While living in Athens has primarily been akin to living in the US (though closer to what I experience on breaks living near downtown San Diego than to Northfield, MN) there are some notable differences. The first couple are the obvious differences: the Acropolis and the general presence of really really old remains and then also that I do not have a car and the public transit is more functional here. The US is famously car dependent and I am a participant in this as I drive practically everywhere in the summers.
The public transportation here is more functional, for at least what I am looking for it to do, but that is of course a very different ask than what I want out of my hometown public transportation. At home I want to be able to use public transportation to effectively commute throughout the whole city and get to where I need or want to go, which could be anywhere in the city because I have been, am more aware of, and know more people throughout the larger city. In Athens I am living in a seemingly fairly centrally located neighborhood that has several different frequent bus and tram stops that I can easily access that get me where I need to be going, but these places are also fairly centrally located and are big tourist locations. These tourist locations are also central in the city and so there are several lines that connect me to them (often stopping at the exact same stops and following the same routes). I don’t struggle to get around in Athens, but I am also not trying to go as many different places or places that are as far off the beaten track as I do in San Diego.
One of the other main differences is the use of shame in this city. I assume this is cultural because it happens in the other Greek cities we go to, though I have less experience there so it is harder to say. But I often find that walking around, even just from home to class, Greek men have a strong tendency to stare. Just this morning on the 10 minute walk over to work in CYA I experienced this at least three times. The staring feels most akin to catcalling in the United States, which there is not as much of here as there is in the US or as I was warned about before coming. There is primarily just the staring. I also do not feel as though my outfit was particularly inappropriate. I was wearing a dress and sweater. The dress has a skirt that is not long, but I not only lengthened it recently as I made the dress and can easily adjust the length, but it is also not absurdly short. The skirt follows all of the rules that were in place in my private religious high school uniform skirts, including the standard finger-tip length for many school dress codes. To be fair, I may have looked like an American, though that is unavoidable as I am an American and did not buy an entirely new wardrobe for 10 weeks here to attempt to cosplay as a European. Europeans come to the United States and look equally European and out of place.
The staring seemed to operate as a tool of shame. When it happens I feel great shame because these strange men are staring at me in an uncomfortable manner (often they are not looking at my eyes/face) and when I do stare back and make eye contact, as I do in the US when this (far more rarely) happens, they do not look away. Typically in the US, making eye contact works as an effective tool to turn the shame back onto the person staring and they look away as though they have been caught, because they have. We have culturally decided that in the US it is rude to stare at people (especially in a manner akin to catcalling), but here they do not look away, in fact they seem to often take it as an invitation to keep staring, to smile, or nod. I came prepared for catcalling and similar behavior, but the incessant staring is really a feature that stands out the longer I am living here and I find it really interesting as it operates to shame women, show the lack of shame that men have, and I keep connecting it to ancient words for shame/modesty/etc and the ways in which those ideas made sense before but make even more sense seeing their cultural successors play out.
I have also noticed that there is a much heavier presence of facial piercings, colorful hair, and “job blocker” tattoos. The Greeks seem to be much more expressive with their appearances in this way and I personally am a huge fan. I love walking to get ice cream and being met with people who have cute well cared for piercings with gorgeous jewelry in them. This also does not seem to be restricted to any age group or gender. I see men and women of seemingly all ages with more expression than I see in the USA. This might tie into the fact that, as I have discussed with a lot of my classmates, the people here, at least the women, seem to be much mroe fashionable or at least concious of their outfit choices than we are in the USA. As expected, I see a lot less sweatpants/t-shirts/shorts than I do in the USA, but it is unexpectedly accompanied with these piercings, tattoos, and hair choices that are frowned upon in the USA. This surprised me some since a lot of the ideas about these things being bad come from more conservative and especially more religious people at home but here, where the country is primarily Orthodox Christian and religion seems to be much more present, these choices seem to be less frowned upon.