Because I didn't know Greek, I really wanted to learn the language. I was a pretty terrible Greek.
Like insofar as like knowing anything about Greece or the culture or really anything. So
that's why I came, to kinda get a certain... When I came here, I...
At first it was a pretty massive adjustment, like learning how to be...
how to let life go in a more of a calm way and like the rhythm. I still had this idea in my mind that moving from
the United States to Greece would be like, it's the US but Europe. Like at least the United States, those lines are...
It's a very controversial issue in the pole community. Because
you can't get around the fact that pole dancing started from strip clubs. Although there are people in this...
Yeah, like people... Like there's a kind of a joke that like
if you like put a bunch of photos of someone like lined up like as they progress through pole like day one, versus like
three years later, day one they're always like in these like athletic shorts. Yeah, athletic shorts. And like those heavy Adidas sports bras.
And then you like fast forward like three minutes. There's also a lot of people in the US that are very connected to that.
They might not be a professional stripper or a professional sex worker, but like absolutely there...
This is Expat Experts.
Hello, welcome to Expat Experts. Today we are recording here from Exarchia, Center of Athens. Berry Center of Athens.
With Emma. Thank you for
getting the place set up and
accepting to be part of the of the podcast itself.
Emma is originally from US. Texas as far as I remember. No, you lived in Texas though. I've never even been to Texas.
Yeah, I'm going for the first time to Texas in November. All right. Yeah, where are you from? New Jersey. New Jersey?
Yeah, I went to school
to University in New York and I lived in New York for ten years something like that. So I think I might have mixed like
probably you post something about Texas at some point or something. I don't know where I got the idea of Texas from but
so New Jersey originally I saw that you live, like you said just right now, that you live quite some years in New York City.
Moved to Athens.
You are by profession a journalist. Yes, but actually today in the second part
we will be talking about pole dancing. Yeah, just I suppose a hobby right now. In Greece. Yeah in New York
I was kind of like semi-professional. I was teaching, performing, competing. In Greece that's like died down a lot.
So now it's definitely a hobby.
But yeah. Nice.
So yeah without further ado as always don't forget to follow and
follow us on Instagram, social media all of these things but especially Spotify, YouTube.
All the streaming platforms to always get the latest episodes going on.
With that said let's go for it. Okay, I'm ready.
The Expat episode 8 with Emma Varvaloukas.
Originally from New Jersey, not Texas.
Texas is kind of more interesting. I don't know why I moved really where I took the Texas from.
I won't interview anyone from Texas actually.
I mean I'm for it. Sure, let's find someone from Texas. If you're from Texas living abroad.
So you were born in New Jersey
then
moved to New York for studies and ended in Greece.
Why, when? Yeah, okay, so my father is Greek, so I'm half Greek. My dad
met my mom in the states. My mom's American. They got married in the states.
They got divorced when I was around 11 and my dad around then also went back to Greece. So
When I moved to New York, I loved New York. I was like absolutely in love with the city kind of thing.
But 10 years later I was pretty burned out.
A lot of people I feel like in Greece anyway when I talk to them are like you left New York.
Like are you nuts? But it's a different I think
concept of what people have in their head versus like what it's actually like to live there. So yeah, 10 years later
I was pretty tired. It was the middle of the pandemic. New York was hit like really hard by the pandemic.
So there was just like you heard ambulances like constantly like all day every day people going to the hospital and
I was just like I think it's time to try something else.
So I came here. My father lives in the suburbs of Athens and
It was a big opportunity for me because I didn't know Greek I really wanted to learn the language. I was a pretty terrible Greek
like in so far as like knowing anything about Greece or the culture really anything so um
That's why I came to kind of get out of New York. Try a new city and to get closer to my roots here. Okay nice.
You were saying like I think that's pretty much a very common thing that you get here in Athens and in Greece and it's probably
to the fact that the international
people living here it's not that big. I mean it's not like other cities in Europe or in the United States, the international
communities are rather bigger and
I'm here it happens a lot like you say I'm from Barcelona, I'm from here. Why are you here?
No like and this is surprisingly also but
at the end when you come from a stressful city and I suppose New York City has a lot of things and a lot of
opportunities, but at the same time it's
never sleeps. As it's always said no and it's like
always like mimics and this chaos and like the stress of the people running here from there and a lot of business related stuff, etc. etc.
The mindset of coming here and the lifestyle of Greece sometimes fits very well to people.
Was that your case? Like it brought you like this calmness of like saying okay everything goes to you.
Yeah, I think that my natural, like my psychology, my habit and my culture
lead me to like a very extreme end of the spectrum as far as like running around and being productive and constantly working.
Like all of that is on a really intense end of the spectrum.
But you're 100% right that like New York is also so far on that spectrum that as
you get older I think like you really need to be
making an insane amount of money in New York and being like very certain industries for you to be able to manage your life in
a way where you're just not you're constantly hustling or just like when I was in my 20s in New York, I was working three different jobs.
I was waking up at 5 a.m. You know I was hustling like very very hard and when you get older like you know that energy starts to drain. Yeah, 100 percent. So, um,
when I came here I
At first it was a pretty massive adjustment like learning how to be
how to let life go in a more of a calm way and like the rhythms being a lot slower and different
but I like it a lot.
I've never been able to like fully adjust to that rhythm.
I'm probably in a space for like probably most Greeks would think that I'm pretty intense as far as like how I organize myself.
But um,
most New Yorkers now would think that I am pretty damn chill. So,
I've definitely calmed down a lot.
But those habits for me like psychologically and culturally are very hard to break.
So I feel like I'm kind of like I'm still very New Yorker, but like I've been a little bit
I have an over taste of Greek. Okay. Yeah. I mean,
at least you are not coming with absolutely not knowing anyone. Your dad is here.
You have other family here in Greece or like...
Yeah, so my father and then my father remarried here. So my stepmom and my stepbrothers are here and then my father's
sister, so my aunt and
that's and I have a couple of cousins that I see that's like the
immediate family structure that's here and I have other extended family here, but we don't really hang out.
They don't... I mean they count, but they don't count.
Another very Greek thing is having family everywhere and like second, second, third, fourth, fifth cousin.
Okay. Yeah, that's stereotyped like don't you know your cousin has a few of these? You're like, I don't know.
I haven't seen it since I was 10. Like,
not really. No, I've never met him in my life.
Yeah, I can imagine, but at the end like you are coming here due to the fact of burnout,
but at least you have some support like you are not going to a new country alone without not knowing anyone and and
like whatever, like how was for your mom, for example, like she was staying in... she's still living in the States or... and
you were like suddenly deciding, hey, I'm leaving. Ciao. Yeah.
My mom was like... I guess it is helpful to explain like my parents got divorced and
after my parents were divorced, but my mom had to come to Greece every year with my father.
So like she had a lot of experience in Greece
and then she was like I'm never coming to Greece again. Like she doesn't ever want to step foot in the country ever again.
So for me to like suddenly like wake up one day and be like I'd like to go to Greece, she was just like, why?
You know, that was kind of the reaction of the entire extended family in the United States was like why does she want to go there?
There's just a lot... actually I get that disbelief from the United States and from a lot of people in Greece.
Like why are you here? As you said before. And then she was like well, I mean, I guess like I had you for...
at the time I guess I moved when I was 29 or 30. She's like I guess, you know,
you've been hanging out with me for 30 years. I guess you can go hang out with your dad for a bit.
That was her reaction. Like she's sad to have me over here.
Everyone also thought when I came here that I would come here for like six months like max a year and go back and like
no one expected that I was going to be here. Now it's gonna be coming out four years pretty soon.
