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Interesting business

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

I wonder what a UK trained accountant would make of the Greek way of doing business. Especially one who was auditing the accounts of our local post office.

The man who runs the post office doesn’t seem to like giving change and tries to avoid it whenever he can. On a recent visit I wanted to buy 2 stamps costing €1.40 in total, and offered a €5 note. He asked if I had change, which I didn’t. So rather than give me €3.60 change he gave me the stamps for free. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened, nor are we the only ones it happens to. Occasionally he will tell me to pay next time, but not always.

This is a post office, it’s supposed to have money – and it does. People pay all sorts of bills here, and obviously buy stamps and pay for other postage. This man has a till full of change. There’s no excuse for his actions. I didn’t give him a €50 note; I offered just a small amount of money over the cost of my purchase. If I’d offered a €2 coin he would have given me change: he can manage to part with a few cents but not his euros.

I’m assuming someone, somewhere expects our post office to produce accounts, which are surely supposed to balance. How can this happen if our postmaster keeps giving away stamps for free?

When we bought our land there were various payments included in the costs. The lady in the local notary’s office who produced the paperwork, for example, was given something like €50. I’m sure she gets paid as an employee, but if she picks up this type of ‘tip’ for every case she works on she probably makes a fair amount on top of her salary.

And of course there were the ‘usual’ payments to people in the official departments, to make sure the paperwork was moving along speedily.

A friend was telling me the other day that some tavernas only produce paper receipts when they know there’s a tax inspector in the area. At other times it’s all verbal so there’s no way of knowing whether all the money received from customers went into the till.

Years ago Ken ran a carpet and upholstery cleaning business in the UK, and some of his customers paid in cash. The tax inspectors went through his books carefully to make sure he accounted for every penny he received, checking payments against his appointments. If they thought he wasn’t declaring all his cash receipts they could estimate them, based on those he had declared, and charge tax on the notional amount. And, other than asking people not to pay in cash, there was no way he could prove that he had accounted for all the cash he received.

There’s a lot of publicity about corruption in high places at present: UK politicians’ expense claims, free holidays for businessmen and so on. Here in Greece corruption at the highest levels of government and business also gets noticed. But this is a country that still has many practices that encourage people to under declare their income, personal or business. It seems that as long as things are kept at a reasonable level, and no-one gets too greedy, this will continue to be accepted.

If even part of that unpaid tax was recovered maybe there would be more progress on projects that are urgently needed, such as a local hospital or a completed motorway, or more firefighting resources. But this is probably naive of me, given the stories I’ve also heard about public money being spent on the pet projects of local politicians rather than the things that are most needed.

And even the greedy are catered for:

I’ve heard of a developer who was taken to court for taking a client’s money but failing to deliver the services agreed. A guilty verdict resulted in a prison sentence, and I believe the guilty party actually went to prison – but not for long. He was able to return the client’s money and get out of prison after just a few weeks, presumably pay a fine?

Not much incentive there to keep to the straight and narrow then?

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So where’s the hurry?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
Somewhere to sit while waiting for 'methavrio' to arrive

Somewhere to sit while waiting for 'methavrio' to arrive

This week, next week, whenever…

The Greek equivalent of mañana is methavrio which technically means the day after tomorrow, but in practice means some time in the future. We often encounter it. To put it bluntly, we just never know when something will actually happen: expectations and reality can be very far apart. Here’s an example.

When we first moved to this apartment last November, our landlady told us she was planning to get an internet connection in her office, which would give us the opportunity to ditch our current, relatively expensive, wireless and use her broadband. Great! We thought, but fortunately didn’t rush out and cancel that contract.

Over the following months the subject mostly went quiet, but every few weeks she would tell us that the broadband was coming – this week or next week usually being the timeframe. In July we got neighbours: a Dutch couple staying in the studio opposite for 2 months, who’d been trying to get internet access down in one of the local cafes, but without their own laptop it was difficult. Again I heard the statement ‘I will be getting broadband here next week’, and hoped their need wasn’t urgent.

Then two weeks ago we were told it was definitely ‘next’ (i.e. last) week. And about three days ago the much awaited broadband finally arrived.

I don’t think our landlady is entirely at fault for raising our expectations as she was in the hands of other people, who presumably kept giving her dates that they failed to keep. What I find interesting is the fact that it never seemed to bother her to keep telling us that broadband would be here ‘next week’. Faced with so many failed deliveries I would have been too embarrassed to even raise the subject until the thing was installed and performing.

