it fills me up with energy and is like my soul gets a bright shining sunlight even in a cloudy day. Every student was special in their own way. They all came with different stories. They were truly welcoming since the moment I entered the campus. Whenever I was there, they were switching to English. It didn’t matter. We were there to code, build projects, talk about tech and have fun.
I remember reading, writing and playing the ukelele in the balcony of my apartment. Once some neighbours even clapped after I finished a song, I guess they liked the performance. Walking around my neighbourhood, discovering different corners of the city. People in Greece have a special light. Some of them don’t realize because they are busy getting angry at other drivers in the craziness of the traffic. Athens felt like a hug.
After a few weeks, it was decided that I was going to stay at the coding school more time. Why leave when I had finally found a place where I felt like staying. Plus I didn’t have a need for visas with a deadline yelling in the back of my mind.
Life had other plans for me. I ended up in a hospital bed for a week where I couldn’t get up without the help of someone else. I went back to Spain till I could have a more independent life. My parents took care of me all along and I can't imagine how it would have been in the hospital without them.
After some weeks, at the beginning of November, I went back to the Hellenic peninsula. This time I started my Greek trip from the north to visit my brother who was living in Kozani for a few weeks. Even though some weeks had passed since the operation, I still had pain when walking down the sloping streets of that mountainy town.
After a week where I even saw the snow in the north, Athens welcomed me back. Kalimera lovely home. Emna and I had to leave our Kipselis apartment, it was going to be the new home for Erasmus students and we were not vibing at the same frequency than them anyway. I was lucky enough to rent a free room in the apartment where Emna was living, so I had a new place where I could call home.
My new neighbourhood was Exarchia, the anarchist headquarter. I loved the local vibe of some places there. It had a very vibrant energy with many bars, restaurants and people chatting in the streets.
Abed and Ion went on a trip and never came back to work at the school. The place was still shining with the light from all the students who were building programming projects. The energy was like drinking fresh water after a long walk. I went from having the school as a side business to leading the place. A new person joined the team, he was going to be the new person running the program. His name is John and he went from work colleague, to friend, to close friend.
Athens helped me realize that even though I spend a lot of time in front of the screen because of my work and some of my hobbies, genuine connections are some of the biggest gems of life.
My brother came to visit for a weekend with some of his work colleagues. They kept making jokes till my stomach was hurting because of laughing that hard.
At the end of my stay, my brother came again for a few days before going back for Christmas. My last days were intense. I was closing things at the coding school. We had a graduation party. We went around Athens, spent time with friends and said goodbye.
I flew back to Spain for Christmas with my brother for the first time in my life. With some of his work colleagues as well. We had again an awesome time. It felt special.
Thank you Athens. Efcharistó poli. I can only feel grateful for all the tough moments, for all the lessons and all the laughs.
You are the place were I gave friendship a bigger space in my life. You gave me trust. There are so many different memories I have lived in your streets, for the good and for the bad, that you have become a part of my soul.
Have a good week.
I love you very much world,
Julia