So it was also a shock to my Greek family that I came here because like I have a sister and
she was always like the Greek-er one. Like I was never interested in Greek culture. I was never interested in Greek as a language.
I just wasn't interested. So the fact that I came here, I learned Greek and I've been here for a decent number of years. Everyone's like...
Okay, that was unexpected. But it was obviously it really helped having like a landing pad.
When I first came actually moved like basically into the second lockdown here and I stayed with my father for like six months.
Otherwise, I would have been sitting in an apartment by myself.
And I have friends that moved around that time and were like they had a really, really difficult transition. I did as well for different reasons.
But it's really helpful to have people to call and be like, "I don't understand how this website works." Or like why...
You know, just like little things you need to adjust to there's always an easy answer there. So that was
very much so appreciated. Shout out to the Greeks.
My Greek family for helping me with that stuff.
Suppose bureaucratic. Always the complex part entering this country. If you come from outside of the European Union, but also coming from inside of the European Union.
It's still not easy. It's ridiculous, like how the processes of bureaucracy in this country are over complicated, even for European citizens, which
doesn't happen in any other country in the European Union and you just enter it and do a couple of papers and they're set in here. It's like...
It's crazy. I have an American friend here. So it was easier for me because I was already a Greek citizen. So it's like, all right...
Ah, you had the nationality. Okay. I did. So a lot of that, like those wheels were greased.
Greased.
A friend of mine who's American and does not have any EU citizenship, nationality, nothing, took her three years to get her residence permit here. She's married to an EU national and everything's done in Greek. And so when I talked to her, oftentimes I think how do people get by here? Not speaking a lick of Greek. All of the instructions on other websites tend to be in Greek. I don't know how people do it, to be perfectly honest.
- I mean, the fact that the Greeks speak a rather good level of English, compared to
other...
Italy, Spain, or France, or wherever, it helps.
But it's true that if you need to do the bureaucracy and other stuff on your own, you are pretty
much fucked because everything is in Greek.
So you always need this Greek friend who speaks good English to call him and say, "Hey, sorry,
how the fuck do I do that?"
And then they're like, "Hey, okay, I do it for you."
- Exactly.
- We'll talk later.
Pay me in black.
- Basically, yeah.
- A couple of beers, yes.
- Basically, yeah.
- Sure.
And you said also there like you didn't speak any Greek at the point of time when you came
here.
- So I had started learning Greek about a year before I moved.
- Okay.
- Which like when I came here, I was probably a one and a half.
- A one and a half.
- A one and a half.
I wouldn't call...
I feel like theoretically I was A2, but like from an actual like use perspective, I was
not.
- And when you arrive here, the half goes out and it's 0.75.
- Exactly.
Yes.
I was just like, "Oh."
Everything that I thought I had learned, like actually putting it into practice, I was like,
"Oh, this is a bigger uphill than I was expecting."
So but yeah, I've been here, like I said, almost four years.
I'm taking my proficiency exams in two weeks from now, so we're filling this in May.
So this is like the lower proficiency, like for people who've done the lower proficiency
in English and doing the lower proficiency in Greek.
- So you studied all this nearly four years, like since the day that you arrived, you put
yourself into it.
- Yeah.
I do lessons online with my Greek teacher that I'm also close friends with.
And yeah, I have been studying a lot.
- That's good.
I mean, in your case, I suppose it's also a part of like rediscovering your roots, which
is also nice in the sense of like probably it also helps to understand culturally things
that happens around you here in Greece.
What has shocked you the most when you arrive, like through these three years or four years
that you were not expecting the Greeks to be doing or the Greek culture to be like that?
- Oh man.
I mean everything.
I was like profoundly naive when I...
I should explain.
I don't want to be like the stereotypical American, but I had traveled a lot.
I was very like cultured in that sense, but I still had this idea in my mind that moving
from the United States to Greece would be like, it's the US, but Europe.
Like there was no thought in my mind of like how different the two cultures are.
So I was kind of shocked by literally everything.
The main thing that comes to my mind was really like coming to terms with the level of distrust
and cynicism here with the government and economy and all that.
And also just like the media space here was really shocking to me because I'm a journalist.
I'm like very into media ecosystems and information and all this stuff.
And it was a really big learning lesson for me to be like, oh wow, the media space here
is so anemic compared to the media space in the United States.
Like the US has plenty of problems there, but it's just a completely different world.
I mean also like I suppose the money and the media thing it's bubble, it's much bigger
in the United States because how many people live in the United States, how many sharing
the same language?
Right.
From state to state, everything changes culturally wise probably, and things are done differently,
but at least the language is the same one.
So if you are more in a political tendency or another, whatever, you find your media
space in there here in Greece, I kind of find that the TV here it's extremely bad.
Like, I'm sorry.
It's just like, I don't know.
I mean, it took me some time to of course understand what it was going on.
Of course, like I'm here for three years and I'm also learning Greek and I'm not close
to doing a proficiency level exam at all.
But at the same time when I watch TV and when I watch news in here, I'm surprised by the
low quality standards of what it's the journalism here in general.
I'm not criticizing anyone specific, but more in a generic way on maybe it's the format
that it doesn't enter me.
Like it's just like this whole connecting live and making it so big when it just some
people passing by and it's just like, why are you making this drama out of it?
I don't get it.
It's curious.
It's another way of doing journalism itself, I suppose.
Was that because you're still working for American companies?
So you didn't need to change the job when you come here?
You had it before?
How was that?
So I had started a new job for like a year or six months, something like that, before
I left the States.
But it was the job that I was hired for was to essentially build an organization from
scratch.
So in doing that...
There is this kind of job thing.
Yes.
Here you have build an organization.
Yes.
Wow.
Okay.
Yes.
It was a lot of work, but it exists now.
It runs, so it can be done.
But when the pandemic...
I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to leave New York.
Of course, I was not expecting the pandemic to hit, but it really worked in my favor because
everything was remote.
As far as office jobs were remote, right?
So I used that as an opportunity to go to Greece and because I started the organization,
I came here and then I hired everybody in like European and Asian time zones rather
than hiring people in American time zones.
And thankfully my boss who founded the organization and finances it was open-minded about that,
I think heavily because of the pandemic and because we're just in a world now where everything
was remote first.
So that worked out very, very well for me, but there are a lot of factors there that
could have not worked out.
And I always told people I didn't want to come into Greece and enter the economic sphere
and the job market in Greece, I just knew that that was going to be not beneficial for me
in many, many ways.
So if that hadn't worked out, I maybe would have tried to find another job, but I probably
would have come back to the States because I wouldn't have wanted to sacrifice the job
opportunities.
I was very lucky that that ended up working out.
So right now your work colleagues are... because that's also one of the things that happens
if you're hired in the United States or Asian.
The time difference, it's huge.
I have work colleagues who are in Panama, for example, and there is only two hours of
gap where you can talk with these people because when they are just starting you're just finishing
and it's just a little more complex.
But in your case, most of your colleagues then are similar time zones.
So my colleagues are either in the UK, Europe or Asia.
The ones that are in Asia does get a little bit complicated.
I think there's a four or five hour time difference depending on the time of the year and that
can get a little like, "Ooh."
All of our third party vendors though, so the people that run the website, people that
produce our podcast, the people that we place ads with, all of these additional people,
they're all in the States.
It's manageable when they're on the East Coast, it's very difficult when they're on the West
Coast.
When you start doing that, it doesn't work.
So I try to avoid that at all costs.