Maybe here they’re so used to things not happening when planned that they’re comfortable with these non-appearances, but I know that if I’d made any plans based on the early promises I would have been very disappointed.

And that broadband for us? So far we can access it on one of our two machines – for some reason her network can only accommodate two machines and one of those is obviously the office one. We’re trying to pick up a wireless signal through concrete walls so it isn’t always that good, and our PC has a much more difficult time picking it up than our laptop. As we want both machines to have internet access at the same time (we’ve tried juggling one machine, it just doesn’t work for us) we don’t yet have an acceptable solution.

So we’re not abandoning our trusty wireless connection yet despite the shiny new box sitting in the office. The attraction of faster broadband is definitely there, but we know we won’t have access to this when we finally move so we’ll need our wireless connection long-term. But maybe adding up the costs of installing phone lines and getting a new broadband connection is a good idea as we could be here for some time yet…

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That garden just keeps calling!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Gardening activities have been neglected recently but now I’m paying the price.

Daily chores

Daily chores

The reason for neglect is justifiable – when you have visitors it seems unfriendly to excuse yourself to do weeding and pruning each night on top of the necessary watering. But the consequences are that the weeds make the most of their opportunity.

On our own our lives are quiet and a 10 day visit that includes two lively children takes a few days to recover from. So the weeds had a good two weeks to undo my previous efforts at garden management. And they took full advantage of this opportunity. Getting back on top of things in the continuing heat is a slow business. The knack of early rising still eludes me, so my gardening time is the last couple of hours of daylight assuming the heat of the sun has begun to ease.

The vegetable garden took at least 2 days to weed. As we’ve harvested and discarded unsuccessful crops we’ve opened up areas of ground. On the one hand this gives the weeds more scope, but on the other these areas don’t get as much water, so some weeds are struggling to survive. This makes the weeding a bit easier, even though there’s more of it. We’re plagued by a fast growing shrub that has deep set, stubborn roots. The easiest ways to deal with it are either tugging it out or cutting it off at ground level. As the shrub is sticky to the touch, cutting is becoming the preferred option, although this guarantees it will come back more quickly.

In some of the flower beds the weeds had started to overwhelm the flowers, and faster growing ground cover plants had started to move in on their neighbours. One of the challenges is the roses. Greeks love their roses, but don’t seem to choose anything other than multi-thorned varieties. Trying to coax weeds from around the roots and stems of thorny roses is no joke. It’s the same with pruning: holding on to that cutting without stabbing myself is also a matter of luck. And in the heat the blooms don’t last long so pruning is an ongoing task.

Slowly the beds are starting to look better. Weeds are disappearing and plants are looking tidier. Several are coming back into bloom. It’s difficult not knowing what many of the plants are or anything about their care. Back in the UK, every plant from the garden centre came with a name label, and usually basic care information. Here, it’s different. It’s not just that this is an established garden; it’s the same when you buy plants. Provision of information isn’t the norm.

And our landlady doesn’t know either even though she chose most (if not all) of them. She was never intending to have a hands-on caring role for the garden so her involvement ended once the choices were made.

The challenge for me is that I don’t know what I should be pruning and what I should be leaving; what needs more water, what less; where to put new plants and cuttings that keep appearing etc. Personally I lean towards letting nature rule rather than excessive pruning, but maybe I need to take a different approach with some plants. Maybe if I pruned more there would be more flowers. I just don’t know. And solutions aren’t easy.

I’ve tried the internet to find out more about the plants but I can’t find a site where I can just look through pictures until I spot what I’ve got. On most plant identifier sites you need to know the name (if I knew that I wouldn’t have the problem) or be able to answer questions about the plant such as leaf structure, growing habits etc. which are often phrased in scientific terms that mean nothing to me.

I think the solution will have to be taking pictures then visiting the garden centre and trying to match them up with plants on sale; then asking the owner for care details without buying anything. It’s either that or buying a book. Unless we can find one in English that’s an expensive way to find out the names of a handful of plants. But maybe it could be useful for the future – although I’m hoping to collect quite a lot of cuttings from the plants already here anyway.

