Category Archives: Day to day on Symi

Day to day on Symi

Bits and Pieces

Bits and Pieces

Hello, and here’s wishing you a good week ahead, happy solstice and all that. Or, happy Witchling Day if you happen to live in the imaginary village of Saddling, down on Romney Marsh. Not sure what I’m talking about? Click here. (Note, that’s book two of a series, but it’s set around the summer solstice.)

Neil June 19_12

Other news… The photos today are from Neil, as you can tell by the quality and style. He’s currently arranging to have a one-day diving course with the new Symi diving school, Blue Lagoon Divers. A friend did this the other day and had an amazing experience. There are longer courses and various ways to arrange them as everything is tailor-made to suit you. If Neil gets on with the introductory morning course (during which you do all your safety training and your first dive, one-on-one with an instructor), then he may go on to do the longer one so he can dive deeper.

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We’ve had some traffic police from Rhodes on the island of late; different uniforms and everything. Apparently, and this is café chatter, they came over following the complaints about the biker-boys* and the way they make up for lack of manhood by removing the baffles from their exhausts, so they have the noisiest moped on the island or some other childish thing. Many people who live along the main road have been disturbed by their curfew-breaking antics, and enough was clearly enough. Hopefully, they’ve been put in their quieter place. Things are certainly a lot quieter than they were.
(* Or biker girls. Definitely biker men who should know better, ’cos I’ve seen one doing a wheely up the main road. I’d say he was 40 going on 12.)

Neil June 19_01

Another thing I’ve noticed in groups on Facebook is more and more people asking for advice about how to stay longer than 90 days. These are Brits who want to come to Greece for a full summer or who want to move out here for a year and try it out. I can’t believe I am still seeing this kind of question, and I can’t believe how calmly and kindly most people are answering it. Did the yUK government not make it clear? After Brexit, if you want to have an extended stay in Greece (or another EU country), then, basically, you’re stuffed. You can’t. End of. You can’t extend your 90 days while you are here. Sorry. Well, you can arrange a certain visa before you leave if you’ve got a place to go and a job etc., but you can’t do it on a whim like you used to. There are other ways around it, like buy a property for a quarter of a million or have an income of more than 2K per month, a large amount of savings in a Greek bank, private health insurance and so on. But the good old days of being able to come for six months, or even four, or even 91 days (in a rolling 180) are over. Brexit, the gift that keeps giving.

Neil June 19_03

Oh, finally, talking of gifts. Another friend recently had a parcel from UK Amazon which only took eight weeks to get here and only cost an extra €45.00 in customs duty and so on, and that, by post-Brexit standards, is not bad. I ordered a book from Amazon Germany last Monday, and the tracking told me it was delivered on Thursday. Delivered being, left Athens, so probably on a Blue Star or a flight to Rhodes, but still, an excellent service. It was ordered via Germany, sent from Italy, arrived in Greece and was probably in my PO box last Friday. Nice. Must go now and pick it up.

Day to day on Symi

Friday Photos

Friday Photos

To end the week in what’s become my usual fashion, here are some photos.

Firstly, Taverna Zoi is opening tonight (Friday). I took these and other photos early in the morning while walking up to To Vrisi. The others were taken on a walk down to Yialos, as you can probably tell. Here they are in no particular order. Have a good weekend.

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Day to day on Symi

Sometimes…

Sometimes…

Living on Symi, sometimes the simplest of tasks can take a terribly long time. For example, let’s say you needed to get your incoming orders from the bank and give them to your accountant so she can prepare your tax returns. This can involve gearing yourself up to head to Yialos, an event in itself for the likes of me, preparing your speech for when you get to the bank, and being forearmed with your bank book, passport etc. That done, you head off down the steps, around the harbour, and arrive at the bank, hoping there won’t be a queue. There is, and you wait in the blazing sun while the queue declines pleasingly quickly until there’s just one person in front of you, and you are being held in the vestibule, which must be the only non-airconditioned part of the building. However, the person in front of you is trawling back through their transactions since before the days of the Drachma… But you finally get in, deal with your paperwork, pay the fee and escape. As you do, you decide to call at the post office, where you wait again until you can enter, check your PO box and find there’s nothing there anyway. So you decide to drop your papers at the accountant, only to find they’re not open yet because it’s still early. So, you trudge back up the steps knowing that you’ve got to trudge back down them again another day soon.