Still though, I work Greek hours here but at the end of the day because I know that
I'm lucky to be here, there's still an expectation that I need to be flexible as far as my evenings
go so there's definitely been times where we've had to record a podcast at 1 a.m. Greek
time or stuff like that.
That happens.
So maybe it's well worth the trade-off to be here.
I wouldn't complain about that per se.
Makes sense.
If you could bring something from the United States here, what it would be?
Bagels.
Bagels.
Like I don't have to think about it.
And then sushi.
Bagels, sushi, Asian food in general, Mexican food, or it's all food.
It's really funny that you want to bring sushi and Mexican food from America.
I mean I would take it from Mexico and Japan but also from the States.
I'll explain.
First of all, there's a strong lack of knowledge in Europe about bagels.
I don't know what it is but there are just no good bagels here in Greece.
I've never really tried bagels elsewhere in Europe but I feel pretty strong that they
probably don't exist in most of Europe in a way that I would find.
You would need to go to the north of Europe.
Germany, Belgium, this part is probably not the same that you have in Europe.
I'm very particular about bagels.
Very, very particular.
And it's funny to me because I tried for a long time when I moved here to find bagels
and some people were so, so sweet to me to try to help me.
I would arrive and be like, "The bagel!"
I'm like, "Oh no, this is not it, guys.
This is not it."
But yeah, the international cuisine thing was really rough for me coming from New York
to here because it's just...
It's non-existent.
It's non-existent.
And when you talk to Greeks about it, they really don't...
Some do.
Like, you know, ones that have lived outside of Greece and traveled quite a bit, they get
it.
But a lot of Greeks, when you talk to them, they're like, "But we have Mexican food."
And I'm like...
No.
No.
You have Tex-Mex from Texas?
Probably.
I don't know where it's from to be perfectly honest.
I'm like, "Ew!"
That's a very typical thing to have in Europe specifically.
I don't know if in the United States it happens, but a lot of the Mexican restaurants have
been to Mexico a couple of times.
Mexican food that they serve in Europe is Tex-Mex.
It's not Mexican.
It's still branded as Mexican, but it's not Mexican.
It's also because of lack of ingredients, et cetera, et cetera.
But it's true that if you compare a city like Athens, which is the capital of a European
country to any other European country, capital, there is no international food here.
Like the catalog of international restaurants is rather limited.
You have some Pakistani, Indian, and it's mainly because of immigration coming here
and then building restaurants, like everywhere.
Let's say like this, but the lack of Asian in the sense of Chinese, Japanese, any Vietnamese
food doesn't arrive.
Thai, there is very, very few restaurants here.
It's true.
Yeah, 100%.
It was really funny to me when I first moved here and people would be like, "We're going
to an Asian restaurant."
And I was like, "Okay, which kind?"
And they're like, "Asian."
And then I'm like, "Okay, I don't really understand what you're saying."
But you go there and it is in fact Asian.
You're like, "Okay, but are you Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai?"
All of it.
You're like, "But you can't possibly make all of this well."
Fried rice next to gyozas next to sushi next to pho.
Pad Thai.
Pad Thai, yeah.
There are places here that do- You need to know them, and let's not make a-
Let's not gentrify these places.
We will talk afterwards.
Let's keep them secret.
You will not be seeing restaurant recommendations on this podcast.
And if you want to know the restaurants, you need to contact me and give a like.
Sure.
Subscribe, like, and then maybe we'll consider sending you to the good Thai restaurants.
What about culturally, in general?
There is a lot of record and topics in this podcast about coffee, life outside, which
is very different.
I don't know because I think in New York, at least quite some life, it also happens
outside.
You go to restaurants, you have a lot of activities, so probably this is not so different in that
sense.
I suppose the way of going out and the way of doing things, it differs so much.
I mean, I've been to New York, but as a tourist, I never lived there.
So it's a big difference.
I went out in New York, but I suppose I wasn't in the most touristic places that one could
be.
That happens.
Yeah, that's normal.
Yeah, it's funny.
So before COVID, anytime I would come to just a lot of Europe, obviously not all of Europe,
but like certain parts of Europe, I was always struck by people being outside, particularly
in warm countries, obviously.
I don't think in Norway it's like that.
I was always really jealous of that because it's really nice.
It is something I really like about Greece.
People are out on the streets eating and drinking and hanging and everything is just outside.
New York is very outside in the sense of people are in parks, people are constantly doing
stuff, but until COVID, you didn't really have this atmosphere of people eating and
drinking on the street.
That changed with the pandemic because they opened up a lot of the laws and now post pandemic,
they actually kept that.
So it's actually kind of a nice change in New York now that it makes it more similar
to the vibe here in Athens that I like a lot.
The thing that I really like about Athens is that you see people of all different age
groups out and out quite late.
You don't see that in New York.
Many of the people that you see out are between 18 and 39 years old or maybe 45 because everyone's
kind of younger there.
But here you see people.
The majority of the plattias are full of old people in Norway and young people go there
after they finish work, but during the day it's...
But also late at night.
I feel like I see people that are in their sixties and seventies out at restaurants until
pretty decently laid out.
Why would you not?
If you don't need to go to work next day, well, I hope I would do that when I'm...
But it's not like that.
In the States, it's not like that at all.
I feel like...
No, I feel like we hide away our old people.
It's also a concept of, for example, I think this is also a mentality thing.
Where you live and grow and live in the same city for all your life, for example, and this
retirement thing, it's more like if you ever retired.
You arrive and you still live in the same apartment that you had for the whole year,
whatever.
Well, probably the concept of retirement in the United States is much more like, okay,
I worked in the city all my life and I'm planning to retire somewhere a little bit more calmer.
I don't know, I've never pictured, and probably it's also because of that, because the old
people in New York doesn't go out that often also.
But I also pictured New York as a city that is transitory until a certain age.
Some moment you say, "This is too much.
I'm 70 years old.
This city is way too much for the capacity that I have per year."
Yeah.
I think you're 100% right about that.
I think it actually happens long before you turn 70.
It usually happens when you're thinking about having kids.
That's the point where a lot of people are like, "I don't have the money to pay for the
space that I need to have kids.
There's not a lot of outdoor space for kids."
All of a sudden, you realize that you're living in a really big city with crime.
You just need to think about these or thinking about things in every way.
People I think, a lot of people leave around that time.
But you're also, yeah, 100% right that people in the States generally, that's why I think
that's why there's the trope about going to Florida.
People get old and go to Florida.
Oh, good old retirement in Florida.
Good.
My mom is actually retiring in upstate New York.
So, she's a little bit of a weirdo in that sense.
Still nice, Ariane.
Yeah.
No, she's going to have a nice retirement.
But you see, you have the plan of retiring outside of the big cities normally.
Yeah.
Here, you retire wherever you can probably.
Yeah.
It's also an economical reasons most probably.
Actually, if you compare it with that, and it's funny that you say like the age of kids
and everything.
If I ever think about having kids, definitely will never be in Athens, for example.
You're right.
Exactly.
It goes actually in the same direction.
Even if there is these people outside and whatever, it's a concrete, mass concrete block
this city.
There is spaces outside in the sense of squares and everything.
When it comes to green spaces, this city is lacking way too much in my opinion.
Or just sidewalks to push strollers on.
Yes.
It's not going to happen.
Obviously, people raise kids in Athens, but it just seems to me like hard.
It's not an easy city to do that in.
And neither is New York.
It's also not an easy city to do that in.
I've been here for three years.
The other day, I was surprised because it was the first time that I saw a blind person.
In the street.
I was like, it kind of makes sense because if there is a three in a one meter side path,
every three meters there is a three in the middle of the side path and you're a blind
person.