There’s another unwelcome aspect of gardening in the evenings: my quota of bites is rising steadily. I was doing pretty well, just getting the occasional pink lump appearing somewhere but since getting close to the plants again I’m starting to look much pinker and lumpier. Still, there’s an excellent natural remedy close at hand: basil. I just break off a leaf and rub it on the bump until the sap comes out. Usually I only have to do it once, and most of my bites are disappearing quickly. For me, basil is much more effective on insect bites than anything that comes out of a tube.

But every cloud has that silver lining: I’m getting some exercise; and some knee bending and stretching is good for these lazy bones!

And can you believe it – we’ve had our second thunderstorm this month. That’s right – it’s August, it’s Greece and we’ve had rain 3 times! More silver linings:

If it’s raining round Athens it will help put the fires out

No watering duty for at least one night (yeh!!!)

Everything will look and smell fresh again

The cooler air is much more comfortable

Here are pictures of some of those flowers that make the garden such a delight. Wish I knew what they were called!

Maybe some sort of bougainvillea?

Maybe some sort of bougainvillea?

Nice orange daisy

Nice orange daisy

No idea at all

No idea at all

Lovely flowers that start off two-coloured then turn red

Lovely flowers that start off two-coloured then turn red

And one I do know: a bottle brush just coming into flower for the second time this year

And one I do know: a bottle brush just coming into flower for the second time this year

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It’s Started…

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

One night last week we sat and watched a hillside burn.

This sort of red sky at night doesn't delight anyone

This sort of red sky at night doesn't delight anyone

And the following morning …

Well actually, we sat and watched a hillside smoking in the morning, the fire on our side had finally been put out, but it was still blazing away on the other side of the hill.

Fortunately we were far enough away from this, the first local fire of the summer, to be able to watch without fear, and marvel at the power of fire and the challenges of trying to tame it, especially in darkness. Looking at our map, it’s possible the area affected was mostly hillside, but it’s also possible that the fire got close to some small villages.

Whether human life and property was affected or not, the devastation created by these fires can take years to disappear. We drive to Athens through patches of hillside still covered in burnt-out tree trunks from the big fires two years ago, the land still struggling to recover its greenery.

We haven’t yet heard how the fire was caused. It didn’t seem to start until late afternoon so it’s possible that it was natural. But sadly it’s equally possible that it could be arson, something that figured strongly in the fires of 2007. People with a desire to clear land of its natural plant life for their own use. And a selfishness in that desire that ignores the real danger of setting loose a force that is so difficult to control.

Plus a disregard for the costs – financial, emotional and human – of fighting these fires.

Fire engines, 2 helicopters and 2 planes for several hours doesn't come cheap.

Fire engines, 2 helicopters and 2 planes for several hours doesn't come cheap

A couple of weeks ago a young farmer died here. He was working in his olive groves when his tractor overturned, causing him injuries that didn’t need to be fatal. But this area has no local ambulance service and the local hospital is 50 km away along coastal roads. Not a quick drive in an emergency.

The length of time it takes for an ambulance to attend an emergency and get the injured person to hospital means that people die who might have lived. Understandably residents have protested to the authorities calling for better facilities locally. But money has to be available to fight forest fires, and there is only so much money.

The Greek government have announced extra money for firefighting services this year. Just as important, they are focussing more human resources to investigate possible arson in these events. Greek justice can be a mixed bag at times, but let’s hope that anyone stupid and greedy enough to create fear and damage by starting fires gets exactly what they deserve.

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Hot and Sticky Musings

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

We’re now well into what is best described as the ‘sticky’ part of the year.

It’s that couple of months or so when, try as you might, you never really feel dry. Not even straight out of a refreshingly cool shower, as the humidity in the bathroom means you’re trying to dry yourself in a steamy atmosphere – a definite non-starter. Any achievements in the way of dryness are short-lived: move away from doors and windows that are valiantly trying to admit that tiny bit of breeze and it’s like climbing into an open oven. The heat is tangible and the humidity high.

The only comfortable place to be when the weather gets this hot and sticky

The only comfortable place to be when the weather gets this hot and sticky

Normal life becomes decidedly uncomfortable. Cooking offers the challenge of working out how to produce a decent meal using the minimum amount of heat, without resorting to salad every day. Linger near the cooker for even a few seconds and you break out in a sweat. I can’t imagine what it’s like working in a restaurant kitchen in this weather, and I have nothing but admiration for those people who work out of doors in the intense heat, day after day.