And breathe.

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That’s how things can sometimes go. On Tuesday, however, things ran differently. Having geared myself up for the annual visit to the bank to ask for my ‘pink slips’, which the accountant needs to do last year’s tax now the platform is open… I headed on down the steps with a self-made printout of the transaction details I needed official copies of, so I could hand it over and save the teller some time. I was early, as I hardly ever do anything late, i.e. after ten in the morning, and discovered, when I stopped to tie a lace by the war memorial, that Jenine had been calling me for the last five minutes. I’d not heard because my head was back in 1890 and the chapter I intended to write when I got home as it usually is when I am allowed out on my own. We walked to the bank, and she continued on to work, and lo! I was admitted to the vestibule straight away. There, I had to wait while someone finished some piece of business inside, which took all of two minutes, and I was released into the air conditioning to talk to the teller.

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I made my opening gambit in Greek, of course, and after that, we slipped politely into English. The paperwork was quickly prepared and handed to me with the news that not only are these things not called ‘pink slips’ anymore and haven’t been for years (I knew this) but also, there is no need for me to go to the bank to get them. I can do them via my Alpha Web Banking… and here’s how. After the demonstration, and after being told how to activate my new card, which arrived a couple of weeks ago, I was back out in the sun with a spring in my step. A quick visit, no need to bother them annually again, and my card activated to boot. So, buoyed by this, I decided to head to the post office, where there no queue, only a cheerfully welcoming George, and a delivery slip waiting for me in our PO box. I’d ordered a model from the USA back in March. It was a pre-order, due to become available at the end of May, and I wasn’t expecting it until next month. It had been posted on May 16th and arrived here on June 10th, no extra charge, all in one piece. Well, as many pieces as the kit should have because you have to put it together yourself. Result: I now had a spring in both steps.

I now have four to build when the winter comes.
I now have four to build when the winter comes.

There was another result shortly after when I started my trudge back and found Stelios already in his office. I dropped off my papers, thereby saving another trip down the next day, and headed on up the Kali Strata springing like nobody’s business. On the way, I met Panormita, who does my tax return, so was able to tell her – while bouncing from one spring to the other – the non-pink slips were waiting for her. And so, my annual admin was done and dusted within one hour of leaving home.

Sometimes, things don’t take so long after all.

Day to day on Symi

This and That

This and That

I’ve got some odds and bods to show you today. These are photos that don’t seem to fit anywhere or haven’t yet found a place in one of my quick ‘catch up’ blog posts. Oh, apart from the boot which falls under my ‘things found by the side of the road’ collection.

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I’ve also got a preview of what you can find in next year’s calendar, which is now on sale at lulu.com (and only there). You used to be able to do an online preview at that site, but I haven’t yet found out if I still can. So, this will have to do:

Preview smallerClick here to go to the purchase page.

The glass of wine shot was just one of those moments when a butterfly fancied checking out the vintage and hung around for a quick look.

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This other one is there because I thought it was about time we had a shot of Yialos and the boats. It’s looking a bit busier down there right now. The taxi boats are going out, the beaches are open, there are more visitors, and there’s more activity. The same goes for the village where there are more people about in the late afternoon/evening.

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Day to day on Symi

A view from the bridge

A view from the bridge

Well, not exactly from the bridge, but from the balcony looking towards the bridge… of various ships. Hey! It’s early. We had a new Blue Star boat coming in yesterday. The Ariadne is doing the Monday run for the time being. According to Yiannis, it is 197 meters long, and I have to say, it did make an impressive sight. When I first saw it coming around Nimos, it looked like a cruise ship, only not as high. The other boats you can see are the other Blue Star with the Nicolaos X day boat behind it going home, and the one going out is the Sebeco taking Neil over to Rhodes for his health checks last week.

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