House for sale

Don't get excited, were not selling up!!

On our main page you will see a new link where I am about to post details of a house for sale in this area. Full details with photographs will be available in a few days, so please keep checking back if you are interested.

Am I critical of Greece?

Following my last post about getting factual information from the blog written by Kat, I received the following “comment”. Whoever wrote this failed to leave their name, just posted as “Anonymous”. As it did not seem relevant to that thread, I have separated it here:

“If Greece is such a backwards country according to your writings, and you find things so unorganised here, then why don't you go back to where you came from? “

I write about what happens to us since we moved to Greece, my name and email address is clearly visible to everyone. Yes, I have opinions like everyone else, and when I express some of them I try not to be upsetting or offensive to others. I would hope that others wishing to express their views through my blog would also have the guts or decency to reveal themselves. So, as a result I have now turned off the option for people to post comments anonymously; I know there ways around everything, but....

After reading the comment I looked at what had been written over last few years trying to understand why someone thought I found Greece “a backward country” and things were so “unorganised”. I hoped I hadn't described it in either way. I don't think I have, I only recorded events that had happened to show progress with our home and incidents that we found amusing.

I apologise if those events have made it sound that Greece is the way you describe it “Anonymous” and offended you. Yes of course there are bad things and good things about the country and also the people, but that's exactly the same wherever in the world you are.

We both love Greece the way it is, we don't want to change it; we have chosen to live here.

Factual information

Over the last few years we have tried to answer questions from people about various topics relating to living here in Greece. Facts about businesses and government bodies are difficult to gather and then be sure that you are accurate, particularly with the problems of language. Just when you are sure that you have grasped something, it's a fair certainty that within a month or so laws or circumstances will change and your information is no longer valid.

Even something as simple as bus timetables can be nightmare. The main national bus company KTEL removed bus timetables from their web site some time ago and now have a pay-for-info telephone service. There are still some web resources that give information and a local paper also includes timetables. The problem? None of them show the same timetables! Some are probably last years timetables, some are probably even older as people fail to update their information.

So that's why today I must tell you about a wonderful lady in Athens. I discovered her web pages by accident, pure serendipity. I won't try to tell her story here, you must read her pages yourself, but what you will find is a refreshing honesty and a wealth of factual information. Best of all, Kat periodically checks the validity of her posts and provides updates. Like the rest of us she loves Greece, but is still willing to criticise and point of the pitfalls of living here. Also, the comments by others on her articles add to the excellent insights of the Greeks and Greece.

Hats off to Kat, you'll find the link to her pages in the column on the right.

Yet again, earthquakes!

Here are two maps of the Southern Peloponnese, one showing a rectangle defining the area where most of the “local” earthquakes have occurred , and the other, with the help of the web site www.emsc-csem.org, you can see some of the activity in the last 7 days.

Since 14^th February the number of seismic events is now 266 !! Almost every day we still have something recorded for the area, but thankfully as they are mostly under magnitude 4, we don't feel anything.

On the map showing activity you can see the mass of events in the Northern Peloponnese, between Patras and Pylos that have occurred in the last couple of weeks. These started with a couple of quite serious quakes measuring over 6, and these caused considerable damage and the deaths of at least 2 people.

Also on that map you will see a large orange circle to the east of the Peloponnese, between Nafplio and Nemea. This occurred a couple of mornings ago, about 5am our time. I happened to have just been woken by our cat, Tara, who wanted to go out. After letting her out I had just laid down in bed when I heard the wood in our roof making popping and cracking noises and could feel a very gentle movement of the bed. No, no jokes please!!! So, 100km away, a magnitude 5 quake could just be felt.

I hope this is the last entry about earthquakes for some time!!