Then there’s dish washing. Even with water at the minimum acceptable heat to clean the dishes it still seems to give off a steady flow of hot, moist air. The best argument I’ve come across so far for getting a dishwasher!

In fact, the slightest physical exertion generates a noticeable amount of heat. Just a few movements and it begins. From the fitness angle, it’s gratifying to realise that your body does start to generate heat with so little effort. But when it’s the beginning of a series of stretches and lifts, whether for exercise or cleaning the bathroom, the end seems very far away, the light at the end of a sweaty, generally unpleasant tunnel. This is when you search out those items of clothing least likely to need ironing, or sport the crumpled look.

All the experts tell you that the time to stay out of the sun is between 11 am and 3 pm. But even at 8 am it’s too hot to stay out in the sun for longer than a few seconds. Walking down into town becomes a game of ‘spot the shadows’; narrow, shady alleyways becoming more attractive than the more open, easy roads. Clothes stick to you, creating eye-catching damp patches. Yes, we could take the car, but putting aside the unjustifiable use of fuel for such a short journey, it’s usually impossible to find a shady parking space. A hot body in a hot car means twice the stickiness.

At this time of year there are trade-offs needed constantly:

  • Use the car (quicker) or walk (in the heat for longer)
  • Use climate control in the car (increases fuel consumption) or try to keep cool by opening the windows (tangled hair and sometimes it’s a hot breeze).
  • Switch the computers off (can’t work) or use fans to keep them cool or even air con (both use extra electricity and air con isn’t that healthy).
  • Get up at 4 am, when it’s actually cool, then try to catch up on sleep later in the day when it’s hotter and noisier

We always try to take the greener option, but sometimes it’s a difficult call.

Last night around 9pm we walked down into Koroni – a band had been advertised as part of this year’s free entertainment. At first the atmosphere seemed better as the heat of the day was slowly fading, but after a little while I realized it was actually less comfortable than when the sun was out. The sun masks some of the humidity during the day, but at night there’s no getting away from it, and we have at least 50% humidity at present. By the time we completed the 10 minute walk to town my clothes felt clammy and uncomfortable. It was warmer on the seafront than up at the top of town, and even the slight breeze out on the pier made no difference.

To add the final topping, the band was dire. They seemed unable to play at anything other than slow and made a hash of Dylan’s ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ among others. Their lead singer didn’t have much of a voice either. But their audience applauded politely, even enthusiastically, at the end of each song, so maybe we just haven’t acquired the local taste yet!

But the heat doesn’t just affect us humans. Now is the time of year when fresh food can go off almost while you’re looking at it, which isn’t good when we’re getting produce from the garden more quickly than we can use it. Storage is a challenge as we only have limited fridge and freezer space in our apartment, and anything in a bottle that’s been opened needs to go into the fridge or it quickly sprouts a surface of mould.

We do, however, have the use of an ‘agrotiki’ – essentially a storage area of up to 15 square metres of additional space on top of what the planning regulations allow.

We hoped the agrotiki would give us somewhere relatively cool and dark to keep things fresh for a bit longer, but it’s not working out that way. The temperature in there is warmer than our apartment during the night, presumably due to the two water heaters that are housed there (a useful thing to remember when it gets cold in the winter), and cooler during the day. But it’s not really that much cooler, nor is it completely dark, thanks to our landlady deciding it needed a metal door with a window, and vegetables are quickly drying out or going mouldy. Strangely, grapefruit seem to keep well.

A couple of weeks ago, nurturing the idea of a potential bumper crop, our thoughts turned to long-term storage. Freezing or bottling seemed to be the two options, and with nowhere to put a freezer we thought we’d give bottling a try. First stop was to buy a pressure cooker, which we thought would be ideal for the job. Second stop was to read up on the techniques. Sadly, the wrong way round.

Our thoroughly modern pressure cooker, unlike the two old ones I discarded in England, only has one pressure setting: high. Apparently this isn’t unusual these days, and makes a lot of sense as most of the things you cook are done at high pressure. Unfortunately though, to use it for bottling, we need to be able to generate low pressure. So it looks like we’ll have to resort to one of the longer methods, which means using the cooker top or oven, not something that appeals in this weather.

We’ll still be able to enjoy stews, soups and especially rice pudding (if I can remember the recipe), and cut down on use of the cooker (and heat generation) at the time of year when it’s cooler anyway. Well that’s when I’ve managed to decipher the instructions, which are helpfully only in Turkish.

