Saving Time in a Bottle

Just when you become comfortable, maybe even complacent, change happens. 

In June the government issued new requirements for Greek residency permits for third-country expats, like us. 

The news was seismic in the expat community; as well could be the changes!

The game rules have changed: time out!

I liken it to changing the game rules once play has started. We are now on the field in the timeout period waiting for the referee to clarify the new rules of play so the game can begin again. 

And we are wondering if we still qualify as players or if we'll be booted.

Greek Game Changer

A seismic change in residency permit requirements

After nearly a decade of staticity, Greece's residency permit was recently overhauled.  It was lengthened from two to three years. The name changed from FIP (Financially Independent Persons) permit to the 'Residence Permit for third-country Nationals with Sufficient Resources'. 

But the most riveting change is the increase in the amount of income you must have to live in Greece.  

The joy in getting that plastic card, the permit, that lets us live in Greece

The monthly income requirement for individuals has nearly doubled, going from 2,000 to 3,500 euros ($3,824US). Two people, filing as a family, will be required to have 4,200 euros ($4,584US).  Because we originally applied as individuals we will need to show 7,000 euros a month in income.

The alternative to the increased monthly income is having stash of 72,000 euros ($78,663US) deposited in a Greek bank account (that's up from 48,000 euros or $45,089US). 

Mid-morning: tellers closed their windows despite waiting customers

The amounts are the only thing clearly defined in the new requirements. And for many expats and expat wannabes, the increases alone could put expat life out of reach. 

For others who could meet the income requirements, it will be a matter of how the proof of income is defined that determines whether or not they qualify. Must it be strictly a pension payment or will passive income, earned on investments, count? 

Greek banks aren't known for their customer service.  So that higher amount to have on deposit isn't a warm and fuzzy option for those of us who've dealt with them. Will savings accounts and investments not in Greek banks count toward the requirement?

'What if' and other questions. . .

We, and most of our American expat friends in the village, are in the midst of the permit renewal process. Applications and documentation for the previous requirements were submitted and accepted by the authorities months ago. Now we wonder if we will be required to start over, file addendums, or get grandfathered in (most unlikely of the scenarios).  

Unsettled times

Expat social get-togethers in recent weeks include a conversation or two on the 'have you heard anything about the permits?'  And occasionally we touch on - the proverbial elephant in the room - 'What if we don't qualify?'  

Needless to say, it has made for a somewhat unsettled summer in the third country expat community. (A 'third country national' is anyone who hails from a country outside Greece or the European Union). We've all had moments in which we ponder our vaguely uncertain futures. And we've all been a bit more reflective on our time here. So much so, that I've decided a song from my teenage years could be the theme song for the summer of 2024. . .

 Saving Time in a Bottle

If I could make days (in Greece) last forever. . .

Back in 1973 singer-songwriter Jim Croce sang a love song about making days last forever, making wishes come true and saving time in a bottle.  Back then, as teenagers, it seemed like days did last forever as we awaited adulthood. Why the need to bottle it? We were far too busy marking time to think about saving it. 

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I'd save every day like a treasure, and then

Again, I would spend them with you

I'd save every day (in the village) like a treasure. . .

Fast forward a half century and the song's lyrics are hitting home loud and clear this summer as a love song for expat life in Greece. I would fill my bottle with. . .

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day 'til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

. . .Time spent watching summer sunsets. . .

I'd save summer sunsets and winter storms

. . . and winter storms. . .

The village parking lot after a winter storm

Time spent traveling the backroads. . .

Backroad adventures

. . .even time spent in traffic jams. . .

Local traffic jam

Time spent in the olive grove. . .

My friend Mary and I harvest olives

. . .from harvesting in October. . .

Princess and Maggie in the olive grove

. . . to walking amid wildflowers in March, exploring with my cats. . .

The Scout and our friend Captain Antonis

Time spent with friends - both Greek and expats from other lands. . .

Fellow Americans, friends, who we'd never have met in America

 and even fellow Americans whom we'd never have known back in the States. . .

House projects included, installing a new hot water tank

Times spent making improvements to our Stone House on the Hill . . . 

Enjoying our Stone House on the Hill

. . .and times spent enjoying it. . .

                                                              But there never seems to be enough time

                                                      To do the things you want to do once you find them. . .

Make the time ~ find the time ~ enjoy

Summer's end is fast approaching, and as with every season it does seem we never have enough time to do everything we want to do.  One thing is for sure this year, we are approaching all things with a bit more reflection and appreciation.

