In Which I Mentally Cheer For Prostitutes and Snow

 
For my birthday in April, my boyfriend made me a CD which included a live version of Paul Simon singing 'The Boxer' in Central Park. Not surprisingly, this concert was packed with New Yorkers, and the crowd goes wild every time the city is mentioned. The phrase "seventh avenue" is met with cheers. The mention of "New York City" gets everyone screaming with excitement. The fact that the former is part of a reference to "the whores on seventh avenue " and the latter is part of a wish to go "home....where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me" doesn't seem to register. Or maybe this crowd was just really proud of that stuff, because what kind of city doesn't have a few problems with crime and weather?
I make fun of these people, but if I had been there, I would have cheered too. So what if the protagonist is miserable and lonely and trapped in the city? To some of us, you don't leave New York to go home. And that's worth cheering about, damn it.
I've come to learn that part of really knowing a place is learning that there are things about it that you despise. I've always loved New York, but I had just enough hate for it that I decided to get the hell out of there, and I went to college in Iowa instead. I loved Iowa too, for very different reasons that I loved New York, but I won't lie; I had some real moments of hatred for it too. I spent four years going back and forth, trading Central Park and Indian food for cornfields and a small town where everyone knows the details of everyone else's life. I think the Grinnellians thought I talked about New York too much and the New Yorkers wondered what on earth I was doing off in the middle of nowhere. But I think I was all the richer for living in two different places, and maybe that's why I decided to come to Greece; to know another place, in a different country this time.
Like all places, Greece has had its fair share of frustrations. There are days when I just want to go shopping on Sunday, or I need to express something complicated and the language barrier is a problem. There are days when I feel like the language barrier keeps me from really knowing the kids I work with. There were also the endless hours of wading through bureacracy to get my residence permit, which has now been pending for eight months, and will in all likelihood, arrive expired and after I have left this continent.
Above all, I miss diversity. It's so peculiar to me, to walk down the street and know, based on genetic features, who is not from around here. I actually find myself staring at blonde people or American-looking people, or anybody with non-Greek looking features. Me, the New Yorker, who usually would not bother to stare if a ten foot gorilla got on the 9 train, and I am now staring at people because they have blonde hair. I'm not sure I like that feeling.
I'm also not sure I like what has happened to my taste buds. My tongue used to be hardy, capable of enjoying hot peppers and curry. I used to laugh at people who ordered food mild. I used to be tough. But then, last week, I broke open a box of packaged curry that my father sent me a few months back, I took bite and found myself coughing. It was so spicy! Packaged curry was spicy, and I know it wasn't even as spicy as the real stuff they serve in Jackson Heights. My tongue has been coddled with feta and tomatoes, and all of the taste buds I had been burning off all my life grew back. I don't like it. I feel like a wimp.
So yes, Greece has its drawbacks, just like any place has its drawbacks. In a certain way, I'm pleased about it. It makes me feel that I really have been here. So many tourists come and go, thinking of Greece as a warm sunny relaxed paradise with ruins, and they don't see much farther than that. It's the same thing that happens in New York, when visitors crow over the view from the Empire State building, but never get the close-up view that reveals so much more. In a way, perhaps it's what happened to me when I studied abroad in London, and decided it was heaven on earth, just filled with literary landmarks and history. I can hardly think of anything I really disliked about London. Maybe it really is the most perfect place on the planet. But I don't think so. Maybe I should go back and try to find some things I hate, and then I'll be a real 20th Century Londoner, instead of an Elizabethan one.
There's another reason I'm glad to have found things about Greece that drive me insane. The fact that I see them makes me realize all of the good things about my own home that I never appreciated before. America is upsetting me so much these days that I sometimes feel just utterly disgusted with my whole country and want to pretend that I'm from somewhere else entirely. When Greeks ask me if I am from England, Italy or Albania, I have sometimes felt tempted to say yes, just to avoid questions about George Bush. When Europeans change between languages with more ease than I change my shoes, I feel embarrassed that we're all so monolingual. But when I think about listening to seventeen different languages on the subway, or eating Kosher Indian food on the lower east side, I realize that there is something wonderful about living in a place with so many different kinds of people. It's such a huge relief to discover that we really do have some things to be proud of back in the states.
And so I will cheer on the now almost non-existent whores of seventh avenue along with incredibly confusing Greek language and the heat of the Greek summer. I will love to hate bureacracy at the embassy with the same passion that I love to hate the New York Yankees. I will complain about the crowded 58 bus in the same way I complain about ten dollar movie tickets in New York, and eventually I will go home, where the New York City winters certainly will be bleeding me, and I will dream of the sweltering Mediterranean sun and long to find someone with whom I can drink ouzo and practice my stilted Greek.