I’m starting this blog about a week after I’ve arrived in Greece—partly due to the fact that I didn’t know how to approach writing a travel blog, partly due to the fact I was actually pretty busy the whole time. That was a surprise. My biggest fear about solo traveling was having too much time on my hands…sitting on the end of my bed staring out the window or sadly wandering the streets alone. See? I’ve already gotten melodramatic. I wish I could say I lost this fear upon touchdown in Athens, but it took a little longer. As whenever I go through a big life change, I go into crisis mode. Aka what am I doing here? How am I going to survive a month doing this? What does it mean to be alive? Etc. You know, classic existential crisis stuff. This was all exaggerated by the fact that I arrived in a hostel having forgotten the realities of living in a hostel…you don’t have any privacy. There’s nothing worse than feeling melodramatic and being unable to sufficiently wallow in it. Nothing worse than having a middle aged Danish man watching you as you do breathing exercises and try to hold it together in the top bunk. Talk about painful self-awareness.

Anyway. I took myself out for a walk and warmed up a bit to the city. The hostel is located in a great area, right near the Plaka—the historic center of Athens. I later met a French-Canadian woman in my dorm room and joined her for dinner. I had forgotten how easy it is to meet new people, and how wonderful it is to have conversations with strangers. When you’re both foreign in a new place, you make a connection much more quickly than you would in any other place.

The next day, I joined the hostel’s tour of the city. An energetic Australian man led about 15 of us (I, surprisingly, being the only American) around the city for a 3 1/2 hour tour. It was great to get an introduction to the city—from the organization to its history, and quirky stories in between. Pretty soon, it was hard for the tour guide to get our attention, as we had all taken to talking to each other. We hit it off so well that a group of us (couple Canadians, a Swede, and three Australians) decided to spend the rest of the day together. I followed the group to the hostel’s rooftop bar — which had a great view out over the city, and of the Acropolis. The night ended with us, and a few other travelers we met along the way, wandering the streets home at about 5am. I realized then that I would be very much not alone on this trip, and that I might, in fact, begin wanting some time to myself. But for now, I basked in the company of strangers, turned 7-hour friends—people from all parts of the world joined just for one night together, and no more.