You're fucked.
Like it's literally what happens.
It's really complex to walk in this city being a fully functional person in all the senses.
It is difficult.
I had a knee injury some months ago.
It was a nightmare to walk around the city, the hills and every two meters a hole.
I really was missing a flat city like my prime port.
Just flat like a Holland.
Someone taking care of the fucking pavement on the streets, please.
I have to say I was kind of impressed when I moved here that they totally with you on
like you're following the blind path, you know, like that raised area and it's like
a tree rubs out of nowhere.
But I was impressed they haven't at all because they don't have that in New York.
I don't know how blind people function in New York at all.
I mean, maybe there's something there and I've just never noticed, but we certainly
don't have that like on the streets the way that Athens does.
But to your point, I've also almost never seen blind people walking around.
Or like disabled people and I will say New York is very good at that.
There's a lot of infrastructure for people with wheelchairs to get onto New York City
public buses and the metro or subway.
I've never seen someone in Athens in a wheelchair get on a public bus or the subway.
Metro.
Now I'm flipping it.
You don't need to switch your English for Metro subway.
The Greeks and the New Yorkers get pissed about that.
In New York, if you say Metro, people look at you like, but what?
Excuse you.
And here also, they get really specific about the differences between the metro, the trano,
the electric car and the trolley and the tram.
And if you get them mixed up, like Lord help you.
I mean, come on, you live in a country that literally has one line of trains.
So if you're complaining about trains, and sorry for the dark joke, but you have one
line and you put two trains in the opposite direction.
So I think you should be complaining about the train system, not about people calling
it wrong.
Wow.
But sure,
Trust me.
Improve the bus systems before and the buses itself and then we can talk about it.
Yeah.
There's a lot going on here.
It's a good life.
A lot to improve.
Of course.
I mean, they're just climbing out of the economic crisis, right?
They just got back to the GDP level.
They're supposed to get back to it this year that they were pre-crisis.
So, you know, billions of dollars paid back to the IMF, still billions need to be paid
back to the various Eurozone creditors.
I don't know.
I'm sure there's lots of tax evasion, lots of money going missing from the top.
So it's just like, it's kind of a wonder to me that anything happens at all.
But I totally understand, like coming from the standard of like, particularly organized
European cities, I can completely understand why people come to Athens and are like, "Are
we still in Europe?"
Are we sure?
And people are expecting Santorini out of Athens in the next year.
That's the other typical case of people like, "Oh, where are the White Houses with blue
roofs?"
Definitely not in Athens.
I don't know if you've seen the social media videos that are like when you live in Greece
and not Greece, like, I love those.
I've seen them so many times and I watch them every time.
You said also about timings, because I saw a couple of videos of yours making jokes about
American timings.
How are you dealing with that?
Because if the Mediterranean, we do something, it's doing things late, very late.
Yeah, so I definitely, so there are two aspects to that.
One is the spontaneity of it.
In New York, it's really difficult to have like spontaneous plans.
Like, I was really struggling there with like, everything is so, people's lives are so scheduled.
Everything is so scheduled out.
If you want to hang out with someone, you really need to ask them in advance.
And then if you hang out, the time that they give you is like, "I need to run in 55 minutes."
And you're like, "Okay, I'm sorry, you have exactly 55 minutes to have a drink right now?"
No, 54, no.
Exactly.
And like at the time, that all seemed normal because it was like, you know, when you only
swim in one particular water, like if that was like, okay, that's just how social life
happens.
And then when I moved here, it was like simultaneously a source of stress and a great relief.
Like when you would go and hang out with people and you're still hanging out like five hours
later.
You know, part of that to me is like, okay, I had not planned for this to take the entire
day, but okay, here we are.
And it's really lovely that people are like so generous with their time and are just like,
"Yeah, well, you wanted to hang out, so we're hanging out."
The other hand, I was just like, "I'm alone here, I need to do something.
Nothing else to do, like bring me another beer."
Exactly, have another coffee, like whatever.
Coffee for five hours, it's only one coffee.
It's true, that is true.
So there was that and then like what you're saying before where it's just like the entire
clock has shifted backwards and I've never been able to adjust to that.
Like my first couple of years here I was partying a lot because I was new, I was single, yeah,
you party.
But even then I just couldn't, it's like it's just not my natural clock to like go out at
eleven or like the Greeks probably do go out at two a.m.
Eleven is early.
Yeah, exactly.
Eleven is late for me, okay?
Eleven is late.
Two a.m. is crazy.
Anything past two a.m. is like, this is my whole weekend.
Yeah, I know.
I have a good friend who says, "Even though we enter to the club very late, nothing good
happens after three a.m. and that's because in reality you are drinking since ten.
The only thing is that you are doing it to the friend's house or someone else or at dinner
or whatever and then you go out at twelve or one or two."
Yes, it's true that you're entering the club at one or two.
But when you are entering the club because the prices inside of the club are also higher,
you're already fucking gross when you arrive there.
So normally you have drink enough and then with one or two hours of being in the club.
And that's also very linked to we are probably, or Greeks and Spanish people now will kill
me because they know how to dance or whatever.
But generally Greeks are not the best dancers in the world.
Oh, the Greeks are so bad.
They just don't dance.
I don't understand why.
I really love this concept of going to a club and everyone is listening.
Yes, they just stand there listening to the music.
And I just like, yes, you know, with the speaker at home, you can't do this without paying
20 euros to drink here, you know.
The other issue here is that I find it very difficult to find clubs that don't pretty
much just play Greek music.
So it's like there is some there are.
It's not that they don't exist, but I've had a hard time.
Then it's too touristy or too whatever.
It's, it's difficult to find a nice spot in the city to go out.
It's true.
I mean, it really depends on which kind of music you are in.
Yeah, I think the easiest is loving techno and electric music, which I'm not in the mood
at all, but there is no lyrics or there is no Greek music.
That is definitely one of the solutions.
If you really like electronic music, which I like, I don't really, the other solution
is to get with a Greek program, which I tried.
I learned a bunch of the Greek songs.
I got with it.
That definitely helped, but it's still just not, it's just not my vibe.
You went in Bazookias every, every weekend.
I went to Bazookia twice and I will never go ever again.
Maybe I would go to one of the like really traditional ones, you know, the more like
a dinner situation, but to like the big like pot.
It's also just like, it's just not for me.
I went once as a cultural experience twice because I was too dumb to learn from the first
time and that's it.
I can get it.
So before we jump to the second part, if it's okay for you, I always do like a little bit
of like these or that questions.
Like if you have to choose what would you stick with?
New York or Greek food?
New York because it's everything, every country you have ever thought of or not thought of,
they have that in New York.
So like New York and they have Greek food.
Not very amazing Greek food, but they have it.
The weather here or there?
Here.
So no snowy winters in New York.
It doesn't really snow there anymore in the winter, you know, like if it was like some
beautiful white Christmas moment, like maybe, but I'm like a sun creature.
I'm a beach creature, so the heat here is oppressive and it's rough, but I prefer the weather here.
Like lifestyle in America or here?
Here.
More chill style.
Lifestyle, I prefer the culture in New York, but I prefer the lifestyle here.
That was one of the questions, like culturally wise also.
Western New York all the way.
I just, I am a born and bred American.
I have a very American mindset.
A lot of people have asked me since I moved here, like, so do you feel like, you know,
like you're a Greek here?
I'm like, no, I feel like really absurdly American here.
Like very aware of my own American-ness.
But I like, I, yeah, we didn't touch on this, but I can't like, New York is a very, very
open minded liberal place.
