Μέσα απ'τα φώτα αυτής της πόλης που σκοτώνει για λεφτά...

[demetrelli]

Finally I'm back in Athens and hopefully for good this time because going back and forth between Athens and Mytilene has started to get tiring this summer lol. It's surprising how I really miss it, despite the awful afternoon heat and the endless times waiting for the bus to go home. Especially now it is just full of tourists and I love it! So many different people and different languages =) It is not as pretty as any other European city because it doesn't have the 18th century renovated buildings like Paris or Vienna, however I have found the most interesting and beautiful places with just a little bit of search and wandering lol. And I would never exchange it to go study in any other Greek city, ew. Even my sister claims to get agoraphobia among so many strangers, prefering to be in a cafe with familiar faces. For me being among strangers is safety and peacefulness because I don't have to greet people I don't like or give account to anyone for what I'm doing. Which is the norm in Mytilene.My dad complained from the first day about the hustle and bustle of the traffic, but then again so does everyone else. If you ask most Atheneans they'll tell you they don't like living here and would rather be on an island all year long (which is not so ideal, I can assure you), that it is a dirty and expensive city but in the end it's up to us to make it better, isn't it? I just hate it when older adults usually complain about it not being clean yet it's them that put out their cigarettes on pavements and streets or just litter public places in general. And when local organisations try to do something good like prevent another free space from becoming a mall and try to turn it into a park instead, they are called anarchists or whatever and usually are met with police force lol. Which shows that at least some people here care and it's mostly young people. Anyways, to finish my rant all I mean to say is that things like that make me want to stay in Athens. Because it's a living city with festivals and happenings and culture and activisms, not an industrial copy =)

And these are inhabitants of Athens that never go away even in summer! Overweight pigeons <3