2024-12-14 Journal Entry

I’m going to be stuck on this plane for another few hours, so I might as well use it to write a bit.

Greece is in the books. All in all, Greece was somewhat mixed in my opinion. The highlights were pretty great: Meteora is incredible, and visiting the Acropolis and other historic sites is actually pretty worthwhile if you’re kinda a dork (i.e. me). But a lot of other things about the country are honestly not that great – I was not really under the impression that Greece was in that bad of shape, but there were quite a lot of buildings that seemed pretty run down, and there’s graffiti everywhere. The super touristy places are well-kept, but heading even a smidge off the tourist trail left me feeling like the country was not doing so hot.

For example, while Meteora was great, getting to Meteora was less inspiring. There was a train, but the line all the way to Kalambaka had been discontinued, so you had to get off halfway and take a bus for the last few hours. But the train was 30 minutes delayed, so I was freaking out about missing the bus since it only runs once every six hours. There was no way to see whether or not the bus was going to wait – I had no idea if this is just a normal bus route or if it’s specially tied to the timing of the train or something? – so I just had to wait and figure it out when I got there. And when I do get there, the train station we stop at is essentially abandoned. Like, walls sprawled with graffiti, signs falling off the ceiling. The only thing there is perhaps the saddest cafe I’ve ever seen: a few stands for potato chips with the odd Greek local flavors and a narrow fridge with beer and Red Bull.

I think most Americans who visit Greece mostly are talking about the islands, which I’m sure are beautiful. As with many places, the natural beauty of Greece is probably it’s greatest attribute. But I don’t think I got a great grasp on what make Greece shine through as a culture. Most of what I saw was people sitting at cafes for hours on end, smoking and drinking burnt coffee. The thought I had about halfway through the trip – and I fully recognize that this is a terrible thing to say – is that Greece felt like a country with very little self-respect. In other places, pride in one’s culture can manifest in many different ways, either by wanting to share it or aggressively protecting it, but when things are in shambles in the country, it feels like the people simply don’t want to go through the effort to preserve it.

That’s perhaps reading too much into it, but I think the pervasiveness of not going above-and-beyond at nearly anything is a pretty damning trait to have. But maybe that’s just an American reading too much into things and being generally an asshole, so it goes.

Of course I think the trip was still worth it, and I think it’d be cool to go back to Greece at some point. There’s surely much that I didn’t see while I was there. But candidly, it’s somewhat middling on my list at this point.