So like to come into a rather conservative culture here was like definitely shocking
for me and sorry to say, I prefer the New York.
I feel you.
Missed a little bit the freedom mindset of Barcelona in that sense.
Yeah.
Is it more open minded than Navas?
Three thousand times more open-minded than here.
I mean here, whether or not they have a big influence still of like patriarchy, the church,
being involved in politics are still very old fashioned.
And it's, you can feel it a lot.
Like I never felt that Athens or like whatever, it's an unsafe first place to live.
Even being a woman, I don't feel it like too much of like a hassle or whatever.
At least when I talk with my girlfriend about it, she feels safe here in a lot of senses,
which Barcelona sometimes is not the case.
But I think the cultural circles and the political mindset of Barcelona, it's much more open-minded
and much more like, I don't know, I want to call it liberal because it's not really liberal,
but it's more like, with bands a little bit more in terms of LGBTQ community, in terms
of feminism, in terms of like, you notice that a lot, especially with the conversations with people.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah, same.
I would say like, as far as the street harassment and safety goes, that I feel safer here than
in New York, which I feel like is backed up by stats, just flat stats.
But I get harassed with much greater frequency here than in New York.
I feel like there's a greater level of cultural awareness in New York about that, where here,
it's just people like ogle at you and make kissing noises.
Like, it's very...
The cut talk is higher here.
Yeah.
You don't feel as much the pressure of like, insecurity level as in New York.
Like, in New York, there's always like, you really don't know if someone is armed, like,
you really don't know if someone has a weapon, you really don't like...
It's something really bad could happen.
I feel like less so here.
Until you go to the Philippines.
No, no.
Maybe Crete.
So wild stuff in Crete.
The only part that has never invaded in this country was money and we all know the reason.
They are crazy as fuck.
That is true.
I am thinking a lot about Athens, like, in the wilds of Greece might be a completely different...
There is people armed.
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
I just, I remember reading about like, this was years ago, like, some guy went into one
of the government body offices, I don't remember, somewhere in Greece and he was like, armed
with a machete and I was just kind of laughing to myself.
In the States, they would not be armed with a machete, you know.
They would be armed with a fucking assault rifle.
Yes.
So.
Which it happened also in the capital.
They entered with assault rifles.
That was a thing.
It happened also.
That was a thing that happened.
Yeah, I can't deny that.
Not my topic.
Cool.
So if it is good for you, we jump to the second part of the episode.
Okay.
Pole dancing.
That is a whole new field for me.
The expert, the art of pole dancing.
So welcome back.
We were just talking about your life and how you arrived here, but in between there,
I think in the introduction we talked about your, what is now a hobby and back in the
time you were doing semi-professionally or pole dancing, it's a whole genre.
I think it's going up.
I, at least, I don't know, here in Greece, probably not, but I have quite some friends
in all over Europe who are now starting doing pole dancing and everything.
It's something that some years ago, a lot of people didn't even know what it was or
related too much to strip clubs and not as a sport or a discipline of anything, very
sexual, blinded thing.
Yeah.
How does it come that you...
That I started it?
So I was a journalism major in school and for one of our final projects for this one
class we had to do like a long form story.
So we were going around the class like pitching what we wanted our story to be and I was like,
I wanted to write about ballet because I did ballet until I was six-sixteen also.
I was hoping to go professionally into being a ballet dancer.
That didn't work out in a shocking kind of event.
Anyway, so I wanted to write about ballet but the girl in front of me that was also
pitching pitched about ballet and in journalism class it's really not a good look if you double
pitch something.
So I was like, okay, let me just think of something on the spot and I had just so happened
to have watched a YouTube video the previous day of like one of the OG American pole dancers,
Janine Butterfly, which will mean probably absolutely nothing to people listening to
this podcast but will mean something to any pole dancer who's watching.
She's like one of the really big first pioneers of pole dancing in the United States and it
was like the most incredible video I've ever seen.
I was like, this is insane.
She's so flexible, so strong.
I had never seen people doing that before.
This was like 15 years ago at this point and so I pitched it.
I was like, I'm going to write about pole dancing because at the time in the states
it was going through this like surge of popularity and that's how I started taking classes because
I went to do it for the journalism project.
So I like brought a friend with me and we took the class and then I was like, I really
love this.
I hooked on it and I just kept going.
I had a dance background like I just mentioned.
It was really nice for me because I had done ballet until I was about 16 or 17 and then
I hadn't danced between then and when I was in school.
So it was nice for me to like find another dance outlet.
In a very different way.
So yeah, I got like super into it.
I got good enough to start teaching at the studio that I was going to.
I did a certification program through there and then I started teaching in other studios,
competed a little bit, started performing.
Me and my friends in New York, we started this, we call it an open mic night for pole
dancers, called Pole Play New York.
It's been running for seven or eight years now, it's like one of the like sort of like
multi-year running shows for pole in New York.
So if you're in the New York pole soon you know it.
So very heavily evolved until I moved here.
Nice.
So this project that you built, it was more like a kind of show or it was a way of like
getting people to also try it out, more like a...
So it was both.
So the thing about pole dancing in New York at the time was that if you are not a professional
pole dancer, like like hardcore competing and getting gigs and performing in that kind of
way, the only space you really had to perform and like even just like for your friends to
come watch was in a studio space.
Like so you're in a dance studio and it's just...
It's like you're watching a recital, right?
Which is nice.
There's nothing wrong with recitals, right?
They're nice but it's just a, it's a different vibe.
What we wanted to do and this was originally my friend Gab's like her, her bright idea and
then she brought me and two other friends into it.
She was like, I want to put on a show that like anyone can dance in.
You don't need to be professional.
You don't need to be like amazing.
It's literally open to anybody who signs up.
But we wanted to be in like a bar or a club.
So it's like, it's in a much different environment than a studio.
So that was the big idea.
We started holding it at a club in New York.
It was like really popular there for a few years and we changed venues.
Still popular.
We had to stop it a little bit during COVID.
But that's, that's how it is.
Like now it's like, it's really well known in the pole scene.
So like people know to go and sign up for it and it's just, it's like, it's really fun.
Afterward we have an open pole jam.
So like anyone that wants to get on the pole can get on the pole.
Isn't that extremely dangerous?
I don't know.
No, because you know, people are, people have survival instincts, like no one gets on the
pole.
So people think it's going to be dangerous, but once you get on a pole, you realize that
you don't know what you're doing.
You don't know even how to be dangerous because you don't know how to climb.
You don't know how to create a bed down.
I mean, the good part is that normally you start from the floor.
They don't hang you up there.
How are you going to get up there?
You don't know how to get up there.
Like a monkey.
Yeah, it doesn't work.
Actually men always want to climb up there like a monkey.
That's not how you can climb.
But it's really fun and like the sort of like pride and joy of all that for us is like on
the one hand, it's a really great space for pole dancers.
On the other hand, we get the feedback from the audience all the time.
They're like the space, like the atmosphere that you've created is like amazing.
Like, it's so supportive.
People are so happy to be there.
It's very open.
Like, it's just like the dives and the feels are really, really fun and really, really
awesome.
We're very proud of that show, the four of us.
So Janine Butterfly is the name?
Yeah.
Is that her real name or it's an artistic name?
I just like, is it common to put like punch names to your artistic like being a pole dancer?
Or it was more like a hiding thing at some point?
You know, I think her real first name is Janine.
Butterfly is definitely not her real last name.
I don't know what her real last name is actually.
It really depends.
Like a lot of people in the pole dancing world have stage names.