Still, it’s probably just as well. All the instructions for bottling tell you to keep your newly processed produce in a cool, dark place, and we’ve already established that we’re not going to have one of those for a few months. It would be very disappointing to go through all the rigmarole of bottling, only to have to throw the stuff away because it got too hot in storage and is likely to give us upset stomachs or worse.

So there’s another thing on the list for our own home: cool, dark place to store all our nice home-grown fruit and veggies, both fresh and bottled.

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Even in Paradise We Moan About the Weather!

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

It’s been a strange week, weather-wise.

By now we would expect to be moaning about the relentless heat (well, you always need something to moan about, don’t you). The decision to avoid using the air conditioning should be under regular review, especially at night, when the heat should be making it all but impossible to sleep.

But as you can guess by my comments, that’s not quite how it is.

As it’s only our second summer living in Greece we don’t really have that much to work on in terms of what to expect. But despite what people say, I’m sure we didn’t get this much daily wind last year. Every day, almost like clockwork, it starts up, especially in the late afternoon. And on several days it’s had a cold edge to it, resulting in arms and legs being covered and windows closed at night, despite the fact that the ambient temperature is now quite high.

The wind doesn’t seem to come from any one direction and swirls around so there’s little chance of sheltering my delicate seedlings from its force. Granted, my washing dries quickly, but that has to be offset against the challenge of unwrapping it from the line, and keeping my ears tuned for sounds that the clothes airer has been blown over by the wind. Then it’s a quick dash downstairs to rescue it before too much dust can blow over those nice clean undies!

The usually empty sky has been crowded with clouds, a welcome respite from the sun when the wind isn’t blowing. And – just to prove that every cloud DOES have a silver lining – we’ve had some decent sunsets, something we don’t get very often. (You pays your money and takes your chance: cloudless blue skies and sunsets don’t mix!)

Here's one of those rare sunsets

Here's one of those rare sunsets

Perhaps the most unexpected event was a thunderstorm a few nights ago. Okay, if I bothered to check the weather maybe it wouldn’t have been such a surprise. But after a relatively warm, cloudless day we were woken in the early hours by the loudest crack of thunder I’ve heard in a long time. The accompanying lightening was impressive, lighting the whole sky and seeming to go on forever.

At first it seemed like the sound and light show had come alone, but after a while the rain caught up. From gentle and refreshing it became louder and heavier, and lasted for quite some time, even though the front of the storm had moved well away. Several inches fell in a short time. Another silver lining – no need to get up early to water the vegetables, but a down-side as well. The weight of wind and water had knocked over the cucumbers – have you any idea how heavy a cucumber plant with a few healthy specimens on it is?

Just going to investigate I picked up several pounds of mud on the bottom of my shoes, plus a collection of dried weeds (naturally the previous day had involved some garden tidying, which was coming back to haunt me).

I think it’s fair to say that, for me, wind is the weather condition I like the least. We’ve covered our vegetable plot with olive netting to give the plants some shade from the afternoon sun. You’d think that netting, being comprised of lots of holes, wouldn’t suffer too much from the wind. Not in our case: I sit watching it being blown this way and that, wondering if the poles are deeply enough buried to stay upright against the pressure. And every so often we have to pop down and check that the sweetcorn, which is growing fast now, isn’t getting damaged.

Wind has a way of making its presence felt everywhere. Sitting outside it swirls my hair in my face and flaps the pages of my book or magazine. That umbrella can shade you from the sun, but the wind might just decide to pick it up and take it away. Inside, anything light is likely to be picked up from where it’s lying and tossed across the floor. A couple of weeks ago the force of wind was so great that a couple of small vases were knocked off a table by a curtain. And if you’re on the beach when it’s windy, you get sandblasted and it sticks to your suntan. Nice!

It’s all experience though, and when we get our own plot sorted we will create wind breaks so we can have better sheltered sitting areas. And we’ll be putting it to good use as well – all that lovely free electricity from our turbine!

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Things we love about Greece #5

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Traditional Shopping

If you’re a shop-a-holic or you like browsing around the famous shopping chains Greece definitely isn’t the place for you. The only place you’re likely to find clothing shops you’ve heard of elsewhere are the big cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki, and even then the chances are they will be far smaller outlets than you’re used to.

