Living a Simple Life
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Are you dreaming of living a simple life? in Greece?Have you paid attention to how there’s always a chair or two in the local shops in Greece? It’s so that the customer can sit down and wait for his turn or sit down and have a chat with the shop owner while he or she is working. There’s no fast service here – and that’s part of the good life image.
Actually nothing here goes fast. When we started building our guesthouse and restaurant we intended to be ready to receive guests a year before we actually did – and this was actually our third building project - the story of earlier building project even became a novel so we should have known better!
..means that everything goes slow...
This time it was the carpenter that delayed us for months.“What can you do to make him show up?” someone (not a Greek, of course) asked me.
I could probably put a gun at his head. If only I could find him, as he’d gone to Athens.
“But there are other carpenters?”
Yes, but this one has already done a great part of the job, besides – is there any guarantee that the next one will be any better? At least this one, when he works, did a great job.
So what to do?
Shrug your shoulders, go for a walk by the beach or sit down in the sun with a good book and a glass of chilled retsina.
A friend, another foreigner, recently was going to sign up for public Greek classes. She had to go and deliver an application at the county administration. “And then I’ll finally start learning Greek,” she said.
Yeah, sure.
You can bet that if they take the applications in February no classes will start until September, the earliest. If they start at all.
We’ve waited for more than two years to have our land divided into plots.
A friend has waited for almost a year for the permission he needs from Ministry of Defense to buy a plot here in the village – foreigners from outside the European Union need this permission to buy house or land in this area.
That’s also a part of the good life image.
Accepting what you can not change
I’m not writing this to scare people off, because you can really live the good life in Greece. I sure do! But it’s important to realize that the medal has a back side, too – and this is very often the things that you can’t change. Greek toilets is as famous as Acropolis.
If you marry a Greek, like I did, you have to relate to the Greek family - and that can be tough enough!
Not to mention Greek religion and traditions, like that of Greek names
Well, you can beat yourself up about things like these or you can simply accept them.
I moved permanently to Greece in 1993 and since I’ve seen so many foreigners come – and leave. We all carry with us ideas about things being done back home and expect much to be the same here.
After so many years the way the Greeks drive still has me going bananas!
It can also be a major frustration when you discover that the good life means sacrificing so much of what you always took for granted: good television, Indian restaurants, the sport shop where they check your running style when you’re buying new shoes to find the right fit, the public indoor swimming pool, second hand shops, charities, being able to find casting sugar and proper tea in the shops…
You name it!
But you wanted a more simple life, didn’t you?
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