As I half-walked, half-ran to the first Saturday morning class for my master’s degree at the University of Athens, sweat poured from my forehead. At 9am the temperature was already more than 20°C.
I was wearing a particularly useless pair of shoes: platform sandals that my long-suffering boyfriend later pointed out were so heavy they were weighing down my legs. “You may as well have strapped some 2kg dumbbells to your ankles” were his words as I trailed behind him up the hill to the Parthenon.
On this important Saturday, my heavy shoes were more than just an inconvenience, they were a serious problem—as, according to Google Maps, I was due to arrive at my 9.30am class at 9.34am. I had visions of a full classroom of disapproving faces turning towards me, and an irate lecturer telling me off.
When I arrived at the faculty building—which is classically Greek, quietly impressive but worn around the edges—I was surprised to bump into my classmates at the entrance. They were not glaring at me for being late, but standing around smoking. One of them darted across the road to buy a freddo cappuccino from the café opposite.
When I expressed confusion, one friend asked me whether I’d heard of the “academic quarter”. “You mean the area of the city where the university buildings are?” I replied. “No,” she said emphatically, and explained, only half joking, that in Greece lessons begin 15 minutes later than scheduled, so that everyone has time to get there with a cappuccino in hand, ready to learn.
I cannot overstate the joy hearing this gave me. It felt like a reprieve from 28 years of uptight Britishness—of the sense that I am constantly on the verge of being told off, that I am perpetually behind.
When we got into the lecture, it became clear that this more relaxed approach to timekeeping did not compromise the quality of the education. The material was challenging and invigorating. The professor—who also nursed a freddo cappuccino as he spoke—is one of the leading researchers in his field in the world. When we finished class, my friends and I rolled into the city together for drinks, a plan conceived on the spot, and I felt the warmth of the Saturday afternoon stretch around me.
It seems, at least to me, that people in Athens have a fundamentally different relationship to time than people in London do. The Greeks seem less invested in what Oliver Burkeman describes as the optimisation of time—the obsession with wringing the maximum productivity out of each moment.
Groups of friends sit languorously having coffee for hours. Service in these cafés is friendly but slow. In Greece things simply take as long as they take, and people have a sense of perspective about what matters—no one is going to die waiting for a second Aperol spritz.
When I say as much to a Greek friend, she chastises me for being a foreigner who does not yet understand the city enough to draw such conclusions. She is deeply stressed, she tells me, and is darting around just like any Londoner would.
She rightly points to studies that show that the Greeks are the most stressed people in Europe, largely because the low salaries put much of the population under inordinate financial strain. The government has controversially recently instated a six-day week for some Greek workers, while much of the rest of Europe is moving in the opposite direction.
All of this is of course true, and much of my perspective is informed by the fact I am a relatively well-off foreigner enjoying the blessings of Greek life without having to face the challenges that come with trying to build a career here. But I still believe that Athenians have a far more sensible attitude towards time than their London counterparts—and that this is enormously beneficial for one’s nervous system. I can physically feel mine slowing down, I notice myself moving from fight-or-flight mode to a gentler deportment.
I tell my friend to get back to me when she’s lived in London for a month, and if she still thinks Athenians are equally uptight, then I’ll believe her. The next week she appears at class and tells me she will be late to dinner the following Saturday because she has an appointment. “What for?” I ask. “A spa”, she replies. Case closed.
