The Place That Made Me

How a City Shapes the Way You Love

Athens is chaos. Beautiful, messy, heart-on-its-sleeve chaos. It’s a place where honking car horns compete with ancient whispers, where cats lounging on sun-dappled marble ruins look infinitely more content with their lives than most of us do on a good day. This is where I grew up, and where I learned that love—like my home—can be both breathtaking and infuriating, sometimes within the same heartbeat.

Athens is not just a city; it’s a mood. A mood that sweeps you into streets too narrow for sanity but just wide enough to contain bursts of passion: a musician improvising on a bouzouki, a heated argument among friends that always ends with someone shouting, “Let’s just get a coffee!” Love in Athens, like its streets, rarely follows a straight line.

And yet, despite its maddening tendencies, Athens shaped me—my relationships, my approach to life, and yes, my philosophy on love.

The Agora of Connection

Growing up in a family of restaurateurs, I learned early on that life happens at the table. My family’s taverna in the shadow of the Acropolis was practically an open-air theater: first dates fumbling over saganaki, breakups drowned in ouzo, loud reunions where plates got cracked—not from anger, but for tradition.

Around these tables, I realized that connection isn’t about saying the right thing; it’s about showing up fully, imperfections and all. In Athens, manners matter less than presence—which is why, in emotional poker, the Greeks always go all in. We gesticulate when excited, cry when happy, and get loud for no discernible reason other than the fact that we’re alive.

This mentality snuck its way into my relationships. The Athenians I grew up among didn’t just fall in love; they leapt. They shouted their feelings from balconies and argued in public squares, but they also forgave easily because—well, life’s too short, and the souvlaki’s getting cold.

Lesson: You can’t build real connection without vulnerability. Lay your cards on the table (literally, if possible, with tzatziki).

The Streets That Teach Patience

Athens tests you. Want to get to that cute café with the rooftop view? Better leave time to navigate streets that barely fit a car, let alone your overconfidence. Stuck behind a donkey blocking your hiking route? Learn to laugh—or you’ll cry, and the donkey won’t care either way.

That’s the thing about my hometown: it forces you to adapt. The city does not care about your plans, your urgency, or the pristine timeline you had in your head. Much like love, it introduces detours just to see how you’ll handle them. Early relationships are like navigating Plaka’s labyrinthine alleys. You think you’re heading toward something predictable, like gelato, and then—whoops—you’re trapped in an argument over whose turn it is to compromise.

Athens taught me that detours can be magical. A wrong turn might lead to a hidden antique shop or a cheerful stranger insisting you join them for a frappe. In relationships, it’s not success that builds intimacy—it’s adaptability. Can you laugh when your plans collapse? Can you shift from frustration to curiosity, giving love space to surprise you?

Lesson: Slow down. Get lost. Good things aren’t always neatly mapped out.

Plate Smashing and the Art of Letting Go

If there’s one thing we Greeks know, it’s how to let go with flair. Smashing plates at weddings might look like unhinged behavior, but it’s one of the most cathartic acts you’ll ever partake in. It’s a ritualized way of saying, “This thing we’re celebrating matters more than the fragile stuff we’re breaking.”

I’ve smashed a few metaphorical plates in my love life too: toxic relationships, misplaced pride, unrealistic expectations. Athens taught me how to mourn loss without wallowing, often with help from soulful music, good company, and, okay, quite a bit of wine.

Once, during a particularly messy breakup, a friend from Athens summed it up for me: “Kane kefi!” In other words, “Find joy, even now.” Some things aren’t worth holding together. Sometimes you need to break something to make room for something better.

Lesson: Don’t cling too tightly. Let go of the fragile bits that no longer serve you, and trust that what’s meant to stay will stay—just like that one shard of plate you’ll find in your shoe six months later.

Love, and Coffee, Takes Its Time

Ah, Greek coffee. It isn’t just a drink—it’s a ritual, a lifestyle, a reason to sit still for once in your life. Watching my uncles argue about politics for hours over a single demitasse cup, I learned that love, like Greek coffee, isn’t something you can rush.

Here’s what happens when you do: the grounds at the bottom get all mixed up, and instead of smooth, rich flavor you end up with bitterness. Athens runs on a slow burn. Conversations last hours, dates may not end until sunrise, and second cups are a given.

It suffuses the way we love: deliberately, with pauses for reflection (or dessert). In relationships, letting things steep is the best way to extract depth. When I ran a boutique hotel on Santorini, I noticed tourists would rush through sunsets like there was a prize at the end. By contrast, the locals would sit quietly, nursing a glass of wine, letting the colors change the way emotions evolve—slowly, over time.

Lesson: Give your relationships space to brew. Observe. Don’t rush things just because the world is obsessed with efficiency.

Athens, My Forever Matchmaker

People always ask me if Athens is romantic. My answer: absolutely, in all the wrong ways. Athens doesn’t give you textbook romance—it gives you raw connections forged in sweaty subway rides and lively tavernas where the music drowns out your carefully rehearsed lines. It gives you sunsets that seem too cliché to be real and then slap you with reality in the form of a pothole you didn’t see because you were looking up.

This city taught me to embrace the contradictions: to love passionately, argue constructively, forgive wholeheartedly, and be curious always. And maybe most importantly, it taught me to fall in love with the imperfections—of a place, a person, or even yourself.

Lesson: The perfect romance doesn’t exist. But a beautiful, messy, unforgettable one? That’s just a u-turn away.

Athens isn’t just the city that made me; it’s the city that taught me how to live, love, and linger. Forever and ever—amen. (Or as we say here: Yamas!)