Even the well branded supermarket chain Carrefour is a shadow of the French outlets. In fact, the only shop that bears a close resemblance to outlets in other countries is the discount supermarket LIDL. But at the other end of the scale Greece really comes into its own.

There are many old-style shops that seem to sell literally everything you could ever need, and many things you never realised you needed, or had lost all hope of ever finding. Plus there are shops that you’ll either love or hate, where you can buy more different types of nails, rope and such like than you can imagine. And they are still sold in the old way: you measure out your rope then pay for it by weight; your accurately cut wood is then totally and charged by volume.

But what we really like is the plethora of traders who bring their goods to the villages.

I can still just about remember mobile grocery vans from my childhood, and and bakers vans were still a common site in England not that long ago, but most of these traders gave up eventually. Here in Greece, loudspeakers announcing the imminent arrival of all manner of traders are a regular, almost daily feature, both in small remote villages and the larger towns. And the range of goods on offer also contains some surprises.

Organic produce straight from local farmers’ fields compete with live poultry (get your baby chicks/turkeys here!) and fish caught that day. Garden plants including tall palms can be seen swaying above trucks as they meander through the narrow lanes. Carpets and rugs peep out from the back of transit vans and even clothes wave precariously on their hangars as a tight corner is negotiated.

Terracotta pots are packed densely and piled high, but our personal favourite has to be the chair man, his announcement always preceding him by several minutes: ‘I have chairs, I have tables, bamboo, wood, plastic … come and look’.

And he does: stacks of white plastic chairs jostle against cast iron and wood garden benches, bamboo chairs and tables balancing precariously in their midst. And all piled in the back of a small pick-up truck. I wonder how often he has to unload the whole thing to get at that particular chair that will go so well on the terrace?

Stop me and buy some: get your garden furniture here!

Stop me and buy some: get your garden furniture here!

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Holy Ghosts and Bureaucrats

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

We’ve finally become the owners of a little piece of mainland Greece.

Some day soon this will be the view from our terrace

Some day soon this will be the view from our terrace

It was months ago when we first viewed the plot of land we hoped to buy. Early disappointment ensued when the seller took it off the market for reasons to do with EU grants, retirement and farmers’ entitlements, which we never really got to the bottom of.

So a few months later when it came back on sale we didn’t get our hopes up. We paid our deposit and waited for the bureaucracy to take its course: surveys, checks, legal searches etc., with the knowledge that things could go wrong at any stage, or the seller could pull out again. We greeted progress updates calmly, knowing that in Greece, plans don’t always come to fruition at the time, or in the way, expected.

In early May we were told things should be completed ‘in a couple of weeks’, which we translated to a more realistic time frame of the end of May. At the beginning of June we made a first payment towards land taxes and legal fees, and were told everything should be completed on Friday 4th. Then early on Friday morning we heard there could be a delay until the middle of next week.

Why? Firstly, the European elections being held this weekend meant the Notary might not be available for other duties; and secondly it is Pentecost (Holy Ghost Day) on Monday, thus a public holiday.

So we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in the Notary’s office at noon on Friday having documents read out to us by a translator, and signing paper after paper that sealed the deal.

All in all a painless process, and an interesting one.

Land sold in Greece has its value assessed by the relevant government department. Value is based on factors such as whether a site has access to services such as electricity, water and sewage; how close it is to a town or village; and how close it is to the sea,  and doesn’t necessarily bear any relationship to the price being paid for the land.

Our plot lacks water and electricity, is exactly 1km from the village boundary, and several km from the sea, although with excellent views both across to the mountains of the Mani and out into the Aegean. We’re probably no more than 10 minutes from a sandy beach. Takingall these factors into account, the valuation is significantly lower than the price we’re paying.

Our agent has recently sold a piece of land which, because it’s in quite a remote area without electricity, water or decent roads, was very competitively priced. However the valuation department thought otherwise. The plot is close to the sea – not to a beach or an accessible area of coast, but to rugged cliffs. Unfortunately this type of subtlety isn’t taken into account in land valuations: close to the sea means close to the sea, and that is a factor that increases the valuation. In this case, the official valuation is twice what the land cost.

A curious system applies whereby it is up to the buyer to decide what to officially declare as the price they paid for their land. Anything between the official valuation and the actual price paid can be declared. The usual guidance is to declare a price a little above the valuation, but below the actual purchase price. It’s a swings and roundabouts situation: land taxes are calculated based on the declared price, so the lower we go, the less tax we pay. But if there turns out to be a problem with the land, we can only get our money back up to the amount we have declared.

