The truth about expat lifestyle in Greece
KALAMOS BOOKS
Marjory McGinn
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10 Jan 2011
The heat and lifestyle have made Greece a favourite among expats. But
with the economy on its knees, is the dream over?
When Scottish expat John Malcolm was caught speeding in the southern
Peloponnese, a Greek police officer strolled over to the car to book
him and asked where he was born.
“When I told him I was Scottish the officer said, ‘That means you’re
as mad as we are,’ and waved me away, saying to his colleague, ‘He’s
Scottish – don’t have anything to do with this one,’” Malcolm recalls.
The Scot drove off, relieved he’d escaped a fine but amused at the
colourful image his countrymen seem to have in this remote part of
southern Greece, where he’s lived for 11 years. “It wasn’t really
meant in a bad way, because I’ve found that Greeks look fondly on the
Scots, partly because they remember the Scottish regiments who came
here during the Second World War,” says Malcolm.
The fondness might also stem from the fact there are very few Scots
living in the Mani region, the mid-section of three ragged peninsulas
in this most southerly part of the Greek mainland, famous for its
olive groves, soaring Taygetos mountain and 16th-century stone towers,
all of which have attracted many English expats and holidaymakers.
However, only half-a-dozen Scots live here permanently, compared with
about 200 full-time expats from the rest of the British Isles. John
lives here with his German partner, writer Eva Maria Lang, in a stone
house surrounded by olive trees in the village of Riglia.
Malcolm, 52, from Dundee, who runs a computer business, came here in
1999 looking for a new life after a family bereavement. “I sold my
house in Scotland and came to Greece as my sister Ruth was working in
the Mani and had a village house,” he says. “So I turned up at her
place with everything I owned in my car, and my motorbike on a
trailer. I’d never been to Greece and thought I’d just come over for a
break, but I’ve been here ever since.”
Malcolm was one of the first Scots to live in the southern
Peloponnese, part of a small group of expats in the Mani at that time.
“In those days you didn’t need to earn much to live really well,” he
says. “You could work for two weeks and then take a month off. I had a
computer and was one of the first people here to have an internet
connection. People were always asking me to book things online, and
then later to help them get internet connections, and that’s how my
business grew.”
Like other Scots in Greece, Malcolm quickly grew to love the laidback
lifestyle, but is now uncertain about his future. “This is home now,
but I can’t say if it will be for ever because of the dire economic
situation in Greece.”
In recent months the cost of everyday items such as food and petrol
has soared and there is uncertainty about how much worse it might get,
while estate agents report there are now fewer queries from British
buyers.
“I’m always proud to tell people I’m Scottish, but I know I won’t
return there to live,” Malcolm says, rather defiantly. He says he
couldn’t adjust back to the Scottish climate and lifestyle.
Kathleen Stylianou (nee Lindsay), from Edinburgh, came to Kalamata,
the capital of the southern Peloponnese, six years ago with her Greek
Cypriot husband, Paul. The couple met at a school in Cyprus where
Kathleen was teaching and moved to Scotland, but once their daughter
had graduated from Edinburgh University they decided to return to the
Mediterranean.
They chose the city of Kalamata because its airport meant they could
easily return to Scotland to see their daughter, her two toddlers, and
Kathleen’s parents, now in their seventies, who live in Fife.
Stylianou, 50, admits she worries about her parents, especially since
her mother has been unwell and her brother, who lives nearby in
Haddington, now has more responsibility for them. However, it hasn’t
made her change her mind about living in Greece, where she works in a
private school.
Sitting in the couple’s top-floor apartment, with spectacular views of
the nearby Taygetos mountain and the Messinian Gulf, Stylianou says
she suffered severely from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in
Scotland and as we talk she chooses to sit by the balcony doors in her
study, with the winter sun streaming in.
She says she has made a point of not losing her connection with
Scotland and, although there is only one other Scot in Kalamata (out
of 30 British expats), she held a Burns supper two years ago and
invited 80 people, mostly English, for whom the business of addressing
a haggis was more foreign than the customs of their adopted country.
Stylianou says buying a sheep’s stomach for the haggis was an arduous
affair. “In butcher’s shops here, when you ask for a stomach you are
handed the complete insides of a sheep, which I had to take home and
sort out.”
