Two Years Before the Souvlaki

Buried Under Boxes

We spent most of yesterday unpacking boxes and are pleased to report that we more or less have an unpacked kitchen.  The bedrooms and living room, sadly, are not in such good shape.  Our apartment in Haifa had more built-in cabinets and shelves, and although we've purchased a few bookcases, we still have lots of stuff that doesn't yet have a home.  We rented a car for the day yesterday, and before we turned it in this afternoon we ran out to the Carrefour Home and bought Graham a newer, bigger dresser and another small bookcase.  Buying bookcases is amusing because three years ago, we moved to Haifa with just a handful of books.

Around six, we left our messy apartment and headed south to a church near the village of Malades for Matt's secretary Eva's big fat Greek wedding.  It was awesome and hopefully we'll get around to telling you more about it later.  Unbelievably, however, we forgot our camera so hopefully some of the other postdocs will send us pictures.

Moving In Live Blogging

11:55 am  We've cleaned up and reorganized in anticipation of the movers' arrival.  The balcony and living room are clean and clear, the guest room has been emptied of painting supplies, and we have switched bedrooms with Graham.  The parking spaces they requested haven't been blocked off because they're still blocked by various cars from last night.  We'll see how that goes.  

12:10 pm  A scout on a motorcycle arrived to survey the area.  I told him 4th and 5th floor; he yelled into his cell phone for a minute and drove off.  The parking situation has not improved.

12:30 pm  The wait is excruciating.  Matt took Graham's tunnel - aka the box our refrigerator arrived in six weeks ago - and managed to block off one parking space.  He's contemplating taking a chair down to block off a spot Pittsburgh-style, but we're afraid the gypsies will steal it.  Graham is too excited to nap.

1:00 pm  We'd just sat down to lunch on the patio when the movers reappeared. They lifted up one of the gypsies' Apes and moved it from in front of our building. Now there's just a van and a small Fiat to be moved. The movers also seem unhappy about the metal awning for our patio's retractable sunshade, which may block the crane which will soon be dropping our furniture and boxes onto the patio.

1:15 pm We seem to have run into more troubles.  From what we could understand from one of the men's halting English, it seems one of our downstairs neighbors is making some sort of trouble.  The movers are now trying to reach our building's owner.  "It's just crazy," one man told us before he grabbed most of his stuff and walked out.  Fortunately he left some of his tools on the balcony, or else we'd really be worried.

1:30 pm  One of the movers is now on the third floor balcony below ours, taking down our neighbor's metal awning frame.  Apparently the crane will drop our boxes and furniture on that balcony and then they will hoist them up to our fourth and fifth floor balconies.  

1:45 pm  The truck carrying the crane appeared.  Although, technically, it's not a crane; it's more like a bucket attached to an escalator.  The truck with our shipment has not yet arrived.

2:55 pm  The truck carrying most of our shipment arrived approximately an hour ago, and now our apartment is crowded with boxes.  The movers repaired our kitchen table, which arrived slightly more broken than it had been before the move, and it's set up in its new spot.  The couch is facing the fireplace on its rug.  Graham is overwhelmed by toys.  We are overwhelmed by all our stuff, which all smells mildewy - in other words, it smells like our old apartment in Haifa.

3:30 pm  Mattresses are being lifted from the 4th to 5th floor balcony.  The final boxes are up.  We're overwhelmed by boxes and packing supplies.

3:45 pm  Everything is in the apartment.  The awnings are getting reconstructed.  Niko and Sanna are back from touring the ruins at Knossos.

4:02 pm  The movers just left.  Our neighbor downstairs was shouting at them complaining about something probably her awning.  The movers rolled their eyes.  If she didn't already, she really hates us now.  

4:11 pm  Our month-long experiment in urban camping is officially over.  Tonight we will sleep on a proper bed, with pillows.  This concludes today's live blogging.  We hope you enjoyed your vicarious entertainment.  One piece of advice is: Don't ever move.

The movers are coming! The movers are coming!

Breaking news:  The movers just called to schedule a noon arrival tomorrow.  Just over two months since we packed everything up and headed to Crete, we're going to be reunited with our stuff.  We're sort of in shock, but on the other hand, we've become so cynical in the past two months that we'll believe it when they stuff is actually in our apartment.

The movers requested we block off some parking spots in front of the buildings.  As we have neither a car nor several sawhorses (the time-honored Bostonian technique), maybe we can enlist the help of the gypsies.

Stay tuned; we'll keep you updated with live blogging all day tomorrow!

Customs

We woke up, which is to say that Graham woke us up,  bright and early this morning and walked down to the port to try to get our shipment through customs.  After wandering around by the marina and the ferry terminal, we finally found the customs house in the cargo area.  We were met by our customs broker, a short old Greek guy with a big beard who needed only a pea coat and sailor's cap to look the quintessential Aegean sea salt.  He looked at our passports, filled out some paperwork, and spent some time yelling in Greek into his cell phone.  