Thanks for the time you've spent with us today and to those of you who've followed the residency journey for as long as we've been on it: your continuing interest and support is most appreciated!  

Enjoy your travels and your everyday adventures. Until next time ~

Losing Touch

It was a copy of People Magazine left by our recent houseguests that brought the point home: 

Living in the laidback Greek countryside, I've lost touch.  

Summer in an olive grove

People Magazine tells all there is to tell about America's celebrities and public figures. Problem was, that aside from 79-year-old Tom Selleck, most recently of television's Blue Bloods, and the recently deceased O.J. Simpson, I didn't recognize many of the names of those famous folks.

People Magazine - who is doing what and where

I've lost touch. It is as simple as that.

 And what I found most amazing about that realization was that I didn't care who these people were, nor did I care what they were doing when the paparazzi photographed them, even if it was while they grocery shopped or frolicked on some exotic holiday. 

Losing touch with the other world

Being an expat and losing touch with the everyday world you left behind, to a certain degree, go hand-in-hand.  

As American expats we've lost touch with the familiarity of doctors, dentists, and hairdressers we had visited for years. We've lost touch with routines of shopping at the corner supermarket, visiting the dry cleaner and filling the car with gas at the regular service station. But with each of those has come the challenge and exhilaration of creating new familiar and favorite routines in the Greek world.

What has been tough is losing touch with friends and family. 

We knew it could happen.  We'd read the articles about expat life and knew that losing connections with friends back home and loneliness can bring down the most enthused expat. Yet, as with all unpleasant possibilities, one reasons that it couldn't possibly happen in your world. 

Losing Touch

'Losing touch' with friends is quite a widespread phenomenon apparently experienced by many of the 230 million expats worldwide.  And with 18 percent of those expats being more than 61 years of age, they likely have a good number of friends and family with whom they want to keep in touch.

Loneliness is often cited as one of the most difficult aspects of expat life. The inability to make new friends and the absence of family and longtime friends are often the reason expats choose to return to their home country. 

Friends at Your Fingertips

So, when you look at the speed and ease of communication afforded by today's technology, there is really no excuse for losing touch, is there? 

With a scroll through Facebook and Instagram postings we are able to celebrate birthdays and holidays, graduations and weddings. We can share in the sorrow of loss and send well-wishes to those who are ill.  

US, Canada and Greece - we talk face-to-face twice a month on WhatsApp

WhatsApp, Facetime, Messenger and other such programs allow us to visit face-to-face with friends no matter where in the world they are living. And doing so is always a day-brightener!

 

Weekly email 'coffee klatches' keep us in touch

Even writing emails - now thought of by young people as a somewhat old-fashioned communications tool-- keeps us up-to-date with the comings and goings of friends.

Luckily, we have a cadre of dear friends who are committed to keeping in touch while we are in Greece. Several of us write emails as if we were visiting regularly together over coffee. We chat face-to-face with others. Skype has made texting together was easy as if we were just across town. 

Emails, photos and Skype keep these childhood friends together

Staying in touch is done both with precision regularity as well as at random out-of-the-blue contacts. Now, despite being thousands of miles apart, we are up to date with each other's lives, everyday activities, travel, health, even weather. 

As the years have passed my definition of 'staying in touch' has become so relaxed that it includes writing a comment on a FB or blog post. 

Poof! Just like that, they are not heard from again

Yet it has been with some incredulity that we've realized there are some -- thankfully, not a lot of --friends with whom we have simply lost touch.  Poof. Gone. No communication from them and no response to attempts to reach them.

Moving On

An article in Expatica.com, a website 'by expats for expats', offered an interesting take on losing touch: 

 'Don't be afraid of losing friends who won't or can't commit to keeping the connection. . .it gives you more time to invest in those who are willing to make the effort,' it offered.  

Reasoned one expat about the topic of lost friendships on Reddit, an American social news website, 'People's lives go on and you've moved a different direction. Many friendships are based on common experience and close proximity.'

'It's hard to stay in touch with all the friends we make through life. Scientific studies show we maintain 150 relationships at any given time in life,' wrote another.

One of the most obvious bits of advice offered to expats is to quit fretting over those who've dropped out of sight and make new friends.

Friends in the expat world

A meet up of multinational expats on Easter afternoon in the village

 

As of last year, according to the World Population Review, there were 23,297 American expats living in Greece.  The number pales in comparison to the 799,248 living in Mexico, but still, it seems like quite a few to those of us who are a part of that statistic.  

