Well, the answer to the first question is easy – it really is amazing. It was the best decision Anne and I ever made.  It wasn’t easy, we hit many difficulties, but we never once doubted our choice. If you want to live the quiet life surrounded by beautiful seas and scenery , then this is the place for you.  But it is easy? The answer to that is, for a Brit, it isn’t any way as easy as it once was, but it is still possible. We moved in 2010, Brexit wasn’t even a word and Freedom of Movement was still ‘a thing’. It literally was as easy as picking up your car keys and driving, or getting on a plane. OK, so I am ignoring the months of planning and packing, but we arrived in Greece with every right that we had in the UK. The rights that Germans, Swedes and French (all the nationalities of my neighbours) now all enjoy are sadly no longer completely and immediately available any more, but that doesn’t make it impossible for Brits. 

The two ways to still move here are :

1. Golden Visa – Spend over €400,000 on a property and gain a visa.
2. FIP or Financially Independent Person – If you have a net salary over a certain amount, you can live here. This figure is eye wateringly north of €4,000 pcm, but there are recent stories of savings being taken into account.

You can of course live for 90 days in any rolling 180 day period, but that makes planning and holiday homes that tad trickier. If you feel that these options now only really favour the well-off I can only agree, sadly. 

If I had more space I would detail all the many problems and difficulties that we faced. None were insurmountable, but taken together as they often were it could prove very difficult. 

The language was the first and ongoing issue we had. My first self-taught lesson was with some outdated books when I tried to learn the word for ‘thank you’.  ‘Ex … Ef … Exfrist .. risto’ and threw the book to the ground!  It is devilishly, irregularly hard and there is only one way to go in my view: lessons. I did those for four years until my first illness showed its ugly face. I then walked our dog with my friend and we spoke only Greek for hours and I came on leaps and bounds. 

Practice in my view really is the only way to get on with language.  In my first book (details below), I recalled a time when this didn’t quite go to plan. My eldest niece is called Georgia, which is a popular name in Greece, pronounced ‘Yee-orr-yee-a’.  It also means ‘agriculture’ in Greek and I have absolutely no idea how I know that, it probably came from an exercise I did at school – one exercise invariably leads to several more. My family were coming over and so I asked our teacher to spend the lesson teaching me how to introduce my family, so ‘This is my father/brother, he lives in the UK/Switzerland’ etc. From that I had to learn all the familial vocabulary like mother, father, brother/niece etc plus then it led to a lesson on countries of the world. I had been testing my nascent Greek out whenever I could and, not unlike in the TV series Alan Partridge where the main character only had ‘friends’ at the Travelodge where he lived, my only real ‘friends’ were people that worked in the local supermarket. There was a lovely lady there in her 30s who I would chat to and so I asked what her name was and she said Georgia.  I then said ‘my niece is called Georgia!  She is coming to Stoupa in two weeks’. The next time I was in the supermarket I walked in all cocky and saw her, so I shouted out ‘Kalimera Yia-yia’, being careful to get the pronunciation precisely correct. She was distinctly cold with me when I was at the checkout. I thought this odd and told my Greek teacher at the next lesson and she asked me to repeat what I had said. It was then that all became clear. Instead of calling her ‘Yee-orr-yee-a’ (‘Georgia’) I had called her ‘Yia-yia’ (‘Grandma’). That is how I learned to say ‘I am very sorry, I have made a mistake’ in Greek. As I said, one exercise invariably leads to several more. My Greek is now conversational and I can read and write. If I was graded for my grammar I would get an E, but that’s a pass still, isn’t it?  After all those hours it sure feels like it should be. 

I don’t want to sound like my late Gran, who would always list her ailments, but I reckon at my tender age I could give her a run for her money.  But in recent years I have been diagnosed with Bipolar 2, sleep apnea (together with an operation to drill my sinuses) and managed to top it off with a brain tumour and various psychiatric hospital stays. Public healthcare isn’t available to me being a Brit of working age, but is for those who have retired. I have to rely on private health insurance, which is about €180 pcm for Anne and I combined. It is a requirement of my living here and has been worth its weight in gold. Pre-Brexit public healthcare was good here, sometimes a little slow, but who am I to complain?  Private is next day service and fantastic. Even for the procedures that weren’t covered by my insurance it was very affordable – a colonoscopy was €100 for example.  All the doctors with one exception spoke English (my medicinal Greek was found somewhat lacking unfortunately) and German was also spoken. I’d give it a solid 9.5/10 for service and 10/10 for affordability, which is reassuring because as I am sure you will agree, when you are ill you just want to be seen RIGHT NOW. Stoupa and Ag Nik also have a medical centre for minor ailments and a blood laboratory for the monthly tests I have to have. For anything else, a trip to Kalamata is needed. The specialists are all crammed in to about two or three roads, mini Harley Streets. Lastly and by no means least, we have Dr Sophia, an angel who has – no exaggeration – probably saved my life twice.  Visits to her do not need appointment and you just wait to be seen (usually much less than 30 minutes, often straight away).

Whilst I wish none of this had happened, I often think ‘thank God I got ill in Stoupa’.