Alone in Athens: A Third Culture Kids Journey Back Home
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I have come to Athens on my own.
Not by choice I might add but by the rollicking rollercoaster of life in your forties. My frequent travel companion, former flatmate and all round gorgeous good egg, Serena, was supposed to be with me. Two nights before our flight she calls to tell me her Father has had a bleed on the brain. When he came out of surgery he didn’t know who she was. Whilst he is slowly on the mend she’s not going to make the early morning flight we’ve had booked for five months and planned for a year.
I’m wobbly.
Wobbly that my friend is sad and scared and in a situation that no one ever wants to be in. I’m also wobbly because, although I can easily travel alone, I’m not ready for this. I’m not in the frame of mind that is needed to set off on a solo adventure. I had relaxed into thinking that directions and food choices and experiences were going to be shared. I need to switch my mindset.
I needn’t have worried.
As soon as I step out of the airport I am fine. I’m more than fine actually. I’m home and it makes me very happy.
My upbringing was on a tiny island on the outskirts of the Mediterranean. Feeling the wall of heat hit me in Athens is like a jolt into my childhood. Everything comes flooding back.
Being raised in a culture that is different to where my parents are from, as well as my own nationality, means I am what’s known as a Third Culture Kid. I grew up going to school from 7.30am until 1.30pm. Temperatures were predominantly in their 30s and 40s. Weekends were spent on sandy beaches with clear waters. Evenings on a restaurants patio next to a main road with stray cats and food so fresh it had been caught that morning.
I had forgotten the feeling of nostalgia and calm and safety I feel in a Mediterranean environment. Trundling around Athens on my own is nothing. It’s what I know. Essentially it’s who I am and makes me very happy.
Before I came to Greece everyone asked me ‘Are you going to the Acropolis?’ Yes I replied confidently not really knowing what the Acropolis was. I thought it was the big thing with the columns. Apparently it’s not. That’s the Parthenon…..which is within the grounds of the Acropolis.
There are so many people trying to get up to the Parthe-polis that there’s actually a queue. One where we all shuffle along shoulder to shoulder looking down at our feet trying not to trip. There’s also a lot of scaffolding. I skilfully take lots of photos making out that there aren’t a thousand people with me and the 5th century BC temple I’m looking at isn’t having a make over.
Athens | May 2024
The heat is deliciously pleasant. Not too debilitatingly but enough to make you feel a little sticky. It’s heat that means you’re forced to slow down. It reminds me of Summer days at school. Temperatures not really affecting you at break time but grateful when you get to sit down in a cool, dark classroom.
Down the back of the Acrop-ethnon I wander the winding, colourful streets of Plaka. It’s a natural destination after sight seeing up the hill and has quaint, traditional restaurants full of Americans. Oddly there’s also an abundance of single women. Once I spot my first one I spy them everywhere. No single men but plenty of women. Oh God! Do I look like one of those women? Please no…..
But why do I have such disdain for them? Why do I think they look sad? I’m having a great time, why can’t they be?
Oh no no, I’m not like them because technically I’m ‘at home’. The culture they’re experiencing for the first time is something that is a part of me. It’s tied up in a place I dream of and call home and have ingrained in my memories
Oh so you speak Greek?
Oh dear….I shamefully reply that no. No, I didn’t need to learn the language which is a lazy and disrespectful answer to give but is also the truth. I grew up on an Army base where everyone spoke English. I went to an English speaking school and my tiny island was already a tourist destination meaning most people spoke English.
****
The plan was to explore the Greek Islands for my birthday but the boats ‘hopping’ from island to island take so long and cost so much money we had to reduce the hopping to just two hops.
First hop stop is the island of Naxos and then onto Milos.
Imagining I would be standing at the front of a large sail boat heading to a Mamma Mia style dock I am shocked to see a Dover to Calais type ferry waiting to take me to Naxos. It’s enormous. I walk up the plank, next to the cars and trucks parking in the lower deck, smell the strong whiff of petrol and am reminded that actually I’m not a Third Culture Kid but a greedy Fourth Culture Kid.
