05/09/2026
My August dump is a bit unusual this year.
The two countries are almost complete opposites. Think yin and yang.
If you know, you know. Greeks don’t take no for an answer. 😂
I hadn’t spent August in Crete in a long time. Once I was immersed in it again, it suddenly hit me how all-encompassing Greek August is.
The scents, the sounds, the warm nights, the routines everything.
There’s a particular feeling to it that you don’t even realize you’ve missed until you’re back in it.
P.S. August obviously feels very different when you’re working through it. It’s the busiest month and a lot of people are working their asses off while everyone else is enjoying their holidays. I’ve lived those Augusts too. So I’m especially grateful that this time I got to experience it like this.
Places have their own sounds.
Some only start speaking to you when you leave.
I never really listened to Greek music.
Cretan music was simply always around, and although I appreciated it, I didn’t think much about it. Funny how living away changes that.
Now when I hear it, it hits soul deep.
Even in Crete, things are becoming newer, fancier and more polished. Looks over substance sometimes.
There’s something soothing about places like this simple, unpretentious, not performing for anyone.
It makes you feel at ease.
There was a lot of play.
And not just the dancing.
From the body language to the local idioms, the jokes, the gestures, the malakies and all the little references that don’t need explaining. There’s so much more room for nuance and play when you share the same social language. It felt freeing to slip back into it.
It also felt good seeing so many friends and familiar faces, and losing count of how many times I heard my name called in the street.
I think this was my first real taste of working while travelling, and it’s probably overly romanticized.
Bad internet, constant distractions, inability for any routine and while I love many of the sounds, Greece also has a lot of sounds that never seem to turn off. 😅
You end up carrying this constant mental load of everything you should be doing, while not quite managing to do it for all sorts of practical reasons. So
