Medea Karalis

I met him at the worst possible moment—literally as I was wrestling with a souvlaki wrap that had exploded onto my dress. We were both waiting for the night bus in downtown Thessaloniki, Greece, and he just stood there watching me try to dab tzatziki off my chest with a receipt. “You’re losing the battle,” he said. I looked up, deadpan, and replied, “I already surrendered.”

I’m 26, and I work in a bookstore near Kamara. My love life had been uneventful for months—mostly bad Tinder dates, the kind where you fake a bathroom emergency just to escape. But this guy, Nikos, wasn’t from an app. He was real, unfiltered, and standing in front of me wearing mismatched socks and holding a helmet with cat stickers. He had just finished a shift as a food delivery driver and smelled faintly of oregano and gasoline.

He asked if I wanted to split a cab instead of waiting. I said no. Then the bus didn’t come. After twenty minutes of silence and tzatziki stains drying into my dress, I caved. The cab ride was chaotic—he insisted on playing ‘90s Greek pop and dramatically lip-syncing to every word. I laughed so hard I forgot about the mess on my dress.

We started seeing each other. Our dates were never normal. The second time, we got locked inside a cemetery after hours because I thought it would be “romantic” to walk among the statues. On our fourth date, I broke his kitchen faucet trying to impress him with my “plumbing skills.” He called it performance art.

Six months later, we’re still together. He still wears mismatched socks. I still can’t eat souvlaki without staining something. We argue about whether bougatsa should be sweet or savory (it’s sweet, obviously), and he still insists on singing badly in the shower.

It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s probably not for everyone. But it’s ours—and somehow, it works.