My childhood was split between the tiny island of Cyprus and another country that, when I was born there, was also separated by a border ~ Germany. Driving back to England in the holidays meant taking the Dover to Calais ferry in reverse. I have vivid memories of numerous bouts of seasickness brought on by that petrol smell and the rough seas. I’m also reminded of squealing with laughter whilst holding onto hand rails in the toilets as the ferry swung from side to side. Believing my Mother was in on the fun I now know she would have been a very pale shade of green.
The waters are much calmer than The English Channel as we set off to navigate the Cyclades and I go to find my seat. Well….seats plural as although Serena will be joining me soon I am currently still travelling on my own. As with all three ferry journeys I take this holiday, two seats purchased together, for some bizarre reason, are not allocated side by side but one in front of the other. Chatting to who you’re travelling with on a ferry appears to be frowned upon in Greece.
Boy am I grateful for this system right now.
One of my seats is on a row that is completely empty. The other is next to an older Australian couple who have the worst smokers coughs I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Their coughing is so loud and guttural and gross I think each time it erupts they’re going to choke to death.
I promptly take the seat on the empty row.
I listen to their continuous coughing and try to imagine how they operate in life ~ walking up stairs, eating with friends, breathing.
To distract myself I read an article about over tourism in places like Italy and Greece and how we shouldn’t travel in the Summer to these destinations. I justify my trip by the fact that it’s my birthday and legally I’m allowed to do what I want on my birthday.
The Coughers, I decide, should not be allowed out of their house let alone into Europe.
Was coming to Greece a mistake? Why didn’t I go to Slovenia or Albania or anywhere else that isn’t full of the rest of the world? I worry that I’m contributing to the demise of certain places.
I promptly fall asleep after I’ve read the article so I can’t be that worried about it.
I’m abruptly woken by Male Cougher grabbing the back of my chair to hoist himself out of his seat. I fantasise that if he coughs whilst standing over me a huge block of tar will fall out of his mouth and drown me. Similar to one of those oil drenched birds off the coast of South America I’d be flapping around desperate for help.
As I watch him walk away I wonder how he’s still alive.
He comes back fifteen minutes later with two beers. It’s 8.48am.
****
Under the blazing sun as I walk down to the beach near my hotel in Naxos I am once again propelled so swiftly into my childhood.
Treading on dried pine needles and smelling that wintery scent when it’s 25c holds such strong memories for me. Heavily scented pine trees and the delicious fragrant figs hanging nearby remind me of occasions I haven’t thought about in almost twenty years. The emotional attachment to these scents is so evocative it stops me in my tracks. It stops me but it also makes me very happy and calm and safe and grateful to have experienced my childhood in such beautiful surroundings.
I instinctively look around for Sister With Massive Laugh. Had she been with me we would have instantly felt like teenagers again. Thankfully with better eyebrows than the late 90s allowed us.
Having reached the beach I decide where exactly I’m going to park up for the day. I look to my right and come face to face with a penis. Multiple penises actually. Penises and bare asses and tits of every variety on show. I see more penises than I’ve seen all year. One man has not a single tan line and looks like an old leather handbag. His body is the colour of an aged salami…..he also happens to have his salami on show.
As it’s still the early days of Summer my skin is as pale as the sparkling white Naxos marble. I decide not to expose it all just yet and turn to my left where’s there’s one couple, thankfully not fully naked, lying on towels. They’re speaking German and the woman is sunbathing topless.
I mean, could I feel more at home.
Oh so you speak German?
Oh dear….I shamefully, once again, reply that no. No, I didn’t need to learn the language which is now an even lazier and more disrespectful answer to give but once more is the truth. I grew up on an Army base where everyone spoke English. I went to an English speaking school and most Germans speak English pretty well.
Settling down next to my topless cultural compadres I had forgotten that in the Med tops are redundant. Nowhere else have I found the freedom you get from wandering around with your titties bouncing around and no one batting an eyelid. Free the nipple is a movement the Greeks have absolutely no concept of. This is how I grew up and just like the evocative smells, the wall of heat hitting me, the languages surrounding me, taking my bikini top off and lying in the sun is my heritage.
