How to move to Greece: the good, the bad and the ugly

Your dream is a new life in Greece? Here's the push you to realise it...

Kalimera one and all from somewhere in the Aegean.

I’m currently on a ferry, sat typing this in a shaft of sunlight cast from the sun that glints off the inky blue water and onto my seat. Having spent the past few days eating taramosalata and driving wild coastal bends past goats, cows and sheep in the sunshine, I’m feeling eternally grateful to the universe and to my sheer stubborn nature for bringing me to Greece. I hope that this email, after so many of you have messaged me to ask me how I did it after living in London for most of my adult life, is a jolt for any of you considering the move.

Below, for my paid subscribers, I’m sharing some of the logistics and practicalities that are required when moving to Greece. Things like details on tax residency, health care, the reality of wages and jobs market and the culture shock when moving to Greece are all below for those of you seriously considering relocating to the land of clear blue skies and feta. First though, I want to share a little of my own story.

I am half Greek and half English, born to an English mother who’d moved to Corfu to follow her heart and realise a love story with my dad. When I was 11, we moved to the UK (grey, drizzly and depressing Blackpool - a coastal town that had very little in common with the rural Greek village I had known until then). As soon as I could, I got out of my mum’s hometown and left home to study and never returned. I lived in London for almost a decade but every summer, from April until September, my island of Corfu drew me back. Perhaps it was an essential part of my identity making itself known or simply a biological need for sunshine and lower cortisol levels, but I felt a heaviness every time my plane took off from Corfu airport, London bound.

Anyone else who has lived in London will have experienced the seven year itch with the city. Once I’d lived there five years, I felt the need to leave every couple of months. A city break in Athens here, a summer in Corfu there. I needed an injection of something else to feel as though I could get by in my London life. That ‘something else’ was usually Greece but I also escaped the winter every year for far-flung destinations like Thailand, India, Mexico, South America. I’d sublet my ridiculously over priced bedroom in east London and work well-paid, freelance copywriting jobs in order to pay for my increasingly expensive habit of escaping the city I called home.

In late February 2018, I returned from Buenos Aires to snow. I thought I’d escaped the winter months in London, only to arrive back to an icy bedroom and an even cooler greeting from my perennially grumpy french housemate. Something needed to change. I was either going back to Buenos Aires to live or Athens - it’s twin city (in my opinion). Due to lack of cash in the bank account, I chose Athens. It was a safer option and I could fly back to London if all went belly up. Tentatively I booked a flight.

Two weeks later I was in Athens and my (now ex) boyfriend came along with me. We rented a temporary apartment for a few weeks on airbnb in one neighbourhood and then moved to another neighbourhood, feeling out where might suit us best. At the time, rents were incredibly cheap, as were apartments to buy. Greece was recovering from a hideous economic crisis and prices had hit rock bottom. Because of this, the energy felt in parts like a blank canvas. Artists and writers were moving into run down areas, like the neighbourhood that I now call home. There was a DIY feeling that anything could happen in the coming years and those who took risks during this time have benefited from doing so.

I bought an apartment a year after arriving in Athens, something I would never have managed with my own meagre earnings as a writer in my twenties. In that first year, I celebrated every sunny winter day. I savoured the fresh, seasonal fruit sold at a farmer’s market I could finally afford. I stayed up late drinking tsipouro listening to the twang of the bouzouki and danced until dawn at the clubs that didn’t seem to want to close for the night. Not making plans was a part of the culture, rather than a personality glitch. I could finally call up friends for a coffee and meet them in the next half hour, not plan a catch up with two months’ notice.

My life changed irrevocably when I moved back home to Greece. My relocation to the city has brought me closer to who I was always meant to be. My books, retreats, my man and my daughter all happened here. They all happened because i opened up a new path for myself. I wasn’t raised in Athens but my move, in every sense, has been a home coming.

I hope, with a little help and encouragement, you might be inspired to come too.

How to move to Greece: practical advice to help you live your myth in Greece (if you know, you know)