Rubin Asher Smith

A Day Trip to Lake Vouliagmeni (December 3rd, 2025)

A woman is humming in the common space now and I feel very calmed by her, though she doesn’t know me and I don’t know her. Or maybe I’m just easily calmable right now because I hardly got any sleep last night; there’s no insulation in my room and it must’ve been as cold as it was right outside my window, if not somehow colder. I awoke every hour and a half—if you could even call my shivering dips out of wakingness ‘sleep’—and I finally had to put on my pants and winter jacket just to keep from freezing. What definitely didn’t help is the fact that I’m sick and have a sort of baseline chill in my bones. It’s like that feeling when you’re so cold that you’re not willing to get up from under your blankets for any reason at all, even if it would mean putting on some extra layers and getting a little warmer. That must be that inner kind of chill that a fever gives you. That being said I don’t feel totally febrile, but on my way to Lake Vouliagmeni today (at the transfer bus stop between my first hour-long bus ride and the second, hour-&-a-half long bus ride) I coughed up a glob of green phlegm, one that could mean a little pneumonia is accumulating somewhere. Or whatever the reason, those two cigarettes I smoked last night at that bar definitely didn’t do me any good. Beginner’s luck—a pneumonia on my first try. Not worth the thirty seconds of head-buzz per cigarette.

What I also saw at that ~twenty minute wait: a horsefly on the road was walking along normally, but as soon as he tried to fly he’d flip right over onto his back and just wiggle there upside-down on the asphalt for a few seconds before flipping himself back over onto his feet. He’d take another few steps and then do another little hopping maneuver to start his flight, but then would invariably flip over onto his back once again. I think one of his wings must’ve been broken. There was an easy metaphor right there on the surface about repeated, failed attempts at a new life.

Still I wondered after watching him for a bit thusly: should I just stomp on him? It’d be a mercy kill. Essentially the problem was that I don’t know what he’s thinking. He probably wants to live just as much as I do—the question is, am I, as a ‘higher’ life form, in the position to override his will to live in order to diminish/end his suffering? I’ve got too little information here, and all the information that I did receive (namely, his repeated attempts at flight) actually points me to the exact opposite conclusion. I should definitely not kill him. I watched him for a while, didn’t stomp him, and in the end my bus came and ran him over. Did he die? I don’t know. I left it up to fate instead, the great knower of all things.

(On a corkboard in the common room in my hostel there’s an Emerson quote written in French: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” I thought it was from his essay ‘Self-Reliance’ but turns out its from ‘Art.’ I went back and read some of Self-reliance though and damn: “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” Excellent.)

That second bus took me down to Lake Vouliagmeni; our route was almost entirely by the sea. The lake was bordered on three out of four sides by high cliffs, and the last side was a deck covered in lounge chairs and tables. A digital thermometer rose out of the water and read in white LED’s: 21˚C. So obviously that number didn’t mean much to me and I dipped my hand in. Too cold, 21˚C was. I lay down on my lounge chair still feeling a touch febrile and tried to warm up under intermittent rays of sunshine.

Beside me were two Asian-looking-Russian-speaking women. Possible ethnicities I thought of: Kazakhstani, Mongolian, straight-up Russian, Kyrgyzstani, or straight-up Chinese. They were tall, both were smoking cigarettes, and they were severely happy appearing. Maybe they were in their late thirties and neither wore a wedding ring. They changed into bikinis and over them they wore long, kimono-type cloaks that were very eastern looking. Incessantly giggling to themselves, they reminded me of two matrioshka dolls that could’ve stacked one right inside the other. Now that I think about it, one was just ever so slightly taller and fatter than the other and they looked almost like twins…

Either way they stepped into the water and I knew then that I had to as well. Plus a nice sunbeam had warmed me semi-adequately and I felt ready. One of the Russian ladies squealed when she put her feet in the water. She turned her head to her partner and said something in Russian, and then next in English for some reason: “Free pedicure!” (Which really sounded like ‘fdree pyehdicyurde!’) As I would learn later there were dozens of tiny, minnow-like fish that would eat at the dead skin on your feet.

I went to go change in a wooden changing room that smelled amazingly like an oaken dry-sauna and then returned to my seat. I hesitated for a bit longer still, and noticed a Jewish couple sit down and start swimming. I could they were Jewish from the woman’s long black dress and a sheytel. Her shirt also had Hebrew on it, which would’ve told me everything I needed to know had her Tzniut not already been a dead giveaway.

I approached them. "?אתם ישראלים” I asked, to which they replied in the affirmative, and we got to talking ¾ths in English and ¼th in Hebrew. The man, Har-el, spoke better English than his wife Ya-el, so he mostly served as her translator. His family was from Poland, and hers was 8th generation Israeli (!) with her ancestors apparently going all the way back to the Vilna Gaon, though I swear everyone claims that their lineage goes back to the Vilna Gaon. Dude either had ten wives or everyone is just straight up confused. Pretty sure it’s the latter. It was lovely to meet them though, especially considering the amount of Anti-Israel graffiti around Athens—almost on every street there’s a “fuck Israel/Zionism” or “from the river…” in English posted on a wall. Neither Har-el nor Ya-el seemed to have noticed this however, perhaps because their eyes aren’t trained to pick up English like mine are. Anyway Har-el said I should come to his house next time I was in Israel, gave me his WhatsApp number, and I left them in peace.

I took off my shirt, stepped into the water, and immediately a school of those fish began nibbling at my feet. It tickled more than anything. I didn’t love the feeling. I pulled my feet out of the water and the smaller Russian lady turned to me and repeated, “fdree pyehdicyurde!” Then she and her partner giggled again. Oh they were so damn happy; one nearly could’ve jumped inside the other.