Tanned tits is a tradition I shall pass on to the next generation in my family. You’re welcome, Guys.
Naxos | May 2024
I make my way back to the hotel along the waters edge and think about my nomadic upbringing. I have long believed that my roots are with people as opposed to specific places and I always say I’m not really from anywhere.
But if I was asked to describe what raised me and formed me and draws me back to feeling young again I would say it’s with a specific weather that makes your skin damp and your breathing shallow. It’s with hearing the Greek accent as well as the German language. It’s with loud building work in hot, dusty cities and beautiful chalets in green mountain ranges. With bougainvilla as well as fir trees. With halloumi and stollen. And the most powerful memories of my upbringing come from the smell of figs, pine, jasmine, goats, ouzo, the pink cleaning fluid that every public toilet in the Mediterranian seems to smell of.
Those are the things that I was culturally brought up with and make me feel like I belong somewhere….that and floating in turquoise waters with my tits out waiting for my melasma moustache to kick in.
That’s when I know I’ve come home.
Milos | May 2024
The Contents of My Consumption
~ Reading 📖 ~
Frida Khalo and me: How the artist shaped my life as an amputee by Emily Rapp Black | The Guardian
I was throughly engrossed reading Emily Rapp Blacks account of being an amputee and finding inspiration and solace through Frida’s life and art. I loved the style of her almost blunt writing and the rawness she talks about when it came to her experiences of motherhood. She also went to the same V&A exhibition in 2018 as I did. I vividly remember there being more photos and equipment on display showcasing Frida’s illnesses and disabilities. Similar to Rapp Black I discovered more of the pain Frida endured throughout her life and was intrigued to read how it resonated with Rapp Black.
The great ageing secret society doesn’t want women to know by Hannah Betts | Substack
Journalist Hannah Betts has joined Substack and I loved the freedom in her first piece. As a perimenopausal 53 year old childless woman she describes having a conversation with a Gen Z friend who thinks that being 53 is harder than being 23. A passionate, funny and realistic response about how that is far from the truth made me want to follow her and see what else her writing has to offer.
I used to know Wix and was always in awe of her. One of the funniest women I knew on the comedy circuit. A confident, statuesque creature who I would always gravitate towards in a room. As I got to know her better I saw the confidence was masking scars but never knew how deep they ran. I read her account of a school bully who’d come back into her life with a knot in my stomach. At 44 she’s taking back control and I loved it.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Set in New York so obviously I was hooked from the start! The book follows Cleo and Frank as they initially get married for a visa and then navigate their age difference, their needs and their addictions. Mellors writes characters beautifully and so vividly. Would thoroughly recommend.
Educated had been on my ‘to read’ pile for years and I don’t know what I thought it was going to be about but I was so surprised by it and I couldn’t put it down. Raised as an end of the world fearing Mormon, whos parents didn’t believe in formal education, Westover took herself to college at the age of 17 and defied the odds of where she started out in life. Such an engrossing true story.
This best selling book about a stolen manuscript that June Hayward passes off as her own zips along at such a pace I felt like I was on a treadmill reading it. Was hooked for the first third and then my attention started to wane as it delved a lot into online antics. I guessed the twist early on but it didn’t detract from it being great writing and really enjoyable.
Small things like these by Claire Chambers
A beautiful small, quiet book set in the eighties in Ireland and follows one man in his build up to Christmas. It’s just an afternoons read where nothing is wasted on the page. Would be a great present for a reader.
The cost of living by Deborah Levy
Oh Deborah how I love thee. The second in her trilogy of books about her life as a writer and the period just after the divorce from the father of her children. Her writing is so evocative I felt like I was with her in the new flat she moves into in North London as she cycles around the city.
Happy September Lovers!
Great to be back with you all. It’s been too long but regular scheduling will commence from here on in. Expect opinion pieces, humorous musings and the continuation of my Dating in the Digital Age series.
By becoming a paid subscriber, for a mere £3.50 a month, you’ll get to read my next instalment in two weeks ~ The Dom in Asia.
Hopefully see you all then x