A few weeks ago, I had a chance to visit Athens temporarily. I spent a week in the city, and noticed something peculiar. People in public transportation (e.g. in subways and in buses) tend to use masks more diligently than in Germany. This somehow surprised me, given that it's already 2026, and it's been a few years since COVID was considered a big thing.
It was palpable, definitely. Whenever I was in the Athens Metro, it almost felt like up to 25 percent (1 in 4) of the passengers were wearing masks. This is definitely not the case in Berlin. I wonder why, so I looked it up. Apparently, Athens lifted mask requirements way later than other European capitals, only lifting it in March 2023 (compared to other cities in Europe, which lifted it in early 2022). The additional year that the mask requirement was imposed in the Athens Metro apparently just created a habit for the locals which didn't get broken later on, not to mention that it is the winter, and therefore, flu season.
I also learned that Athens has a rather large elderly population, and therefore they are more vulnerable, and so to mitigate the possibility of getting sick, they do wear masks. And people also tend to wear masks to not bring sicknesses to vulnerable family members. And of course, when they are feeling slightly under the weather, they also tend to wear masks, as a courtesy.
I didn't expect to find COVID-relevant cultural differences, but this brief visit to Athens definitely showed me one.
