Greek In the Big Apple

This past week I celebrated my 35th birthday in New York City with a group of lovely friends old and new spanning 13 years of living and going back and forth between Greece and the United States. There was a moment of realization that I've come back to where this life of living and being in two places started. I spent my first New York birthday with some of those same friends 13 years ago at a small underground bar in the Village where we all were a little younger and more eager to face life and its strange twists and turns.... but here we are and still enjoying every moment wherever we might be. And now that we are all here smiling and enjoying each moment as it comes, I raise my glass to my fellow travelers. Cheers and thank you for one of the best birthdays one could ever ask for.  Ευχαριστώ πολύ όλους τους φίλους μου... μακρινούς και κοντινούς που μου έστειλαν την αγάπη τους και την ενέργεια τους... και στα επόμενα 35 εδώ θα είμαστε. :)  ...

Friday March 9th leaving the city on an Amtrak train bound for New England. I find myself back in familiar and familial territory this weekend, traveling by train from New York to meet my parents and good family friends in Greenfield Massachusetts. Train travel in the U.S can be an interesting harrowing, and educational experience or just a plain drag depending on what you want out of traveling. Many commute with trains every day others take long distance trains from city to city... Train travel is quite different here than in other countries in Europe I've been too recently. France for instance has an extensive, well developed, high speed and modern train system, people rely on the TGV for fast reliable travel between cities in France as well as Belgium.  Greece on the other hand does not... Train travel in there is frowned upon and very badly maintained. Very few use trains to travel from city to city and those who do don't have a very pleasant expe...

Filoxenia /Gratitude φιλοξενία / ευγνωμοσύνη  I have now been in New York for three months, and after many weeks of searching, I have finally found my little corner of the city to call home...What one may call a room of one's own.  When looking back at the past three months the generosity the open hearts, the open homes, and the care I have received from my friends here in the city has been the corner stone and building block of my new life here. It brings me to tears to realize that without these wonderful and amazing people I would not have been able to survive let alone get a start in this new path. There are old friends who have opened their homes, supporting me in this effort by reassuring me while lending an encouraging word at moments of doubt, and new friends who have helped me in small and big ways from helping me find work, to looking for a home and listening to my rants in order to keep me sane and focused on my goal of transition. I don't know how I coul...

Early morning in New York City is a rare time of day. It's an opportunity to see and be a part of a rare ritual of moving from night into early morning even before everyone else starts their day. This beast of a city moves at a rapid rate at all hours of the day and night but there are those few hours just at the edge of dawn where the city is almost quiet. For the past couple of weeks I've been waking up at 6.00am heading to morning Mysore Ashtanga practice at the Ashtanga Yoga New York studio on Broome street... the studio is run by Ashtanga Yoga veteran teacher Eddie Stern. He along with his wife and a team of lovely assistants have been my yoga family since the first week of my arrival here in the city back in December. Every yoga student needs a yoga family and since I've been here they have been my yoga family. Now that I walk in the studio I see some of the same people every day doing their Asana practice and in a rare moment of coming in to the studio at 6 am I w...

The past week has been a rich example of cultural references and discussions with old friends and new acquaintances of what it means to be a New Yorker, an American and where most of us "come from". My good friend Suzy was joking recently that I'm "fresh off the boat" and in a certain way that is quite true. Although I've lived half my life here in the U.S. I've always lived a double life. I'm half Greek half American and I've had a life in both the U.S and Greece. Something the differentiates my upbringing from many other Greek/Americans is that I have lived studied and worked equally in both countries, I call both countries home and I consider both English and Greek to be mother tongues. No one in New York is "from here" yet all who live in this great metropolis relate to being New Yorkers. This city is one of the most diverse in cultural and language examples. The neighborhoods are defined by their cultural identity. Brig...

Last weekend I made a brief escape from New York and hopped on to a north bound train into the the familiar landscapes of my childhood. One good thing about loving the city, is that you can leave it for a while and come back to it with a new perspective. Managing to distance oneself from busy city life, is a healthy balance for all new yorkers... Some don't feel the need to ever leave... they find their quiet moments within the city... others like to take a brief weekend, a breather if you will in order to appreciate it more when they get back. I've heard of countless stories... for and against this theory of escape. Some choose to go to the furthest reaches of Manhattan into the area of Inwood and the Cloisters, others to the southern tip of Brooklyn into Brighton Beach and Coney Island... The distance is insignificant to the change of scenery. My personal escape had to do with child hood memories. When I first moved to the United States back in 1991 with...

Its a bitterly cold January evening as I'm sitting in the warm and comforting kitchen of a very close family friend. Tonight I'm enjoying one of the calmest weekends after a quite some time. So much has happened since I last posted and I've had a brief absence from this blog... I have been gathering  so many thoughts and put together a lovely tapestry of images in my mind to transfer onto the page but I've really have not had that quiet moment until now to write...so here is a catch up post after almost three weeks... I've been in New York and general north east of the U.S for almost two months, and it feels like a very short amount of time, but also long enough to start to feel incorporated into the every day life and I dare say almost feeling at home. I've discovered and have been shown some beautiful corners of the island of Manhattan and have visited four of the...