Fresh fish… and frustration!

So I’ve been here almost a week now, which seems utterly impossible but I suppose it’s one of those things you can’t argue with: time flies. Overall it’s been really wonderful, everyone I know here has been so welcoming and taken me out and shown me round a bit and stuff and it has made for a few fairly surreal moments already. Some of my favourite things have been – discovering Gazi, the ‘up-and-coming’ neighbourhood that surrounds the old gas works. I met some friends for a coffee there on the square and loved the studenty, fun vibe around the place. The bars and caffes are all really individual little places, the one we went to had an olive tree growing in the middle of it and a generally pretty cool decor. I know I need to start getting my camera out around here because I have no illustrations, and that’s especially a shame when it comes to the meat and fish market by Omonia that my cousin took me to on saturday. It’s amaazing! There’s just piles and piles of the freshest looking fish, squid, shellfish, eels, rays and octopuses you’ve ever seen on one side of the huge market space, while on the other side whole lambs and rabbits and pigs hang from hooks in various states of chopped-up-ness. As well as huge knotted bunches of intestines and tripe… Fascinating just to look at, as well as the fact that (except maybe for the guts and innards) it makes you so hungry, thinking of all the amazing potential dishes you’re seeing. Vegetarians/vegans probably hate me right now. Honestly I am trying to cut down on my meat consumption – I’ve given up red meat entirely for lent, for example. Fish, on the other hand I don’t think I could cut down on, not in this country! I’ll head back there soon and get some pictures, anyway I’ll be shopping there once I find myself my own place – it’s a tenth of the price of the supermarkets, as well as being fresher.

Which reminds me that I have to make a call to see about visiting a potential flat-share today. I’ve found a place on Craigslist sharing with two girls that sounds very promising… My cousin is the perfect host in every way, but I’m keen to get somewhere I can actually call home and unpack in and cook my own meals and such like.

More interestingly, certainly, my impressions of the Greeks continue to be almost entirely very good. Apart from their warmth they are such a  good-looking people! I am already harbouring three crushes! As usual, of course, none of them have a huge amount of potential: number 1 took me out with his girlfriend on Friday night, number 2 is a girl who is almost 100% sure to be straight and the third is, I suppose a slightly more likely option, but a good few years older than me and, as they say, in a different ‘place’. All this on top of the whole drama surrounding Justin-the-non-boyfriend (as my cousin has so hilariously titled him), who is all the way back in London but who may just have kept my heart back there with him.

Athina

OK, I’m here. Athens. And as I seem to say a lot these days, it’s another first day of the rest of my life.

Only this time it seems much more true. My new lifetime: the Greek one. I wondered when I left South America about why we do this, so many of us. We go off to some random part of the world (for me it’s been Spain and Argentina up ’till now), and we settle in and get a job and a place to stay and we make all these new friends and slowly settle in and get used to being there. I’d say that takes about 3 months, after that you really believe it, you feel at home and that place just becomes a part of how you live, that shower is where you shower every morning, that tube is the one you take to work, the streets of that town are the streets you walk on… And then you give it a few more months and you up and leave again.

People asked me, when I was in South America, why? I’d never been asked to give a reason for this before, for my urge to keep moving, to know new places but never for too long, to make friends only to move away from them. So I had to think about it, and I guess to me it always seemed so obvious. It’s not only, to use another tired cliché, that you shouldn’t cry when things are over but smile because they happened, it’s also a chance to see something of yourself that you didn’t know. A chance to get a snapshot of what your life might possibly have been like in some completely other place. It’s comforting in some ways. I know that when I was all the way out there, one of the most important things I learnt was that me and the boy I’d been with through uni weren’t just together because we happened to meet in halls and have a lot of things in common due to our circumstances, and we hadn’t just stayed together because it was comfortable and easy and convenient. I could be on the other side of the world and he was still the best person I knew. It shows you what you value, it teaches you that you CAN do it, you can make new friends, build a whole new life, there’s a million reasons why!

And trust me, when you set up a whole new life somewhere for yourself, six months really can feel like a whole lifetime. So here is my new lifetime, a completely different one, based in Greece this time. I’m so excited, but not too nervous, I know Greece, it’s not like when I headed off to a new continent, a new hemisphere! The difference of course being that my Spanish is pretty good but have you ever tried to speak Greek?? I really have to get some classes! So there’s what I have to do today: find out about some Greek classes somewhere nice and central and hopefully with lots of other young people so as to get to know a few; Arrange a meeting with the guy who’s helping me sort out my job at the museum; and then get up off the blow up mattress in my cousin’s living room that is currently my sleeping quarters and go take a stroll and see if I randomly stumble upon the ideal place for me to stay.

New Blog

It’s quarter to seven and I have to be up in an hour and a half, my sleep cycle is definitely messed up for good.
Once again it is the very first day of the rest of my life and the mad diet/excercise plan begins a-new. Totally happening for real this time. I have, I don’t know, about 3 weeks left in lovely, freezing London? I am not keeping this extra half stone that I’ve managed to accumulate that long. No sir, it is time to get ridiculously spartan on myself and actually join the damn gym. I’ve just got back you see, only a week ago from living in a beautiful, mental, South American city for the past 6 months and have been used to a gym and generally excercise of any kind free lifestyle, I ate too much there and I drink too much wherever I am. Headed to my nan’s house today, though, to catch up after the long trip, so I’m screwed before I’ve even started. Excelent. Plan to get back by, say, 5.30 and go at least join up and book myself in for a few classes. I should probably get one of those ‘induction sessions’ as well instead of just doing my own (minimally strenuous) thing as usual.
There’s definitely someone creeping around outside my room, who’s even up at this time?? Probably Michelle, my mum’s friend who’s staying so as to be closer to her daughter who is unfortunately one of the too many people I know who have gone too far with the drugs this last year. I guess more on that whole situation another time, for now I’m going to try to get another hour or so’s sleep before the cold walk to waterloo station that awaits me.
Havn’t worked out some cool way to sign off yet. Bye.