She is an active member of the expat community, but has made a handful
of Greek friends. “You have to make an effort to get to know Greeks,”
she says. “You can’t expect them to always make the first move.”
Being married to a Greek and having fluent language skills gives
Stylianou a different view of life. She says “many expats have an
idealised vision of Greece coloured by films like Shirley Valentine or
Mamma Mia!.
“But it’s not like that. Greeks have very different ideas about
things, and you have to get used to that, especially personal privacy.
“The Scots are very private, but Greeks like to know everything about
you, and say what they think. They will come straight out and say they
think you’re getting fat, for example. They’re very direct. They don’t
say it to hurt you but sometimes it does.
“But I like their spontaneity. In Scotland you don’t ask someone out
on the spur of the moment so much. You give people notice. Here,
Greeks will ring up and expect you to drop everything to go out with
them, and that can be a lot of fun.”
Like other expats who have lived here for a while, or married Greeks,
Stylianou is critical of those who say they don’t need to learn the
language properly because many Greeks speak English.
“I think you need the language to understand the people,” she says. “I
think you live a much richer life here if you have that.”
But richness of life is not what everyone is seeking. Most expats seem
content to huddle inside their British enclaves, particularly around
the popular beach resort of Stoupa, which has bars and cafes serving
full English breakfasts and Sunday roasts.
This area has the largest population of expats in the southern
Peloponnese, and one local business even delivers English-style food
to them, such as pies, sausages and curries. In one hillside
development of villas, there are so many English expats that it is
known derisively among other Brits as Brookside, after the TV soap.
Fran Burtonshaw, 50, packed in her job with BBC Scotland in the late
1980s after meeting a Greek man while on holiday and later marrying
him. She is now divorced with two teenage boys and has lived in
Kalamata for 20 years. She has many expat friends and understands
their insecurities.
“Some have come to Greece to escape their lives in Britain, and they
may just want the warm climate. But many only want to mix in expat
enclaves because it’s a security blanket for them, and they really
could be anywhere, like Spain. Those who do want to integrate may find
it a very difficult thing, depending on their age and circumstances,”
she says.
While Burtonshaw says there are huge advantages for expats in
integrating with the local community, there are few advantages for the
Greeks themselves. Their culture and family networks are so strong and
self-sufficient that very little of what expats do impacts on their
lives at all.
John Malcolm says when he first came to Greece most Brits “tended to
stick together and sit around in bars all day, drinking heavily and
talking about Britain. However, some of the expats coming here now
make more effort to fit in.”
There are now Greek language classes available and a few expats are
starting to join in fundraising events, together with locals, for
various Greek charities.
Many expats started to arrive in the southern Peloponnese during the
UK property price boom around 2004, after selling their homes for vast
sums and buying a property in Greece for early retirement or holidays.
The country now has about 40,000 British expats, residents and holiday
home owners, although the country is still well down the league table
for the 5.5 million Brits who live abroad. Latest figures show the top
three European destinations for British expats are Spain (760,000),
France (200,000) and Germany (115,000).
Enclaves have sprung up in more remote Greek villages, where expats
prefer olive orchards and quiet coves to crowded resorts. In Megali
Mantinia, a village near Kalamata, expats make up one-quarter of the
250-strong population (with another quarter consisting mainly of
Germans and Austrians), although few stay all year round. On one road
out of the village, there are so many British houses, some Greeks have
dubbed it the “English Road”, which hints at social segregation. Yet,
on the surface at least, the villagers and expats bump along quite
well.
Athanasios Kosteas, 54, owner of the hilltop Lofos taverna, says
expats have had a positive effect. “When I was growing up here, the
village was very rundown. There was no proper road or water supply and
many ruined stone houses due to an earthquake in 1944. The British
started arriving in 2000 and since then they have renovated houses and
returned them to their former state.
“Many Greeks have been inspired to take an interest in old family
houses as well. The village has improved and foreigners have helped
our businesses. Few villages in this peninsula can support four
tavernas and a kafeneion [cafe] all year round.”
However, not everyone feels the same. One Greek man, who didn’t want
to be named, said he was disgusted that many expats’ houses were only
occupied by two people for a few weeks a year, while his extended
family has to cram into one small house.
The Greek language remains the biggest obstacle for expats, and few
make the effort to surmount it. With its roots in Ancient Greek, it’s
said to be the second-hardest language to learn in the world, after
Japanese, and the grammar is so punishing even Greeks don’t always get
it right.