Because a lot of people don't want to be like, this is my first and last name.
Have it be on the internet and like if they work a corporate job, if they have a conservative
fan, like all the different reasons.
But there are also like, there's plenty of professionals I know that just go by their
first and last names.
So I suppose it's a little bit how concerned about your circles or how your circles are
and how accepted you are around it.
Because at the end, I suppose there is a lot of taboo around it.
It's still very much linked mentally to, especially for conservative people and people who doesn't
understand it as a form of art, but more like on a strip club or like, I don't know, sexual
dance in that sense.
I suppose it's still there.
This whole mentality.
Yeah, no.
100%.
But to be fair, like at least in the United States, like those lines are, it's a very controversial
issue in the pole community.
Because you can't get around the fact that pole dancing started from strip clubs.
Although there are people in the States and elsewhere that because of the taboo, they really
don't want to be associated with that.
So they try to create this kind of like alternate history where they're like, actually, pole
dance comes from the Indian pole dancing macabre, which is like this big wooden pole that like,
it's like really unrelated.
Or like this other thing.
You're like, come on.
Like, that's not where that's not where it came from.
You just look at the history of like, who started that first pole dancing studios in
the US, like most of them were strippers.
So if you want to be part of something, just be part of it.
Like that comes with risks and downfalls.
But that's just what it is.
So but it's a big thing in the pole community about like people on the one hand wanting it
to be respected as an art and a sport, which it is, and trying to distance themselves from
like the strip club roots and the strip club aspects of it.
And at the same time, there's also a lot of people in the US that are very connected to
that they might not be a professional stripper or professional sex worker, but like, absolutely,
there's an aspect of it that like they're getting in touch with their sexuality, they're
feeling really good about themselves.
Like you're wearing giant heels half the time, you know, like it's just kind of part of the
game.
Yeah, that's also the dangerous part, the physically dangerous part.
In Europe, actually I shouldn't speak for Europe, because I haven't, I don't have a good sense
of it, like all over the continent.
In Greece, like, it's much, much more like sport-y.
We compete, we're very serious.
You know, a lot of the pole studio owners here are professional, professional professionals.
They compete, they have the schools, they'll dance with the heels and stuff, but like they're
not also dancing at the club.
Like some, there are some, but it's definitely not as common here as it is in the states.
If you're a professional stripper and you do pole dancing at clubs, and strip club,
it makes a lot of sense that you try to do pole dancing, like you take lessons or you
just go to these lessons that I suppose that you encounter a lot of people, or some people
who are really like doing it because they want to bring it to their, to their strip
club dances, which makes sense, because at the end comes from that.
So how do you live with the combination of people of like taking it from an artistic
perspective versus someone who is taking it for a professional reason?
Yeah, for me personally, like I love all of it.
Like I don't, I've had like my own issues with it insofar as like problems at work, like
within my professional life, or like people seeing stuff that I post on the internet and
sending it to my family, like I had, like you kind of have to be willing to take the shit.
But I just think like every aspect about pole is like awesome, like I'm just a kind of abject
fan of all aspects.
I think people that try to like silo it for themselves, I think are doing themselves a
disservice and doing a lot of other people a disservice because they're just not being
honest about like the full kind of flowering of the thing.
I think there are also people that like, for instance, there are people that are really
into it as a sport and want to compete with it, and that's just where their energy is.
But that doesn't mean that they have kind of bad feelings about anything else.
Like that's also like totally fine.
I think the issues that come out a lot in the community are when someone is like, "I
am not a stripper, okay?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and you're like, "Well, okay, yeah, a lot
of us aren't strippers.
A lot of us are not professional sex workers, but like kind of like the lady doth protest
too much, like just you've chosen to get into something that has this in it.
If you didn't want to get into that, you should have done like aerial hoop or like aerial
silks or like polka dancing or whatever.
Whatever you want to do, salsa, I don't know.
What about clotheswise?
I suppose there is much of it like because of the end, if you wear too much of like places
where you need to put pressure and everything, it gets slippery and therefore grip, it's
not there.
So I suppose a lot of the fact that there is less clothes in pole dancing, it's also
due to technical reasons around it, no?
Yeah.
Well, yes and no.
Technically nowadays, because there are, it's a small portion, but like there are some,
for instance, Muslim pole dancers and things like that.
They have created like pants and shirts and stuff that will stick to the pole.
But that's like a new technological development.
What you said is 100% correct, which is like, yeah, you need your skin out.
Like material does not stick to a pole.
Like if you want to grab on your elbow or your thigh, there's a lot of holes on the
thigh.
There's a lot of holes where like you're on like the back of your leg in weird ways.
Like you need to have your skin out and it can definitely be like potentially dangerous
if like you're, you think you're going to grip something and you're not going to grip
something and your head's back this way.
Exactly, you can fall down directly in your head.
Or like, or strip, like, like get something stuck in the pole and then the other part
is slipping and you can fuck up elbows or like.
Yeah.
Like, so that's on the one hand, like that's a hundred percent true.
Like you need to have your skin out and it's basically impossible to do pole if you're
not in at least like short shorts and even short shorts sometimes.
Like don't give you the grip that you really need and like a sports bra.
That being said, sometimes I feel like people ask the questions is like there's a sometime
an attitude of like, oh you're not wearing that to look like a hoe, you're wearing that
because of safety issues.
And it's like, well yeah, but also like maybe I kind of also want to look like a hoe because
it looks hot.
You know, like there is that aspect.
A lot of self-esteem also in this sense.
Yeah.
Like people, like you, there's a kind of a joke that like if you like put a bunch of
photos of someone like lined up like as they progress through pole like day one versus
like three years later day one, they're always like in these like athletic shorts.
And like those heavy Adidas sports bra.
And then you like fast forward like three years later and they're in like this micro-thong.
Final injury, next level.
You're like, oh yeah.
300 euros a piece.
Yes of course.
Yes.
Okay.
And that's like part of like, that's part of the fun, you know, like that's part of
the like, I don't know, like it's almost like a fashion show sometimes.
Like respecting your body also, and like, yeah, it's a lot of like accepting yourself and
like getting mad at injury, which is also like.
And getting mad.
I hope you get mad at that.
No, but it's true.
It also because your body changes.
It's expensive though.
It is expensive.
But yeah, your body changes, like you get more comfortable with it.
Like it's a whole process.
I think that's why like women get very into pole dancing, like very emotionally and like
kind of psychologically into pole dancing, the way that it's not as common to get into
like, like I said, like aerial hoop.
Lots of people are really good at aerial hoop and they love aerial hoop, but there's not
this kind of like stickiness to it I think with, particularly usually with women.
Also obviously there are male pole dancers too.
I suppose the proportion is very unbalanced right now.
Yeah.
But like how different it's like the techniques and the style on a pole dancer, male than
female, like, because I suppose it's not the same kind of posture.
It's not the same kind of movement.
It's completely different.
So in pole dancing like, most, not all, most of the men who do it are gay men.
So a lot of the style that you see on women is also a style that gay men are doing.
Like there's lots of gay men that'll dance with the big heels and like it's a really
similar style.
Pretty much queer environment or?
What do you mean?
It's not, it's not only like the way of doing, but also the way of dressing, like doing a
whole queer performance in the sense of like using that as a, as an art, queer.
Yeah.
Like, like, like you mean the kind of like queer representation?
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure.
So it's just in a technical sense that like, it's not like, for instance, in ballet, if
you watch ballet, what the women do and what the men do, have very specific roles.
Like very separate, like they do different moves, they wear different shoes, they do
different tricks, they just completely different.
