Cretan Diary - Chapter 7 | |||||||||||
Back to Work! (Mike)September 22, 2009 Terry on the harbour wall at Agia Galini (we drove all the way to the south coast). Matt and Terry We had to look after our guests, Terry and Matt, until they departed to catch the ferry bound for mainland Greece on Monday (Yesterday). Then Christos (Eleni's husband who speaks only a few words of English) went car hunting with me. We found a 5 year old Peugeot 307 1.6 automatic that fits my requirements. It's on sale for 6500 Euros. Bear in mind that cars are very expensive on the island and automatics are rare and extremely expensive - a new one costs 20,000 Euros. But I've been driving automatics for ten years and I don't fancy going back to a "stick shift". I think I may have committed to buying it! Now, technically, under EEC legislation, I should be able to walk into any car dealer's shop and buy a car as in the UK. In practice, the dealers still cling to the old system whereby no "foreigner" can buy a car unless he has a Resident's Permit. Frankly, it's not worth arguing about so we will apply for this ASAP. Today we had lots to do! I began by replacing the two (almost full) 150GB Hard Drives in my computer with 500GB drives. I had set up the overnight file transfers so all (!) I had to do today was to swap the drives over. Not everything is working quite as it should but I'll fix the problems as they crop up. (For the technically-minded, there's nothing wrong apart from a few file associations that got lost. The "shortcuts" or "aliases" use absolute file paths, which are no longer valid.) We had bought two cheap Nokia phones a few days ago in Xaniá. In Georgioupolis we had bought SIM cards and top-ups. However, the minute Greek instructions were totally beyond our ability to read, never mind translate, so we drove to Eleni's house where she activated our SIM cards, switched the language to English and showed us how to add credit. Eleni had acquired a puppy and, to keep it company, had got another "rescue" dog called "Trixie". Unfortunately, the following day, the first puppy had run onto the road and been killed. I have no love for animals but even I found this circumstance a little sad. For the Resident's Permit we need passport-type photos so we drove to the nearby town of Vryses (Vreeses) where we found the recommended photographer's shop. Unfortunately, it was "kleesto" (closed) because, according to the supermarket owner across the road, in English, "he has just had a baby so the shop opens only sometimes." (There may be some gender confusion here. I'm not sure whether "he" referred to the shop, the photographer or his wife!) A request for more specific information produced a shrug. We gave up and phoned Georgios, our estate agent, who has been promising to have a meeting "avrio" (= manana) since we arrived. He told us he'd be at his office in Georgioupolis in 15 minutes. We made it in ten but, bearing in mind the "avrio" culture, we knew he was counting in Greek minutes so we took a slow walk around the town before finally going to his office. There was someone there but it wasn't he. We hung around outside in the heat of the midday sun, for a further ten minutes, until finally he arrived. Georgios speaks quite good English, but very quickly, with a strong accent and much rolling of the "Rs". He calls me "Meesterrr Mike". I won't bore you with all the details but we have some bills to pay. I knew that because, when I tried to make a phone call from the "land line" phone in our house, I heard an announcement, in English, telling me that outgoing calls were barred. Georgios said that we should go to the various utility company offices on Friday, with our shiny new resident's permits, and he would explain that we needed the account name changing from the previous owner's name to ours, and then we would be able to pay the bills. Needless to say, I'm worried that my Internet access will be curtailed if we don't pay up soon! In fact, no sooner had we arrived back home (BTW references to "home" hereafter refer to our house in Apokoronas) than the 'phone rang and a voice asked for the previous owner. Jenny explained, in Greek, that he no longer lived here (actually she said "I don't live here now" but the caller apparently understood what she meant and asked to speak to the new owner). She handed the phone to me and I had to promise to go to the 'phone company's office on Friday to pay the 120 Euros or else! (I know we had already arranged with Georgios to go on "Friday" but now I have to tie him down to this Friday!) We needed to get photos and shopping but the shops in Xaniá (= Chania/Hanya) close at 2pm (siesta) and re-open at 6pm. So we left just after 5pm, drove for nearly 40 minutes along the "National Highway", and stopped at "Lidl" supermarket to get a specific make of wine requested by Eleni. Unfortunately they had none of this make, but we took the opportunity to "mark" the location in our SatNav "Favourites" because there are no postcodes here; so you can only navigate to somewhere you've already been! We needed to call at the (cheap) petrol station and Carrefour (both opposite Lidl) so we needed the "favourite" because the SatNav always took us home by a different route. (I hope you are following this closely. There may be questions, later.) Then we continued to the multi-storey car park in the city (already programmed) where we left the car with an attendant and exited with our ticket. We phoned Georgios, who had arranged to meet us there, and he turned up after 10 minutes - real minutes this time! He showed us where to get keys cut, where to buy electrical goods and where to get passport photos taken. Having done all this we stopped at the "Clock" café, opposite the indoor market, and had a tuna sandwich and drinks before returning to the car park. Our car was brought to us in double-quick time and we screeched out into the queue of traffic. By this time, cars were flooding into the city centre. Goodness knows where they were going to park! Horns were honking and blue police lights were flashing. I assume this was a normal evening in Xaniá. The journey home from Carrefour was uneventful but it was dark and I was driving extremely carefully. The road-holding of the RAV-4 is so atrocious that if I never drive one again, it will be too soon. The last car I drove that felt like this was a Morris Marina! I have spent this evening catching up on emails. Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Today, around 9am, we visited the police station in Vamos, armed with various documents, which turned out to be the wrong ones! We were given forms to complete and told to phone to make an appointment when we had a photocopy of our passports and of our Medical Insurance cards. Then we phoned Eleni and she picked us up from Vamos to visit Manolis, who makes wooden furniture and speaks no English. We showed him a sketch of the computer desk, drawer unit and two shelf units for the office. He said (in Greek) that he could make them from veneered MDF to match the existing shelves. He also showed us a sample of tables and we agreed on a specification for a kitchen table and chairs. This lot will cost a fraction of what we'd have to pay for bespoke furniture in the UK! On our return, we made the photocopies, using my computer and scanner, completed the forms, then phoned the police to make an appointment. Friday at 8:30am is the designated time. (The working day begins early here. "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun.") This appointment should tie in nicely with our planned visit to the same town to pay the various utility bills. (But this is Greece so I doubt it will all go smoothly!) Jenny made a lunch with "loukanika" (sausages), "yigantes" (large butter-beans in olive oil), crusty bread and salad. We sat outside on the veranda to eat it. The weather is just right! After lunch we took a walk along an unmetalled road towards the sea. There's a dry valley leading down towards the sea - we'll have to walk down it, wearing proper boots, one day soon. The track took us past several new houses before it ended at a makeshift wire fence. We made our way back and turned to walk uphill towards the village then turned left, down our own road-with-no-name and home. I need a cool drink! I fitted new energy-saver bulbs to our gate lamps and gave all the fittings a coating of silicone grease. Washing the dust off the glass made them a lot brighter! Here am I, assembling the fan that we bought in Xaniá last night. Seemed like a good idea at the time! Two hours (and much sweating and cursing) later, the fan is fitted to the (high) office ceiling. I won't tell you about the pain of drilling holes and tightening screws while clinging to the ladder with my arthritic fingers. Jenny made something from minced lamb and vegetables, with egg custard on top. At least that's what I think she said it was supposed to be. However, there was no sign of the egg after half an hour in the oven so Jenny refused to eat her portion and made a sandwich. I was ravenously hungry by now so I gobbled down my half - it tasted lovely - and then had a couple of local cream biscuit things and a cup of coffee. Looks like I'll have the same again for breakfast. | |||||||||||