Morning coffee at the beach cafe with friends

In our slice of Greece, we have a diverse blend of expats friends including Americans who hail from the Pacific Northwest, California, the Southwest and Northeast.  Those from further afield hail from Canada, Belgium, Turkey, England and elsewhere.

Thankfully our expat life in the rural Peloponnese has been filled with new friends, both expats and Greeks. Although making friends takes time, just like it did back in the old world.  

We find that the lifestyle here probably has us socializing more with friends here than we did back in the States as logistics of getting together are so simple. 

An evening spent with neighbors is always a great evening

Our Stone House on the Hill is set amid eight other homes on a short stretch of road just outside the village. Our neighborhood is an international one with France, Britain, Peru, Germany, Greece, Switzerland and America represented. We are blessed that we are surrounded by kind and caring people and that we have all become friends.

 Silver and Gold

A toast to lasting friendships - old and new

Back in the 1960's Girl Scouts in America had a song they'd sing around a campfire that was a simple ditty with a powerful message:

 'Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.'  

It could be the theme song for expats. 

And with that thought we close for this week and send wishes for safe travels to you and yours.  We are heading off on an adventure. . .one that we said we'd 'never do' and yet here we are doing it! We will tell you about it next time!

A Song of Summer

It was early when I heard the soloist; the sun was just peeping over the hill behind us. With the temperature already in the hot zone as I sipped my first cup of coffee a few mornings ago, the sound of music was loud and clear.

Sunrise and the song of summer

In this afternoon's warm summer breeze, it seemed as if the olive tree branches swayed in time to the music; the song echoing across the grove, now sung with gusto by an entire choir. 

On both occasions I was hearing what I will forever consider 'the song of summer' and theme song to our expat life in Greece: 

A choir sings a summer song in surround sound

The song of summer is sung by the cicadas.

A Cicada Kalokairi 

Kalokairi is summer in Greece

Kalokairi is the Greek word for summer.  'Kalo', or 'kala' in Greek is 'good', so calling this bright, sunny season kalokairi makes absolute, perfect sense to me. (It is one of the few words I now have down pat in my fledgling Greek vocabulary).  

Kalokairi is such a happy, upbeat season that it seems only right that its arrival is announced by musicians who will continue their sizzling soundtrack until autumn takes over.

Residence permits - a ticket to the 'summer concert'

The song became our theme song back in early June 2017. It was then, upon receiving our first Greek residency permits, we could stay here as long as we wanted. Our time would no longer dictated by those tiresome 90-day Schengen Zone limits. Giddy with the newfound freedom, we agreed to extend that stay, just because we could! 

Instead of an actual date though, I told The Scout that I wanted to stay 'until the cicadas sing' to announce summer's arrival. Up until then, I'd missed these troubadours of summer.

Summer scenes in our world

Stay we did. Until the end of June. The cicadas had begun their summer serenade. And that's when those little critters' song became not only metaphor for the onset of summer but also for our seismic shift in life. We moved to Greece four months later.

Cicadas in Cultures

One thing we've learned since moving here is that pretty much everything we encounter in the modern-day world has some deep-seated roots in Greek history, culture and/or language. 

Cicadas, pronounced 'se-KAY-das' or 'se-KAH-das', are no exception.

Stories handed down from ancient Greeks tell of men who were so obsessed with singing that they forgot to eat and drink. They were turned into cicadas by the Muses and given the task of keeping tabs on which humans were showing proper reverence to the Muses, those goddesses of music, poetry and myth.

Cicadas important in Chinese history and culture 

Even in ancient China the cicadas represented 'rebirth'.  They certainly did for us that summer as we closed out our life in the United States and moved to Greece.  That was definitely a 'born again' into a new world and culture experience!

During the Han Dynasty (206BC - 220CE) amulets shaped like cicadas were placed on tongues of corps to symbolize rebirth and immortality. Cicadas in today's Feng Shui are powerful symbols of longevity and happiness; their image is used on jewelry and charms. I've not yet found any such amulets paying homage to them in Greece, but I'd certainly be wearing one if I ever do.

Sing it Again

Summer in our world - file photo 2021

I always feel grateful when I hear summer's song reverberating across the hillside on which we live. The song, once only a promise of what summer could be in Greece, now carries memories of the summers we've spent in this adopted world of ours. Now I can't imagine a summer without the cicadas' song playing in the background.  

