Two Years Before the Souvlaki

AirplaneAirportSky

Monday morning we left our apartment at the very reasonable hour of 7:45 a.m. and flew to Boston via Athens and Munich, or "AirplaneAirportSky! MommyDaddyGrahamo!" as Graham likes to say.  Graham had spent the last several weeks counting down the days until our trip, and he tremendously enjoyed the three flights.  He's spent the last few days explaining "engine spin round and round air backwards airplane up" and "airplane bumpity bump bump" to anyone who will listen. 

We had a good trip too.  We missed the free wifi at Ben Gurion, but enjoyed the fabulous views of Santorini as we flew across the Aegean and of the snowy Alps just before descending into Munich.   Sadly, no great views of North America, as we arrived after dark. 

We're here in Boston to celebrate our first Thanksgiving in the US in quite a few years.  We watched a few minutes of the Macy's parade yesterday but are postponing our feast until Saturday, when Sarah and Brian return from visiting his parents.  This morning, Graham, like a good American, was up at 4:45 a.m. ready for Black Friday shopping.  Instead, we're going this afternoon to K&M Farm in North Andover to pick up our American Bronze turkey for tomorrow.

The weather in New England has been drizzly and cool, very different than the sunny and crisp days we've had the last few weeks in Heraklion.  Graham now has ample opportunity to wear his green frog boots and the striped wool hat Courtney knit for him.

Before AirportAirplaneSky:

Graham at a park in Heraklion last week.

Graham loves this playground when he has it all to himself (which, fortunately, is usually the case.)

Graham loves throwing rocks into the sea.

After AirportAirplaneSky:

We walked with Graham from grandma's house in Concord to the farm stand.

Graham and Grandma head into the woods.

Moving-in Day photos

We were too busy when our shipment arrived last Saturday  to provide complete blog coverage of the event. In addition to the live-blogging, we took some pictures, but due to the slow uploading at home, we didn't get around to posting them until now.

The ladder truck parked outside our building taking up two newly free parking spaces with the ladder stretching up to our lower balcony on the fourth floor.  The platform which carried up our stuff is part way up.  Note, that because it is somewhat setback, the ladder passes just over the railing of of our third-floor neighbor, necessitating the lowering of the metal frame for her awning as well as ours.

Courtney and Graham watch as our stuff is moved from the van to the platform.

A load of boxes arrives at the top of the ladder and is unloaded onto our balcony.

Cold

Autumn arrived in Crete a few weeks ago, and although in principle we're happy to finally have some cooler rainy weather, since our shipment hadn't yet arrived, we were also without almost all of the items one would ordinarily like to have at such a time.  When we arrived at the beginning of September, it was warm and sunny as in Israel, so the t-shirts and sandals we had brought with us were fine.  However, for two weeks starting at the end of October, the weather was decidedly cold and rainy.  Unfortunately, the heat in our building won't come on until late December.  

Courtney was furiously finishing the wools socks she'd been knitting so as to have at least one pair.  I broke down and bought socks and shoes, so I'd have something other than flip-flops on my feet.  After a couple freezing nights, we managed to obtain some blankets for the beds.

This seemed to be a perfect time to inaugurate our fireplace.  The previous tenants had left some wood, and with the help of a starter log, we were soon basking in the orange flames and slightly warming our unheated apartment.

The fire was both romantic and warm.

Niko and Sanna had the misfortune to schedule their trip during this wintry weather, and so they now  probably think Crete isn't that different from back home in Finland.  The Sunday they were here, we took them over to Chania.  After driving through intermittent rain showers, we arrived to find the charming old city nearly deserted.  The seas were so rough that waves from the harbor were crashing onto the street.  

The Finns at the Chania harbor which looked more Baltic than Aegean.

The stormy weather finally broke the next morning and it's once again sunny and relatively warm.  And, to compensate for the cold and rain, when the clouds lifted we were treated to a beautiful view of a snowy Mt. Ida.

Mt. Ida as seen from our balcony an hour after sunrise.

Happy Agios Minas Day

Today Heraklion is celebrating Agios Minas Day, the feast day of its patron saint, Saint Minas.  Saint Minas was an Egyptian who converted to Christianity in the mid-3rd century AD and served in the Roman army.   He eventually resigned, lived for a few years as a hermit, and then heard a calling to become a martyr.  After declaring his faith to Roman rulers, he was tortured and eventually beheaded.

Saint Minas became the patron saint of Heraklion during the Ottoman period (1669-1898), a time of tense and often violent relations between the Christians and Muslims.  According to local history, a Muslim mob surrounded a Christian church on Easter Sunday, 1826, with plans to kill the worshipers inside.  An officer miraculously appeared to disburse the Muslim crowd, and Christians believed he was in fact Saint Minas himself who came to save them.  Heraklionites also credit Agios Minas for saving their cathedral during World War II, when a German bomb fell on the cathedral but failed to detonate on May 23, 1941 and currently on display outside the church.  Here's a bonus fact about the name Minas: it's not very popular here in Heraklion, because illegitimate boys who were left on the church steps in the nineteenth century to be raised by the church were given the name Minas, and the name is still avoided by locals today.

Today is a city holiday, with shops and schools closed.  After listening to monks from the church behind our apartment chanting during breakfast time, we walked over to Agios Minas Cathedral to check out the crowds, which included members of the military, a military band, and vendors selling popcorn, cotton candy, balloons, and religious icons.  The main streets through the city center were closed to traffic, so Graham and Courtney walked Matt to a bus stop outside the Chania Gate, and then went to the park.  The playground, normally empty, was filled with kids on break from school.

Courtney and Graham in front of Agios Minas Cathedral with the soldiers and band ready for the procession.

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.