Greece was my first stop on the 10-week trip through Europe and North Africa I recently completed. I boarded my Athens-bound jet at Newark International Airport at the end of August, when panic over the country’s precarious economic situation topped headlines all around the globe.
Of course, I tend to trust my own intuition far more than I do the international media, a rule-of-thumb that would serve me well from the moment I arrived in central Athens. Signs of the so-called “financial collapse” in Greece were far fewer in number than all of the timeless beauty I encountered traveling through the birthplace of Western civilization.
Of course, this isn’t to say that everything was peaches as cream. Indeed, conspicuous reminders of brewing social unrest appeared throughout Athens, particularly in the form of graffiti, usually scrawled in stark, black uppercase letters — and predominately in English. What was interesting to me is that in spite of this, the majority of Greek people I encountered were apathetic about the crisis and exactly zero of them were rioting or protesting in any way when I was there. Most were calm and sensible when I asked them their opinions about the future. While it would be nice to remain as part of the Eurozone and be able to use the Euro, one man in a bar told me, it wouldn’t be the end of the world to return to the drachma (the currency Greece used before joining the Eurozone in 2002), at least for domestic use.
My favorite characteristic of Athens was how delightfully disorganized everything seemed and how little this bothered locals, who carried on with their daily business as if they knew no other alternative. I would imagine that Greek peoples’ ability to cope and thrive under what Americans might consider to be unbearable conditions to be at the root of why the so-called “crisis” is so much more important to outsiders than it is to Greeks. Just as we judge Greece on the whole as being chaotic and cluttered and ascribe onto the Greek people the unfair labels of “lazy” and “inefficient,” we are less concerned about whether or not the Greeks can cope with their crisis and more concerned with how its aftermath will affect us, even though they will almost certainly pull through it unfettered.
As I traipsed through the Greek capital for three days, I had a difficult time discerning between sights and sounds that were simply a reflection of the Greek status quo, and bonafide signs of crisis and collapse. Greece is, after all, famous for its ruins. Strolling down cosmopolitan Ermou Street, for example, it wasn’t uncommon to see discarded mannequins and furniture in close proximity to posh sidewalk cafés and high street retailers.
Although I did spent a good deal of time and energy exploring different parts of Athens, my home base was an excellent hostel located in very central part of the city, as you can see via my night view of the Acropolis. Other travelers I spoke with throughout my trip didn’t have such luck, and told stories of discarded needles and condoms blanketing the sidewalks they had to navigate to get to their beds at night. I don’t doubt that my positive impression of Athens and the situation there was at least partially due to my primo location — but can you blame me for feeling a bit blissed-out?
I booked just over a week in Greece, so after several days of getting to know Athens, I boarded a ferry bound for the Greek Island of Mykonos. If there is a problem with the Greek economy, it surely isn’t in the tourism sector: As you can see, my boat was positively packed, particularly here in Paros, the first of the group of islands known as the “Cyclades” en route from Athens’ port of Piraeus to Mykonos. I was particularly shocked at the excess of tourists given the fact that I was headed to the islands during what is traditionally known as Greece’s low season.
Upon arrival in Mykonos, however, I was greeted with a far more subdued scene, something that probably owes’ to Mykonos being a destination visited primarily by foreigners — most of my fellow ferry passengers were Greeks. According to an Australian couple I met in Athens the day before I departed, I was headed to Mykonos the week after the unofficial end of the high season, which was fine by me. Rather than channeling my energy into drinking, dancing and feeling terrible, I got to focus my camera lens on the overwhelming natural beauty of the island, which often plays second fiddle to its reputation at the country’s party mecca.
Case in point: Elia Beach. Located about 30 minutes by boat from Paradise Beach, an enclave that’s crawling with foreign students even in the so-called “low season,” Elia’s stunning swimming pool waters and white sand are among the most stunning beachside scenery I’ve ever laid eyes upon. As I detail in my article about Mykonos for gay travelers, Elia is a primary gay beach, with a hidden section (that is, for your protection, not pictured) better suited for encounters of the perverted kind, rather than sunbathing. It’s scenes like this that made it difficult for me to focus on any sort of crisis — and it’s clear to me why the Greeks also seem reticent to do so.
My brief time in Greece was a humbling start to my latest adventure, partly because it wasn’t what I expected it to be and partly because it was everything I needed it to be in spite of that. In spite of all the talk of “collapse” in the international media, Greece is an “easy” destination at the end of the day, a country full of interesting landscapes and cityscapes, friendly people and at a price — that, from everything I understand, has remained around the same level since well before the crisis — that makes enjoying yourself easy. I spent my time in Greece constantly in awe not of what a mess the country had become or worrying about the collapse of Western civilization, but thankful that it was born here and that it continues to thrive after so many thousands of years.
Robert Schrader is a travel writer and photographer who’s been roaming the world independently since 2005, writing for publications such as “CNNGo” and “Shanghaiist” along the way. His blog, Leave Your Daily Hell, provides a mix of travel advice, destination guides and personal essays covering the more esoteric aspects of life as a traveler.