John Malcolm admits that, after 11 years, he still doesn’t speak much
Greek. One English expat in Megali Mantinia, in his late seventies,
complains that unless your Greek is fluent “you can only ever scratch
the surface of Greek life”, while another in her sixties admits she
feels isolated by language difficulties – and worried about the Greek
economy. She is one of half a dozen expats in that village alone who
have put their homes on the market, fearing that the recession and
price hikes will make life too difficult. But for her, it all boils
down to just one thing. “I really don’t want to die in Greece,” she
says, mournfully.
But the Scots appear slightly more upbeat. One of the latest arrivals
planned her move with precision, as might be expected of someone who
has spent 20 years in banking.
Isabel Zeiss (nee Doig), 62, moved to the Mani a few months ago.
Originally from Glasgow, she left Scotland in her early twenties to
teach in Athens. Later she worked in Australia, where she met her
German husband, and moved to Switzerland with him, although they later
divorced. When she retired, she decided she didn’t want to stay in
Switzerland. “I wanted to live in a quiet place by the sea,” she says.
“There were really only two choices – the Moray Firth, where I spent
summers as a child, or Greece.”
There was no contest. “Scotland has changed a lot,” she says. “It’s
more vibrant and modern, and I still have a brother there, but in the
end the climate and lifestyle in Greece had more of a pull.” She
admits that starting a new life at her age has been a slightly scary
venture. “I did think beforehand, ‘Am I crazy? This move is going to
be the most stupid thing I’ve ever done, or the best.’ But at least I
won’t have regrets about not having tried it. And, if I don’t like it
here, I can always go somewhere else.”
If the other Scots here are anything to go by, it’s unlikely she will.
Marjory McGinn is spending a year in the Peloponnese. For more
information about life in Greece visit www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com.
The dark side of expat life
While most expats enjoyThoroughly fed up with the idea of retirement
in Greece, and with Jean suffering from health problems, the couple
returned to the UK.
Jean had a severe hip problem that the sunny climate was supposed to
alleviate, but now she was also suffering from severe stress due to
her Greek experiences.
“I still love Greece and the people,” she says, “but I’ve discovered I
do like living in the UK, and spending more time with my daughter.”
Sarah McKellen, who runs McKellen Messiniaki Properties, a respected
estate agency in Kalamata, helped the Taylors and many other expats
who have come to grief, particularly after they’ve used rogue
builders. Fluent in Greek, McKellen, originally from Worcestershire,
has lived in Greece for 27 years.
“A lot of British people have a dream of life in the sun, but it
doesn’t always match up to the reality, and other people [agents and
builders] can take advantage of that,” she says.
“I am always amazed at Brits who arrive in Greece for the first time,
who don’t know anything about the country, but who fall in love with
the place and within a week have bought a property.
“I try to dissuade them by saying, ‘You wouldn’t do that in Britain,
so why do it here?’”
Or, as one expat bluntly puts it, many British house-buyers arriving
in Greece “seem to leave their brains behind on the baggage carousel
at the airport”. a dream life in Greece, one couple faced hell and
hardship.
In 2001 Jean Taylor, 57, and her husband Peter, 58, took early
retirement and moved to Greece, which they had often visited, buying
an old derelict property in a village outside Kalamata.
Originally from Liverpool, the Taylors used a builder recommended by
the selling agent and came out a couple of times to look over the
work, but on the whole left the builder and agent to manage the house
renovation. When they finally sold up in the UK and moved to Greece,
they were horrified to find the house was unfinished.
“Basically, our builder had renovated it in his fashion. There were
things that had not been done, or done badly, but getting him back to
do them was a nightmare,” says Jean.
Important items they had expected to be within the original £50,000
budget were missing, such as heating and a septic tank.
Worse was to follow. During their first night in the house they were
horrified to discover the basement was overrun with rats, and in the
winter the roof and windows leaked.
“Some people advised us to get another builder in, but we insisted the
original one finish the work. But even then it’s not like it is in the
UK: you can’t threaten builders with court action.
“They are a law unto themselves. In the end we decided to spend our
retirement savings (£20,000) to put things right, and lived on credit
cards until we sold up. The house that had been our dream had taken
everything.”
--
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