So the choice is between paying more taxes with a guarantee of getting all your money back if things go wrong, and trusting that the lawyers have done their job properly, the seller’s legal declarations (free from mortgage, right to sell etc.) are true, and no-one will come out of the woodwork claiming they actually own the land, not the seller. Happily for us our real estate agent guarantees to refund all our money if anything goes wrong, so we’re able to take advantage of the system to legally save several thousands of euros in taxes.

But those other purchasers are in a less fortunate situation. They have to declare the full purchase price of the land and then have to pay taxes on twice this amount, despite not actually gaining any benefit from their proximity to the sea. If anything goes wrong the whole amount they have paid would be recoverable from the seller, but not those additional taxes. A good reason to buy land just a few km from the sea.

Now we have to make a final decision about exactly what to do next. Watch this space…

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One Reason to Rent Before Buying

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Many people who buy holiday or permanent homes abroad make that first crucial decision – where to buy – during a short holiday trip, or maybe after a couple of visits to the same area. Mostly they don’t spend time there, particularly outside the holiday season.

I’d suggest this is very unwise, and today I’m going to have a bit of a moan to illustrate some of the reasons why.

We’re currently renting an apartment that, in many ways, is ideally situated for the lifestyle we want. We have sea views, can be on the beach in little over 5 minutes, the town in around 10 minutes, and have a bakery about 100m away that’s open almost every day for fresh bread and a mini market about 600m distant.

There’s little more enjoyable than sitting on the terrace with a cool drink, listening to the sound of the sea, or the newly fledged birds chattering as they practice flying and their parents teach them how to find their own food. But it’s not always like that. Sometimes it’s so noisy it beggars belief for this rural area of the Peloponnese.

There are 3 kinds of noise:

Firstly there’s the road. We live on a ‘main’ road., one of just 2 roads into the town so it gets a fair amount of traffic. The busy-ness of the road is relative. 95% of the time it’s a trickle of vehicles which occasionally ramps up into the local equivalent of rush hour (more than 5 vehicles in a single minute). It’s a straight road just where we are, although blessed with patches of the same uneven, poorly repaired surface as many Greek roads. It’s one of the few stretches where you can put your foot down and get some speed up, and many vehicles take advantage of this.

Motorbikes hurtle along, their roar echoing back from each concrete wall they pass. Noisy scooters pass more slowly, 2 abreast, with shouted conversations between the riders. And the mechanic further up the road uses it as his ‘test track’, usually for the noisy old bangers which he drives up and down several times before he’s satisfied.

Secondly there are the neighbours. The next house is about 100m away, but voices carry easily across the space in between, especially the type of voice our neighbour has. It’s a monotonous refrain: ‘Maria’ – or rather, ‘Mareeea’ screeched several times a minute at a pitch that could cut glass. The recipient of this attention is a small child, who seems unable to do anything without being chastised. If she’s out of sight she gets shouted, if she’s in sight and playing she has to be watched constantly it seems. The poor child is likely to grow up hating her name, and probably sufficiently conditioned that she’ll do the same with her own children.

I’m often tempted to throw my head back and shout ‘SHUT UP AND GIVE THE KID AND ME A BREAK!’ just to balance things out a bit.

Give me a break!

Give me a break!

I don’t like air conditioning and would prefer to avoid using it if we can. Which means that as the nights get warmer I’d really like to be able to sleep with the bedroom window open. And it would be possible apart from the third noise-maker: the dogs. Two families live in the building next door to us, and each has a German Shepherd, probably around a year old. In the usual Greek way they are kept outside all day and night.

Barking during the day blends with the other noises around but at night it really comes into its own. There can be nothing for hours, then just around the time we want to go to bed it starts. One dog sets off another, and they in turn set off dogs living further away. Deep barking alsations combine with yapping terriers in a cacophony of sound which never seems to stop. With no other sounds around it’s magnified, and our bedroom window is ideally situated to pick it up. So the window remains closed.

I’m not suggesting that it’s always possible to get 100% of what you want. And living somewhere too quiet isn’t everyone’s ideal. And of course you can’t choose who comes to live next to you. But if you don’t jump into that buying decision too soon you can check out things like traffic volumes and the existence of other things that might not suit you, like noise from businesses or houses around with animals that might be noisy.