After a few minutes, we went with a customs officer and a couple other guys over to our container, which was patiently sitting by itself in the cargo lot and probably starting to wonder if we'd completely forgotten about it.  First, they broke the seal with which our Israeli movers had closed it.  Then, the customs officer and our broker started poking around and opening a few boxes to verify the contents matched the packing list.  After two months it was actually quite startling to be once again looking at our stuff, even if it was all boxed up.   I was sorely tempted to ask if I could just grab a couple things, but a moment later the container was closed again and resealed.  

We went back to the customs house and waited a bit while our broker and the customs officer filled out some forms.  Then miraculously the broker came over, said we were all set, and handed me his cell phone to discuss with the movers the delivery of our stuff this weekend.  We gave him money to cover the import duties, and astonishingly that was that.  Of course, this is Greece, and based on our previous experience we're expecting some unforeseen complication to cause further delays.  But, at least for a while, it seems the gods of Greek bureaucracy have decided to relent just this once.

Our stuff

It's been a while since our last post, and you might have been wondering if perhaps we'd finally received the stuff we shipped from Israel.  Sadly, it's now two months since the movers hauled it away from our apartment in Haifa, and we still haven't gotten it back.

On October 11th, our Israeli shipping company received the check we sent via DHL, and then we all sat around and waited until it cleared, which it did on the 19th.  Since then we've been waiting for the world's slowest wire transfer from Israel to Greece to come through.  After waiting for two weeks, we decided to go ahead and send the Greek movers the money ourselves with the promise of getting reimbursed if and when the Israeli wire transfer arrives.  Tomorrow morning we are headed to the customs house down at the port to pay our bill and deal with some paperwork.  And, who knows, maybe our stuff we be delivered some day soon.

Our friends Niko and Sanna arrived last week for a ten day visit from Israel.  Fortunately Niko's physics grant is paying for them to stay in a hotel, because our guest bed is currently hanging out at the Heraklion port.  For a while we were a little sad that we'd be spending the weekend of Niko and Sanna's visit arranging delivery and unpacking our stuff.  So, although we still don't have it, at least we had the weekend free.

Health Insurance

Wednesday night Matt met with our insurance agent and finalized our health insurance plan, and now we have health insurance for the first time since September 1st!  The process of signing up for health insurance is yet another thing that makes us a little nostalgic for Israel.  There, we purchased private insurance that retroactively covered us beginning our first day in the country.  Here in Greece, we'll join the national plan - IKA - four months after we get our residence permits.  As you all know, we aren't going to get our residence permits until after we return with our work visas in January, so a few weeks ago we visited a private agent to sign up for private insurance to carry us through until then.  Two weeks later, the papers are finally ready, and we have insurance!  It's almost efficient.

We get the sense that this insurance isn't for non-Greeks, as we had in Israel, but rather for wealthy Greeks who want to supplement the national plan with private doctors.  Therefore, the paperwork and instructions we received aren't in English, and the agent we purchased it from didn't speak English (or at least, very well) so Eva came along to translate.  As she was describing the various plans, she mentioned that the insurance covers the extra specialist fee.  We were perplexed, so Eva explained that in Greece, the specialists charge an extra fee for "good service" in addition to the fees they report on their taxes.  Our health insurance covers 100% of the good service fee if we get a receipt, but since they know we'll be charged for the extra service and we most likely won't get a receipt, they only pay 70% if we don't have a receipt.  We found this extremely amusing.  Despite the elaborate system of tax numbers and a bazillion stamps for everything, it seems cheating on your taxes is a national Greek pastime.

So, any doctors who are reading this, we dare you to charge an extra fee for good service sometime and see how it works out for you.  If we're ever in need of a specialist here, we'll be sure to pay it.  Paying extra for good service seems like a wise idea.

Mums & Tots

This morning Graham and I attended a mother and toddler's group, or "mums and tots," in the Agios Ioannis neighborhood south of Heraklion.  The group is part of the English-speaking Parents' and Guardians' Association of Heraklion [ESPGA] and meets every Thursday.  Graham and I joined four other blond-haired little boys, two little girls, and their mothers for extremely milky tea and playtime.  Graham doesn't have many toys here, although the few we brought from Israel have been joined by birthday presents from doting grandparents, and I think he enjoyed playing with the toys more than the other toddlers.  One of the mothers is Greek, with a husband from New Zealand and a daughter they're raising as a native English speaker, and the other mothers were from the UK and Ireland, married to Greeks.  Hopefully once I get a little better at understanding a few of the thick Scottish brogues I'll be able to join the conversation more!

As I mentioned, the playgroup took place in the ESPGA's classroom in the Agios Ioannis neighborhood, which is fairly far from our house, south of the National Road.  ESPGA aside, I'm still glad we don't live in Agios Ioannis, which we first visited our first weekend in Heraklion.  A nice woman kindly drove Graham and I this morning to show me where it is, but next week I think we'll be taking the bus.  I'm glad to join the ESPGA; in addition to the Thursday morning group, they have a small lending library and a Saturday morning drop-off arts and crafts time, as well as evening English-language classes for school-age children.