And pole, there's like that demarcation isn't there like that.
There's some differences because men tend to have more strength in their chest and like,
there are tricks that like really beginner male pole dancers can do really easily.
And I'm like, God damn it, you know, just because they have them.
But then this tiny legs doesn't hold.
Also the hair is not helpful, the man hair on the legs is not helpful.
Anyway, there's not that like strict line, like, like the, the, the tends to be similar,
except for there are some like very rare examples, particularly European, Russian, male straight
pole dancers.
They kind of do have a different style in that it's like very acrobatic, very flippy,
very like really intense, like strength stuff that it's just a lot harder for women to do.
Rigid military style.
Not so much rigid, but more like hardcore, like hardcore style.
I know how this is a flack.
They do some crazy shit though.
Like there's some famous, there's a Spanish guy, greatest name, there's a Russian guy,
I'm thinking of it.
Like they're always just fucking doing crazy stuff.
Like they're jumping off a boat and like flipping onto a pole and you're like, okay.
Fly the boat.
I don't know.
The Spanish guy is, he does some cool stuff.
He does some cool stuff.
He just broke up with a Spanish girlfriend who's also an amazing pole dancer.
They were like pole power couple for a while.
I feel it's like a kind of world where everyone knows everything and even the small details.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, that's dangerous.
That's very dangerous.
It's also like because of social media these days that like I can personally talk about
people I know in New York because that's my crowd and I know them.
And then there's also like this whole social media world where like we can all talk about
people that we've never met and like, but we know who they are.
Have you heard they break up?
Yeah.
Why pole dancing?
Do you hear about like this guy, they didn't like how his competition sports came out?
Like that's the whole.
Oh gosh.
Okay.
How does it work though?
Like do you kind of create your own circle of people that you go competition wise or
you present competitions individually?
Like it is more like in a sport of like, even if it of course the dance, most of them always
individual, you go with the kind of clan or like a kind of a group of a same studio called
whatever and you have this fancy name like a little bit like, it sounds a little bit
like the dance competitions at the end of hip hop and are like, they tend to be like this.
Yeah.
You have your own crew of people that you always dance with and you have your routines
with them and you have your exercises with them.
Is it the same in pole dancing?
Yes and no.
Like you, like when you go to a competition, you do tend to go like with your other studio
people, but you don't tend to have group dances in pole the way that you do like, like you
said, in hip hop in competition anyway.
You might have like a showcase where you have a bunch of people at once dancing, but it's
just like the technicality of pole.
It's very hard to have a group act because how many poles do you have on the stage?
Usually you have two and it's hard to put up more than that.
Now it's more meaning in the sense of like someone dances and then you finish your act
and directly the other person enters into the pole and that's like a routine.
They don't do that and I don't know why.
It could be kind of fun.
Like if you see breakdance for example, they do the circle of battle, one dances first
and then the other responds and the other thing.
And I don't know if pole dance is also the competition, it's in that sense like that
one response to the other or like you are really competing with other people, like individually
or as a group of people, how do you do the points for example?
It's more like ice skating style where it's like one person does their thing and then
the next person does their thing and then you all get graded and the person with the
top score wins.
It's more like that style.
I like the breakdance idea though.
Like there's no real reason why you couldn't do that and like separate out like studio
versus studio or something like that.
That would be fun.
I'm into that idea.
Let's hold that.
But no, that's generally not how it's set up.
They do usually have like you can do doubles categories sometimes but it's usually an individual
and they give you like every competition has a different scoring standard.
So that's another thing because it's such an underground and like small thing, it's not
like an ice skating where there's a central body and they're like this is how you score,
it's not like that.
So like different competitions might place different value on different things like difficulty
of tricks, like originality of combinations, like flow and rhythm.
So there is no official organization or standard anywhere?
Anywhere.
But what?
One that's trying to like they're trying to get pole dancing into the Olympics.
There's been, I forget what they're called but they're trying to get into the Olympics.
And I'm sure then there would be a standard of scoring.
And there's another like very, the biggest competition organization is called Pole Spore
Organization and they run competitions like literally over the world and they have their
own standards.
It's not like, it's a very particular, like carving out in the industry, it's not like
everyone follows their standards.
It's just, it happens to be a large organization but there's no, it's a very decentralized
thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
What about the originality that you were saying in that sense?
Like how much is grabbing something that someone else has done before versus embedding something
in yours in your own inside of pole dancing?
Like when you arrive to a level that you are competing and you are semi-professional, etc.
Do you really invent new dances or?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like you really have to be really good but yes, there are people, particularly because
of sport.
Now it's a little bit harder to like properly invent a new trick.
Now it's like, there's enough people and like, it happens everywhere.
Like I may not ask, I mean, everywhere in every sector right now, everything has been gone
before you.
So just reinventing a little bit or changing a little bit of what someone else has already
done but how much is like, it's more like in the idea of like, okay, this can be linked
to this other thing.
I can do these two things together and this will be better or?
Well, so back in the day, it really was like people inventing like literal tricks.
Like I mentioned, Janine Butterfly, like there's tricks named after her.
And there are famous pole dancers that like there are tricks named after them because
they are the ones that did it first and that wasn't even too long ago.
That was probably like even seven, ten years ago and even like maybe five years ago, people
were still doing that.
Now as you say, it's more people looping things together in unusual ways.
People if you have like I said, extreme strength or extreme flexibility, you can do things
on a part of the spectrum that like most pole dancers can't.
Yeah and just like, yeah, like the linking of things together is also kind of tough,
tough to do like tough to make up new things.
If you're not like at a fairly high level and like fairly professional.
And there's also like people a lot of times when people think about pole dancing, they're
thinking about like tricks in the air, which is totally fair thing to think about.
But there's also like a lot of people being inventive and innovative with styles that
you see like around the pole, like not on the floor also, but there are a lot of styles
where like you don't do a lot of inverts, you don't like really go up the pole that
much, but you're it's primarily dancing in heels on the floor and on the floor, but like
you're standing on the floor.
And like choreo with that in different styles and there's a whole thing now called edgework
that was made up like not too long ago.
And so there's still like, it's still growing and developing.
But as you said, I think like the more people do it and the bigger it gets, the less that's
gonna happen as time goes on.
Makes sense.
What are the core skills?
I mean, you said already flexibility, strength, that's for sure.
I think strength is a big part of it, probably, you know, also like holding and must be hardcore
to like muscle wise and preparation wise.
How like do you need to be like fit, I assume in some way like, but you prepare outside
of the pole for doing pole?
So when I started to pull like I had like absolutely no strength at all, like stick
thin and like no muscles.
And like most people when they start pulling, do not like it's some, of course, some people
come into it, they're they're already a dancer in another way or like maybe they've got a
really strong doing crossfit or rock climbing or whatever.
So that those are those cases that most people who start pole started from like absolute
zero and you build the flexibility and the strength as you go, which is like also like,
oh, part of the whole process.
There's lots of goals to run after.
If you are doing this is a mistake that I see a lot of people make and that I made myself,
but if you're doing pole more than maybe once a week and you're only doing pole as your
exercise is actually really bad for your body because you're putting your body in positions
that are like very unnatural and asking it to do strength based things in positions that
are highly unnatural and your body is like why are you doing this now?
Yeah.
So you really should be cross training.
Most pole dancers don't do that, but you should be like going to the gym or like doing other
forms of exercise that are going to like make sure that your body is protected because,
because again, it's such a new kind of fields.
Lots of people are injured.
I injured myself like forever basically.
I'm going to be chronically injured.
