The Covid Era: Drink to Forget

WHAT the F**K was that?
June is here, and we are finally allowed to step back into the sunlight. But as I look around the streets of Thessaloniki, it is impossible to ignore the truth: the world, and all of us in it, will never be the same again. We have crossed a line, and there is no going back to the way things were.

As I sit here trying to process what we went through over the last few months, my mind keeps drifting back to a single image from right before the world stopped. It was a photo taken during my very last free weekend, which happened to be in Volos. Empty bottles of traditional tsipouro, which my friends and I enjoyed during the sunny Clean Monday weekend. Looking back, it feels almost prophetic. We drank and celebrated that day with a wild, subconscious intensity—as if, deep down, our souls already knew exactly what was about to follow. It was, in the truest sense, a drink to forget what was coming.

Then, the silence came. The pandemic divided us in ways we never expected. So many people remained completely locked away, paralyzed by fear and confined to the four walls of their apartments. For me, survival meant a different path. I couldn’t let the walls close in. I became one of those who constantly sought movement, searching for fresh air as if it were oxygen for my sanity. During those dark months, the only true sanctuary was nature. I took every opportunity to escape the city, going on long walks and small excursions into the wilderness, where the trees didn’t know about viruses and the wind still felt completely free.

Now, in the summer of 2020, we are “free” again, but it is a fragile, cautious freedom. The masks, the distance, the underlying anxiety—they are all reminders of the collective trauma we just survived. That glass of tsipouro in Volos belongs to a past version of me, from a time when freedom was taken for granted.

We are stepping into a different era now. We are a bit more fragile, perhaps a bit wiser, but still searching for those small, unhurried moments of joy that remind us we are alive.