The Hidden Stress of Moving to a New City as a Woman -What Nobody Told Me, and What I See Every Day in Athens (Part 1)

Article written by Dr Sotiria Moschopoulou Photo by Konrad Nowacki on Unsplash

I want to tell you about the first time I tried to move somewhere new, before RooMate, before any of this. Long before I even knew this was going to become a company. Just me, trying to find a room.

I came from a small city. I didn't know the area. I didn't know the transport. I didn't know which neighbourhoods made sense for what, or why one street felt completely different from the one next to it. Everyone else seemed to already know this, like it was obvious, like you were just supposed to arrive knowing it.

I remember looking at flats and rooms and just feeling completely lost. Not because I couldn't understand the listings. Because I couldn't understand the living situations. I couldn't picture myself inside them. There were so many things to consider that nobody tells you to consider until you're already standing in the middle of them, overwhelmed.

Eventually, a friend who was heading off to Greece for a month let me stay in her room while she was away. That's how I got my start there. But it was chaotic. Genuinely chaotic. I was going from place to place, meeting different people, and they'd ask me things I didn't know how to answer.

What's your routine? What time do you sleep? What time do you wake up?

And I remember thinking, I don't know. I don't know what I want yet. I don't know what I like yet. I don't know if I'm going to join a gym or not. I don't know my own schedule because I haven't had to know it. I was being asked to describe a life I hadn't built yet, in a city I didn't understand yet, to people who needed an answer right then.

That's the part nobody prepares you for. Not the practical stuff, the logistics, the paperwork. It's being asked to already know yourself in a place that hasn't taught you who you are in it yet.

That feeling never really left me. And it's a lot of why RooMate exists.

If you're navigating this right now, theroomateapp.com was built for exactly this moment.

More on that in Part 2.

Just start. 🤍

Sotiria

Dr Sotiria Moschopoulou is the founder of RooMate, a trust-based roommate matching platform for women in Athens. RooMate operates as a single-sex service under Schedule 3, Part 7 of the Equality Act 2010.