Summer songs ring out in our Mani area of Greece

Along with the cicadas' song, other signs of summer are reminding us that the new season has arrived. Oleanders are brightening the landscapes with their white, pink and rose-colored blooms. The air is scented by the wild sage, and thyme scattered about gardens, groves and hillsides. 

Signs of summer in nearby Stoupa

Temperatures are hovering at 90F/32C with predictions of it reaching 100F/37C later this week. 

The water supply is at its usual low and fire danger is its usual high. Sunbeds are filling with sea and sun enthusiasts who have traveled here for a small dose of what we enjoy as everyday life. 

Summer sunsets at our house

All is good - ola kala - in our world.  Hope whatever season you are welcoming that all is good in your world as well. Safe travels to you and yours~ 

And in closing I want to give a 'shout out' to a group who we recently met while they were vacationing in the area.  Thanks for taking the time to come and introduce yourselves and tell us that you are readers of 'TravelnWrite' after you spotted us in the village - we hope to see you again on a return visit! .  

Olive Grove Lessons ~Life, Love, Loss

 A stiff breeze rustling the branches of the olive trees and making the terrace grasses sway, was enough to pause our stroll in the grove. Sometimes, it was the raucous cry of birds swooping to nests high atop nearby cedar trees that stopped us mid-step. 

Each new noise or movement, they taught me, was a wonderment. We had to pause, listen and watch.  Every time . . .because it might just signify something new and exciting.  

In the grove at The Stone House on the Hill

In the spring, the grove beckoned for a game of hide and seek at the rosemary bush. Sometimes on hot summer afternoons, it was where we watched ants at labor marching across the soil cracked by the intense Mediterranean sun. In the fall, it was games of chase using olive twigs cut during olive harvest that filled our time in the grove. 

Olive grove games

For several years now, I have spent a portion of nearly every day in our olive grove, simply for the purpose of enjoying it. 

It wasn't easy to do that at first. I thought I needed to be pulling weeds, trimming, doing something. That is, until my two feline mentors, Princess and Maggie Mae, decided it was time that I understood the concept best defined by Italians as, dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. 

Dolce far niente in the olive grove

One can't help but notice the proliferation of self-help tips that fill social media these days. There are mantras, memes, and meditations, all offering ways to improve one's life/outlook/happiness by slowing down, simply calming oneself. Indulging in sweet nothingness. I guess the teachings of my fur girls were much in the same vein - they just taught by example. Peace and happiness could be had just by watching a bug crawl past or a butterfly flutter above.  

The key, I learned from them, is taking time to notice, then allowing oneself the time to enjoy it. 

My grove getaway at the Stone House on the Hill

I honestly can't recall when our trips to the grove became a daily ritual.  I was doing it 'for the cats' in an effort to keep them interested in something far away from the road that passes by the other side of our home, I reasoned.  

Princess, left, and Maggie, right, explore the grove.

In truth, I was getting as much out of those grove hours as were the two felines who accompanied me there.  

Life and Love in Greece

The two - Princess and Maggie Mae -- as we named them after they each had made clear upon arrival -- one year apart and nearly a decade ago -- that they would be making their home with us. While not related to each other, after their initial skepticism at sharing our attention, they were to become inseparable sidekicks.  

Dolce far niente at the Stone House on the Hill

The lessons in the grove took on new intensity back in January as the spread of Maggie's skin cancer was clearly bringing her to the end of her life. During these last three months, our trips to the grove increased and each time we lost ourselves in the sweetness of doing nothing . . .together. 

Savoring those last days. Maggie continued to find wonder in sniffing the air to catch its scents as she sat, watched and listened.  

Maggie Mae Smith

We buried Maggie 10 days ago next to the rosemary where she had spent so many hours enjoying life. Princess and I haven't resumed our trips to the grove. We are both adjusting to Maggie's absence, but we continue to indulge in dolce far niente. 

Maggie was not a fan of our travels!

I've taken a break from the blog in recent weeks to experience that sweetness of doing nothing with my fur girls.  As Maggie's health deteriorated, The Scout and I cancelled all travel we'd planned for the first months of this year. (cat people do those things) With Maggie's recent passing, we have a small window of opportunity to travel in Schengen countries before our residency permits expire the end of April and we are no longer allowed to travel (pending the new permits).  We are ready for some travel adventures again. And he's scouted out a good one - I'll tell you about it in the next post.

Maggie 

Thanks for being with us today - and our wishes for safe travels to you and yours. 

And a big welcome to our new subscribers!!