This summer my brother and I lived out the Greek-American dream: we spent a season working for free at a Greek restaurant in Greece.

Working in our homeland, a place our Pappou fled after World War II, was extremely eye-opening and one of the richest life experiences we have shared together. My brother Alexandros and I are open and honest about the fact that we are Greek-Americans, not Greeks. However, like many Greek-Americans, we crave a return to Greece and felt its call grow in the truest sense from everything we learned working at Medusa Milos (https://medusamilos.gr), one of the best authentic restaurants in all of Greece.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say we simply washed ashore and asked for a job one day. In reality, we came at the personal invitation of the owner after volunteering to help out around the restaurant while enjoying our summer break. Because Greeks in Greece tend to think of us as Americans first and Greeks second, we knew our co-workers might not expect us to dive right into the work. Thankfully, what ensued was the most authentic summer of our lives and a renewed passion for our Greek heritage.

For our entire young lives, Alexandros and I have been dancing around the fact that we could only speak kitchen Greek – the cute shorthand version of Greek that Yiayia and Pappou speak in the kitchen. Working at a Greek restaurant changed all that, and we are proud of how much Greek we learned in a few short months of cultural immersion. It was difficult and embarrassing at times – for instance, I remember telling a table full of Greeks I couldn’t speak very good Greek in perfect Greek, much to their confusion – but Alexandros and I learned that speaking better Greek allowed us to claim more authenticity and connect with our ancestry at a higher level.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, there is an extremely high demand for bilingual Greek and English speakers in Greece. Essentially 100% of the clientele at Medusa Milos spoke one or both languages, and the fact that Alexandros and I could articulate why we were there and the various talking points about popular dishes added another dimension to the customer experience. We realized that for many Greek businesses, having an “American” working there is a novelty and a status indicator.

The thing about working at a Greek restaurant is that something memorable happens at least once every hour. Alexandros and I often remarked that we wished we had GoPro cameras strapped to our heads to capture all of the hilarious exchanges and stories we extracted from the entire experience. Whether it was drinking wine with famous musician George Stratakis or explaining to 15 tables per day what on earth two Greek-Americans were doing working in Milos or helping a New York Times photographer capture images of our food, we never stopped having fun.

None of this is to say the work is easy, by any stretch of the imagination. Medusa Milos is one of the most successful businesses on the island, so we know the pacing isn’t the same everywhere – but regardless, we found that the old stereotype about the Greek waiter smoking cigarettes all day simply isn’t true. At Medusa, tables were rarely empty and everyone had a part to play, between the kitchen and front desk and waitstaff. The owners were working harder than anyone, managing the waitlist and customer payments and everything leaving the kitchen.

Alexandros and I have both worked service jobs in America and can confidently attest to the fact that service work in Greece was more demanding. You’ve got to move plates, clear tables, make desserts, make drinks, greet guests, and do a thousand other responsibilities with zero training.

Yet, despite the hard work, we felt a much stronger sense of community. About a week into our stay, we discovered that it is common for business owners to give their seasonal employees housing and free meals. This sense of hospitality was reflected in our own treatment, and we picked up on a genuine sense of employees in the Greek service industry being seen as much more than disposable labor.

Having seen both sides of the sociocultural coin – that of service work in Greece and America – Alex and I understood that we could certainly make more money in America compared to the nation of our ancestors. However, we were touched by the working mentality in Greece of caring about your employees and viewing them as a part of your community. Between receiving free meals and free housing, many of our seasonal co-workers benefited from having almost zero monthly expenses. Back home in America, you get paid more on paper, but your employers care far less about how well you do outside of working hours.

Another surprise we experienced in Greece was the extreme political diversity of the restaurant staff and the complete harmony of the work culture. Across the 20+ staff members at Medusa Milos, we worked alongside communists, leftists, centrists and far right Greeks who looked after each other day after day in the hectic busy season. Sure, Greeks are known for their bluntness and we’d hear an occasional political joke in the kitchen, but everything was made in good taste despite the employees working in a high pressure environment while holding completely opposite political viewpoints. Needless to say, Alexandros and I were in awe when comparing it to the political landscape in America.

Another big part of the job was entertaining visiting members of the Greek Diaspora with local travel tips, dish recommendations and explanations for why we had such convincing accents in English. To our enthusiasm, many of the customers – especially those of Greek descent – all expressed overwhelmingly positive opinions of us working there. Alexandros and I came to realize throughout our stay that to many of them, we were living their dream. They saw that we had cast aside all our cares for one summer to work in an idyllic Greek island restaurant, instead of a cubicle in America.

When it came time to say goodbye, there were tears in the eyes of everyone we had met at the restaurant. You can’t pay enough money for that kind of parea. It made us want to become closer to our culture, religion, ancestry and language of our homeland.

We are extremely fortunate to have been able to work in Greece for an extended period of time while still in our young 20s. When Alexandros and I first departed from America, we knew that we would be working for free and could have been making more money back home. Going in with that expectation was very important – and now, on the other side of a fascinating cultural experience, we are left with enough laughs to last a lifetime and a permanent longing for Greece.

Chris Benis, 23, is a Greek-American from Seattle, WA and has roots in Kythira and Larissa, Greece. He is a recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University and currently attends the University of Southern California as a Master’s Degree candidate.