In other news, we still don't have internet as we don't have the all-important AFM (tax number).  Hopefully we can get Matt's boss to sign us up for internet soon, but until then we're still borrowing our generous and unsuspecting neighbor's.  Sadly, however, this connection is either too remote or too slow or too something to upload photos, so my apologies, grandparents, this blog will continue to be photo-less until we can convince Matt to upload some from the university.

Our ship is in

For the past month, I've been saying - jokingly - that I'll get x "when our ship comes in."  Usually I'm referring to something silly, like my moisturizer I bring back from the U.S., or perhaps our washing machine.  "We can do our own laundry when our ship comes in!" I'll say brightly, then laugh at my own stupid joke.  "We'll have more than two pans when our ship comes in!"  When you've been living in chaos since September 3rd, stupid jokes like that are funny.

It stopped being funny on October 2nd, when our ship actually did come in.  Our stuff from Israel is currently sitting somewhere in the Heraklion port, perhaps a mile or two from our apartment, but it won't  be delivered soon.  Annoyingly, we can't even blame the shipping company, because it's all our fault.  We screwed up our original check on September 3rd, by writing two different amounts in the word and numeral sections, and our bank wouldn't cash it.  When we found out on September 24th, we made our second mistake: we sent a new check by regular mail.  You'd think people who had lived in Israel for three years would have known not to send anything there by mail during the fall holidays, but we, clearly, are not that bright.  It's only six hundred miles, we reasoned.  How long can it take?  It hasn't arrived yet.

Monday we sent another check via DHL, who for some reason couldn't get it to Ashdod until Thursday.  Our shipping company didn't notify us that they received it, but since they work Sunday through Thursday we can follow up with them on Sunday before harassing DHL on Monday.  The sad news, however, is that the Greek shipping company won't start us through the customs process here until the Israeli company releases the hold on our shipment, which they won't do until the check clears.  We don't know how long the customs process will take, but we do know that the Greek company will only deliver our stuff on a weekend because we live in the city center.  Now we're hoping to have our stuff returned to us by Matt's birthday at the end of the month, which we had planned to spend on Santorini.  We've postponed that trip until our stuff arrives. We'd hate to miss delivery because we're on the wrong island.

In the meantime, saying "We can do laundry when our shipment leaves the port" doesn't have quite the same ring as "We can do laundry when our ship comes in."

Greek elections

Today we experienced our first Greek elections and, as recent Greek governments haven't been quite as unstable as Israeli ones, potentially the only one we'll see.  Since we're new to the country and Greek politics aren't exactly a staple of international news, we're pretty ignorant about the relevant issues and leading figures.  As a result, in great contrast with last fall's American elections or even last spring's Israeli elections, we've paid virtually no attention.  We did, by accident, stumble last weekend upon a right-wing incumbent New Democracy rally in Plaza Eleftherias, but that's about it.   We'd heard that perhaps the voting was this weekend, but we weren't entirely sure.

Tonight, however, at about 7:30 pm, as we were preparing dinner, horns started blaring and even some fireworks exploded.  Our first guess was that perhaps the local soccer team had won, but soon it become clear that the hullaballoo was in celebration of the victory of the socialist PASOK party.  The main road through town was gridlocked with cars blaring their horns and waving green PASOK flags.  Plaza Elertherias and the surrounding streets were packed with supporters in a carnival-like scene.   A large tv screen was set up outside city hall showing the current prime minister's concession speech, and when he congratulated George Papandreou a huge cheer erupted from the crowd.  Now, about five hours later, the party is still going strong and the din of the car horns continues undiminished.  

We're In!

This morning we said farewell to our temporary apartment at the Anna Pension and moved into our apartment in Heraklion's center.  Yesterday afternoon Graham's new big boy bed was delivered and he's currently taking his first nap on it.  Last week we also purchased an air mattress which we'll sleep on until our shipment arrives.  Sadly, we don't have any news on our shipment.  It was supposed to arrive in Heraklion today, but we haven't yet received a call from the Greek movers.

We had a bit of an excitement last night when our elevator got stuck between the third and fourth floors.  Fortunately the fire department extricated us within fifteen minutes.  Graham, who was hysterical while we were stuck, seems unscathed today but claustrophobic Courtney remains wary of the elevator.  We're wondering who called the fire department - the elevator's alarm button or our neighbors who heard our cries for help?  It'd be useful to know for next time.

Matt's uncle Al and aunt Meg arrived in Heraklion last Saturday and we had a great visit with them until they departed last night.  After our difficult first three weeks here, and the annoyance of cleaning and painting our new apartment, it was nice to have some parental-type people come and take care of us for a while, even if they weren't our parents.  We spent our time with them exploring Heraklion and nearby Knossos, the Lasithi Plateau and the Diktaian Andron, and Spinalonga, and being treated to lots of yummy dinners and gelato.  We're still stealing wireless from a generous if unsuspecting neighbor, but hopefully we can get some pictures of our adventures up soon.