Greece

When I was a kid and came home from school with my friend Marco, we went up to my room to play and suddenly my mom called me down to the kitchen. She told me she had a surprise for me, that me and her were going to the outskirts of Chania on the island Crete that belongs to Greece together with her new boyfriend since my birthday was coming up. I couldn’t believe it, Greece, that was far away and with sunny beaches and swimming pools and it all seemed so amazing! I remember I bragged about it for Marco and I felt like the coolest kid in the world, me, I’m going to Greece!

It was the first time I ever went on a trip to a country that didn’t remind me of Sweden, like the neighboring countries or Scotland had done. This was going to be something completely different and I was looking forward to be seeing a new side of the world that I already loved beforehand. It felt like the best birthday gift ever.

When we arrived, it was just like I had imagined, I fell in love with all the white houses, and the sunny weather and then we got to the hotel apartment where we would be staying and then the fun came to a halt. My mom and her boyfriend had a double bed upstairs with a balcony but I couldn’t find my room. It was because I had none, I was supposed to be sleeping on a bench in the kitchen and I realized this trip wasn’t for me, it was for them and I felt fooled.

We went down to the beach and I had imagined the water to be crystal clear and light blue but instead it kind of looked like the Swedish water. When a giant wave swept me under so I swallowed half the sea I didn’t want to bathe anymore. Except for in the nearby pool that is, I probably spent the whole vacation swimming there. It’s amazing how little you need to have fun when you’re a kid, I just needed a regular pool and lots of imagination. The pool belonged to a café/restaurant on the beach and while my mom ate Greek stuff like tzatziki I played it safe and ate stuff that I knew from home, like pizza and pasta. And ice cream, lots of ice cream. When I ordered the biggest ice cream they had the waitress told me I should probably get something smaller since I was just a kid. I told her to get me the biggest and put some extra on top of it and then she watched me eat it in 5 seconds while her eyes were getting bigger and bigger.

I loved the atmosphere on the beach with all the restaurants and everybody seemed so happy since they were on holidays. I thought it was so cool when someone who celebrated her birthday got ice cream with sparklers and I thought, one day that will be me! It was everything that a kid could wish for with a trip, except for one thing, I felt kind of alone and that I was just a third wheel to my mom and her boyfriend. And it escalated in a bad way on one of the last days. I spent the time in the pool as usual when I saw my mom and her boyfriend befriend a Greek guy over some beer and I got annoyed that they were drinking because I didn’t like that. I thought my mom turned into someone else when she drank, and I missed the mom I had from when she was together with my dad, because they almost never drank and she was much nicer then.

History almost repeated itself from the story I told about Denmark because I could tell from a pool away that the random Greek guy was up to no good, but they gave the address to our hotel apartment to him so he could come visit. Since I knew the story from Denmark I forced them to go home with me and leave the random guy behind and so we did while the sun went down and I hoped that would be the end of the story. I felt scared to go to sleep alone downstairs in the kitchen by the door but they refused to have me upstairs since they said it was no problem at all and that he wouldn’t come after us. I lied on the kitchen bench and tried to get over it when suddenly someone tried to get in through the door, and then banged on it when he realized it wasn’t open. I ran halfway upstairs to try and take cover, as far away from the door where he was banging but at the same time I felt like I wasn’t allowed to come up. And there I sat until he left and I realized that this could have been a great trip because Greece is a wonderful country, but instead it ended up with traumatizing me once again.

* Best things about Greece – the weather, the vibe, the white houses and the pool
* Most mediocre thing about Greece – the sizes of ice cream portions, they should be huge instead of normal sized
* Worst things about Greece – I regret the company and that I thought the bidet was a foot bath

Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Cyprus
3. Greece
4. Denmark
5. Belgium
6. Estonia
7. Finland
8. France
9. Bulgaria
10. Bosnia And Herzegovina
11. Albania