And it is worth doing. We met a couple who had an expensive house built in a small village a few km back from the coast. While waiting for it to be completed they stayed in Kalamata, the nearest ‘city’. When they moved into their dream home they quickly found it didn’t suit them. It was too far from the level of social activity they’d decided they wanted and they didn’t like the noise of the cicadas (a constant in summer) or the amount of general wildlife in their idyllic little village. So shortly after moving in, they were looking to sell and move to the big city.

Both these disadvantages would have been easy to learn from a brief rental stay and could have saved a lot of time and money.

And just to show I’m not getting too uptight about all this, I’ve been getting back into using my camera as more than a point-and-shoot box. Here’s a picture of one of those fledgling magpies whose chatter is amusing rather than irritating.

Magpie in flight

Magpie in flight

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Some Thoughts on Animal Welfare

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

The treatment of animals abroad often causes strong emotions in ex-pats.

There is evidence of ill treatment of animals in many countries, including the UK. If there wasn’t we wouldn’t have so many charities dedicated to their well-being. But different countries have different views on the place of animals, and sometimes we impose our own values and assumptions without thinking.

Our first rented apartment was the basement floor of the house of a young couple who had dogs and cats. The cats, they told us, were there to keep the mice away and they were expected to find their own food. And they were good at it as we observed on several occasions. The cats lived outside, sheltering under balconies in bad weather. They received little affection (as we would view it) from their owners, who would never dream of sitting with a purring cat on their lap.

For some time I wondered about the dogs. Two were kept in metal enclosures while the third was neither caged nor restrained, but still kept to a small area. All were regularly fed and watered and had shelter from the sun, but beyond this they seemed to get little attention. To an English person whose experience was of a dog being a non-human extension of the family, this seemed a cruel life.

But then I realised my mistake. These dogs got regular exercise – before I ever got up out of my bed in a morning. Just because I didn’t see it, didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. And as they were taken out into the countryside they probably got more enjoyment from their exercise than being walked on a lead through urban streets.

There are still a few people around here who use donkeys for transport, either of themselves or their goods. Our romanticised English way is to automatically feel sorry for the animal’s plight. But they are well fed, they get regular exercise, the regular company of their owner. If they are left for a long period they will have food, water and shade. How is this more cruel than keeping a horse in a stable and riding it occasionally, when you have the time?

Shouldn’t we be concerned that the man is riding the donkey while his wife has to walk alongside?

Stray animals are a problem in Greece. I believe it is illegal to have them put down, so there is the ongoing problem of unwanted puppies and kittens as well as older animal.  Cats are pretty good at surviving and the strays living round here are definitely not short of food . Dogs are both more needy and more appealing, especially at the helpless puppy stage.

This can create a dilemma for ex-pats. That soft spot for animals means they often start to feed them, or even take them in. But the animal may be sick or injured so next they’re shipped off to the vet, whose bills can amount to hundreds of euros.

Two friends have found themselves in this situation, taking in sick animals and picking up costs and responsibilities that their Greek owners were unable – or unwilling – to meet. It’s not impossible that the animals were actually left to be ‘found’ by these people. They explain their actions: ‘I had to’; ‘I couldn’t leave it lying there’ etc. But actually they’re wrong: they didn’t have to, they could have left the animal.

They chose not to, it was a positive choice they made, it wasn’t out of their control, as their words suggest.

But is it wise?

Both friends have now taken in 2 abandoned dogs. Chances are they’re developing a reputation as people who will do this, and they may find other animals  appearing near their homes similarly in need of care and attention. And what will they do? Keep taking them in, establishing themselves as a local, privately funded dog’s home? Spend more and more of their income to feed and care for the animals? When will they decide enough is enough, and how will they justify this to themselves?

That abandoned puppy make look cute but it could give you a whole stack of problems

That abandoned puppy make look cute but it could give you a whole stack of problems

What happens when these people want, or need, to go away? Who will care for their animals? It’s not difficult to get someone to look after one dog or cat, but when the numbers start to rise help is less likely to be forthcoming. So they either incur the costs of kennels (if they can find them) or find their lives have become restricted by the needs of the animals.

I can’t see that this seemingly caring action is really helping Greece to deal effectively with its problems of unwanted animals. In fact it’s hiding the size of the problem. Taking the less animal-loving path may be hard, but it could be the better option in the long run.

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