Meanwhile it was sink or swim, and I chose the latter. The water was surprisingly not cold. I’m not sure if I would’ve called it warm by any stretch of the word, but it was very comfortable, especially given that there was some better sunlight at that point. I did a big lap around the lake, gazed at the cliffs from below, wondered how ancient people must’ve swam there too, and then got out. As I exited the water I also noticed there was another group of Israelis. They were the other kind of Israelis though: tattoos, frizzy hair, long tattered scarves, etc. I didn’t go up to them.

Instead I ordered an Americano and read more of the Odyssey, and then eventually left, as there was seafood to eaten. I didn’t really feel like eating fish, but I was following the advice of some graffiti I’d seen the previous day that said, “follow your plan, not your mood.” And I had told myself that I was going to try some fish in Greece if it was local. That was the plan. So I found a place within walking distance that was right on the water, walked said distance, and went inside. On the way there I saw a woman standing in the shallow water of the beach, far below me down another cliff, and I watched her for a moment acclimate herself to the cold sea water by rubbing handfuls of water over her bare arms—so much for a hot spring when you’ve got bravery (and don’t want to pay seventeen Euros to swim in Lake Vouliagmeni).

I sat down at a table on a concrete platform right against the water. A waiter came by and took my order—bread & taramosalata, and a filet of white grouper—and then put my backpack, which was lying on the ground, onto the wicker chair opposite me. “I’m seeing some waves,” he said, “and I don’t want your bag to get wet.” I didn’t really understand what he meant by that, but I nodded my head and let him move the bag.

Meanwhile this was where I was going to eat animal flesh for the first time in around a year. The menu had a little manifesto in the front stating how their chief value was respect for the sea—which I thought first of all was very Greek—and I felt that they had respect too for the life of the fish, based on the menu items, the fish displayed front and center at the entrance to the restaurant, and the competence with which the waiters spoke about the fish. Their signature dish was something called “head to tail,” where they cooked an entire fish, preparing each part of the fish differently and how the chef saw most fit. That’s what I really wanted to order, but it was 125 Euro per kilogram, and the fish that they had were ~1.5kg each. So instead I ordered a single filet for forty-eight Euros, which was still pretty expensive but worth it in my mind. Could I have just fished myself at home? Yes, but there’s a time and place for everything, and I suppose this was the time and place that I had cultivated for myself.

First came the taramosalata and bread and a handful of olives. The taramosalata was much less salty than the stuff at home, probably because they make it there and so it didn’t have to be preserved. There were two types: a pink one that had harissa mixed in, and a plain one. Both were great. Neither was fishy at all, and the latter kind was almost sweet. A cat came right up to me and asked for some, and feeling generous—as well as the fact that there was too much to eat comfortably by myself—I dropped a dollop onto the ground, which he sniffed and promptly left alone. A beggar and a chooser, it seemed.

The olives were also great, and they reminded me that I need to eat more olives while I’m here. They were Kalamata olives—oily, dark, and refreshing. Just about when I finished everything the fish arrived, charred on the skin on top and a nice yellow-white-colored flesh underneath. I said my blessings to Hashem, the fish—who I also apologized to—the ocean, and the fisherman. When I tried to thank the fish though I couldn’t quite come up with a reason I was eating him. Why was I eating him? Not for need of nutrients, or out of starvation, or at all out of necessity, but instead out of experimentation. I didn’t even particularly have the taste for fish—that I feel like I’ve lost in the last year since I’ve stopped eating animal flesh. But I was following my plan, there was the slice of flesh in front of me, and it wasn’t to be wasted.

I cut into it with my knife. The crust on top broke and the rest just cleaved apart along its natural grain; I put the forkful into my mouth, and it was buttery and very mild tasting. Lemon served just to highlight the natural mushroomey flavor of the flesh, and the piece once again cleaved in my mouth into its myomeres without any chewing. It was perfectly briny. Probably the single best piece of fish I’ve ever eaten.

I chewed much of it with my eyes closed—a technique I learned from L.—and ate the whole thing in silence, not that I had anyone to talk to. Also on the plate was a lemon-juice soaked salad of some leafy green that the waiter tried to explain to me, but he didn’t know the name of in English. It tasted like a cross between arugula, spinach, and seaweed. I sort of liked it more than the fish, actually. Still I finished the filet, and at some point a wave hit the concrete wall I was sitting atop. A tide of seawater came rushing underneath my table and feet, almost as if the ocean were trying to fight back against my transgression. I guess she didn’t read the restaurant’s manifesto.

But I had done what I set out to do and once again it was time to move on. Overall I think I’ll continue to avoid flesh-eating for now. It was worth it to check in with my convictions though, and I’m happy I did, but neither the taste nor the nutrients were worth it in my book. Maybe I’ll reconsider my stance once I start developing Kwashiorkor.

I left, got on the bus back to Athens, and finished The Odyssey on the way. I’m really glad I picked it back up. Aside from the story itself, there’s something deeply healing about how Odysseus, the greatest Greek hero to ever live, only had one child. Clearly this juxtaposes the Avot of the Jewish canon, seeing as their chief objective—as well as god’s—is to have as many offspring as possible. I’m finding that distinction too in people I meet here. Not that I’ve spoken to too many of them, but maybe just by observing them out at night with friends, relaxing at cafés midday, or otherwise just seeming happier than the average American (Jew), I get the sense that there’s somewhat less of an obsession with transcending death through one’s children and more of a comfort with life itself.

Other things I’ve noticed while writing this:

Otherwise in the meantime it’s started pouring with thunder and lightning, the power went out in my hostel, and I left to a bar around the corner to plug in my laptop and type this up.