Body has injuries in pole if you get to a certain level, which I feel like is the case
for like most professionals and most sports have injuries, but I feel like it happens
in pole at like a level where like you shouldn't be getting injured, where you're like really
still kind of a beginner intermediate and like, you know, like people are getting injured
way too early.
Because forcing the body probably also without doing any other preparation.
Yeah, and people don't have a good like they see things on the internet.
They want to attain certain trick or like, you know, that means there's a certain kind
of level of pole dancer and they're, they're not ready to get there.
And the bad thing is to the teachers.
Not all teachers are made the same.
Not all teachers are like properly instructed about how to teach pole, which is a whole
another issue.
So they'll encourage students to get into things that they're really not ready to get
into.
Like when I was teaching I was really huge on like if you can't invert by yourself, meaning
like if you can't deadlift your body, like your hips over your head, you have no business
being in an inverted position.
Like you should be able to do that by yourself.
Whereas here in Greece, like the attitude about that is very different.
Like if you, if a teacher can like get, like hold your weight up or if you like kick and
like grab a foot to like get your body up above your head, like that's totally acceptable.
Which like for me, it was a very like, okay, like that's not how I would do things, but
I, it's not my studio, so.
How did it affect moving here?
Pole dancing, because at the end you were saying that the scene in New York, you had
to quite nice scene build up there.
Yeah.
Here, it's not the most common thing.
As far as it looks like, did you stop?
Like, did you continue?
How was it?
So the transition for pole for me was probably like the hardest and the most disappointing
transition that I've had moving to Greece.
I will say before I say all of this, like there are exceptions to all of this information.
Like there's a studio that I go to pretty frequently in Amalukpi called Pole-Sense where
like a lot of the instruction there is amazing and like they're very good at what they do.
I taught there for a little while, in Greek, which was crazy.
But anyway, I have had a really hard time here because like the standards of how pole
is taught here is like very, very, very different as I was talking about before.
I've been to pole classes here with heels, so it's like an additional, like your body
should really be warmed up where the teacher like doesn't even leave the class through
a warm up.
Like, I'm sorry, you want people to do this cold?
Like completely cold?
Just like jump?
Like, no.
It feels really unnatural.
Like any flexibility, like even just a simple flexibility exercise is like absolutely any
sport that requires a little bit of flexibility you would do warm up.
Of course.
Like literally warm your body up.
Like it's particularly if you're above 20 nothing years old.
Some of us are not 19 anymore.
So that's been hard.
I really just don't agree with the teaching methods here and the teaching style, things
like that.
And it's also just the community is a lot different here.
In New York, like the studios were first and foremost like community spaces, meaning like
people were really in community with one another.
Really supportive, really positive, and like very just like, you made friends there.
Here, I don't know if it's because I'm not Greek.
And like that was that's also been an issue.
But anyway, it just doesn't have the same vibe.
It doesn't have the same feel.
People go there and then leave and that's all.
Yes.
And they don't like in New York, it was very, this probably seems like a small thing, but
in New York, usually after a class, like the teacher puts on a song and they're like let's
all freestyle together and like see, you know, do the combo that we learn or whatever, whatever.
And so there was something there was an artistic expression and like an inner thing that like
went along with the class or is here.
It feels very like I'm here to learn a skill or do a sport or to work out or like whatever,
which is like, great.
It's just not what you're looking for.
It's not a community based thing.
Yeah, it's not what I'm used to.
And I really, really, really, really miss that.
But you're still doing it, that's something.
I am still doing it.
Like I said, I've had also a lot of trouble because I'm really trying to learn Greek.
And a lot of the times when I go places, people want to speak to me in English, sometimes it's
like a tick, like, you know, they hear an accent or like I stumble over, you know, my Greek
is obviously not perfect.
I stumble over something or whatever, they go into English or they're like, this is a
great opportunity for me to practice my English, where I'm like, I'm trying to fit in, like
I want to be here and experience the class how everyone else is experiencing the class.
I can understand you just fine.
I can ask you questions just fine.
Like we don't need to be speaking English, like can we not?
And that's been like a very, very difficult thing because like I feel like a zoo animal
because they'll like talk to the class and then turn to me and say it in English.
And I'm like, I understood you, like you don't need to repeat that.
You know, so I'm still doing it, but it's hard because I feel like now I'm doing it
to try to maintain what I had, which I haven't.
I'm like far, far, far below what I used to be able to do versus in New York it was like
very internally motivated.
Like I got so much joy out of it.
I always wanted to go to polo class.
I was there like constantly.
It's here, I kind of feel like I'm pushing myself like, okay, you're going to be upset
if you like lose all of your skills.
So yeah.
Yeah, I know the feeling.
Yeah, okay.
You've had a similar experience.
Yeah, I mean, like futsal, which is indoor football versus five.
The level here it's lower.
I got the injury now.
You also get older.
Things got a little bit more complex and it's like you lose a little bit the motivation
that you had 100% when you were in a country where it was more common, where you had more
friends instead of the team.
This kind of stuff happens.
Yeah, like you said, you also want to go and like see your people.
It's different when your people aren't there.
Nothing to complain about this year.
Like I have a wonderful team with wonderful people who accepted me really quick.
I mean, that sounds I was really, really lucky because it felt like really easy.
That's nice.
It's a little bit sad.
Probably my last season here, I had this knee injury.
It was the end of this season.
I don't know if the career in general.
Oh man, I'm sorry.
It's what it is.
Well, if I can give you a pep talk, I also thought I had a career ending injury when
I was in New York and like I still have it and it's still a problem, but it's more manageable
than it used to be.
I just had to go on a long journey of PT and all that stuff.
No, I think like, I mean, I'm going a lot into physio and then it will not probably not be
the end of career.
It will be just like a slow down.
I mean, I played professionally for some years and being at that level, I cannot maintain
that.
I'm relaxing a little bit and maybe taking other things in.
That's okay.
Yeah, that is okay.
It's just a different phase of life, you know, and it will open up new doors.
Yeah, definitely.
Talking about tips, like any tip to anyone who wants to start poling, not only here in
Greece, but if you think about New York or whatever.
Yeah.
I think like, don't be afraid to.
I think people have a similar conception in their mind as what you asked about, like,
do you need to be strong before you go?
Or do you know?
And the answer is no.
How much you are, it doesn't matter if you haven't gone to the gym or the exercise class
in five years.
That's how I started.
I hadn't done anything in years and most people start like that.
So if it's something that, like, piques your interest for whatever reason, like, just go
do it.
And I'm complaining about the atmosphere here, but it is, like, generally speaking, like,
in particularly in the States, like a very welcoming, open, like, everybody is welcome
kind of community.
Nice.
Well, with that, if there is anything else that you would say, maybe using a little bit
to do promotion, I think you are in social media in Athens.
Emma in Athens.
Yeah, I had an exciting TikTok account for a while, I was posting on TikTok and it was,
like, much more successful than I ever thought it would be.
And then I got scared and people were bringing it to me online.
So I stopped.
But if I ever started again, TikTok and Instagram, Emma in Athens and yeah, like that's it.
Cool.
Thank you so much for your time and for accepting, again, the invitation, letting the space,
doing it.
Thanks for having me on.
It was a pleasure.
As always, we are on Instagram also as experts, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, for whatever
reason I have zero views in all the videos because I think TikTok gets tired of me.
Twitter now called X blocked my account.
So yeah, everything is going really well.
Is that so?
Yeah, I have no idea why, but I'm suspended and I can't post anything.
So I will see.
I will deal with Elon Musk at some point, I suppose.
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