There’s a group for nearly everything you could ever want – Treasure Hunting groups for things left out by the bins, used clothes groups to fill in the gaps left by how tiny the second hand stores are here, groups for looking for pet sitters, groups for adopting street cats, groups to look for roommates, and groups for expats to simply share knowledge and look for friends.

I was also relieved find that Facebook Marketplace is just as widely used here as in the US – I was already used to getting most of my furniture that way, and with some help from Google translate, I was able to do so again. I have a few friends with cars, but there were some items that couldn’t be fit in a sedan, so thankfully the sellers that I got my stove and fridge from offered delivery for around ten to twenty euros (apartments tend to be complete blank slates here), and I paid for a truck to deliver my couch (since I got such a good deal on it, I felt like it was worth it to pay the extra delivery fee – I paid just as much for the truck as the couch but it was still cheaper than buying new).

I did eventually find some used furniture stores, but it took some time, and none of them are easy to get to from where I live. There’s one that has several locations, called Reto, which I really like because they’re a charity shop supporting people coming out of addiction. They don’t charge much for deliver either – I think I paid thirty euros for three pieces of furniture to be delivered, and I live a bit far from them. There’s also a really big store called Paliosinitheies that has a more mixed selection when it comes to the quality of what you’re getting – they also have their items listed online, which is nice. On Saturdays there’s a big flea market in Egaleo, but I found this too overwhelming at the time. I might go back at some point now that my Greek is a little better. There’s a more permanent flea market in Monastiraki that’s mostly antiques and because it’s in the tourist district, tends to be a little pricier. Victoria and Kypseli have a lot of second hand shops that aren’t necessarily all going to have listing on google maps, so you kind of just have to wander around and find them.

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As for second hand clothing, I’ve had mixed luck. There are some places in Zografou that I found had pretty low prices, but most of the places I’ve found in other areas of the city are more of the boutique vintage variety, and not only are their prices higher and their stock pretty limited, they don’t tend to carry a very wide range of sizes. One of my Greek friends has promised to take me to her favorite places though, so I may have a better report soon! For now, I’m just very glad that Vinted has recently started shipping in and out of Greece, because I pretty much don’t buy clothes new and haven’t for quite some time. Used it just better!

Back on the topic of furniture, if you want new items, there are a few different IKEA locations, with the one at River West being the biggest one. There’s also a Danish chain that’s similar to IKEA called Jysk, and for appliances there’s Public and Kotsovolos. I bought my mattress from an online shop, and I did look at some different Greek stores for a couch but as I said earlier, ended up getting one on Facebook Marketplace. When I found the hardware stores – Prakitiker and Leroy Merlin – I finally started feeling like I might be finding my feet here, ha! Up until that point I’d felt like I was scrambling a bit, going between all these random little homeware stores I was finding just as I walked around, but once I was able to go to Leroy Merlin and load up my cart with all the bathroom bits and lightbulbs and picture hanging nails and dry wall plugs for screws and plant pots and surge protector power strips and the last of what I needed for the kitchen… that was such a relief. I never realized how much I would miss Home Depot! Much as I love IKEA… sometime they just don’t have exactly the kind of thing you need. You need variety! Types of nails to choose from! Table legs that you can attach to the piece of scrap wood you found by the bin to make a table for your thrifted microwave!

Speaking of which, riding the tram with a microwave rattling around in your IKEA bag gains you more looks than you would think, considering how few people here have cars… I’ve also carried a small tree on the bus. It’s amazing the things you find yourself capable of when you don’t want to pay for a taxi! I’ve also walked twenty minutes bearing a cat tree along with a heavy bag of cat litter – a decision I regretted more than the other two.

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Which brings us to our final item – cats! Though I did look through the Facebook groups and considered a few of the cats I saw there, I really wanted to be able to help out a bonded pair since I wanted two anyway and know that pairs are harder to adopt out. So I actually ended up finding a rescue group’s website, and found my cats in their listings there. Cat shelters aren’t so much a thing in Athens as are foster homes – which I think is great actually. I was able to go and meet one of the cats in her home setting – the other one was there as well but hid the whole time – and their foster mom has kept in contact and still likes my Instagram posts when I post about them! I just think it’s such a better situation for the cats, and it’s nice to have someone who knows their history to reach out to if a medical problem was to come up. The cats are brother and sister, and they’d just turned 6 when I got them. Now they’ve just had their seventh birthday, and are thriving!

Taking them both to the vet was definitely an adventure – luckily it’s only a ten minute walk, because I had one of them in a backpack carrier and another in an over the shoulder carrier and they both put up quick the fuss both ways. Vets are much cheaper here, but I feel like food and litter are about the same as in the US. Also, no one charges adoption fees here (I don’t think you’re allowed to), but microchips are required (probably because of the over abundance of street cats they’re dealing with), so thankfully I was able to just pay the adoption agency for the microchip transfer so I didn’t have to figure any of that out myself.

There are lots of pet stores here, but I was getting frustrated with how many different stores I was having to go to, all in different directions, in order to get all the different brands I needed for different things. So these days, I walk to the store for their litter, and just order their food with Wolt (which is a food delivery service like UberEats but also delivers from other stores). No Chewy equivalent here, but honestly with how complicated getting packages from couriers often is, ordering with Wolt is much easier than a service like that would be.

The next best service after Wolt or efood, in my opinion, is Skroutz. When I really can’t figure out where to buy something, I just look it up on there, and order it. They ship to lockers, so you just select the nearest one that has space, and then it arrives a few days later, you go and open the locker with the app, and hey presto, you have your item! Sometimes you can also get things for cheaper that way, and it saves you from walking around to various stores to price compare. It’s the closest thing you’re going to find to Amazon here. Same concept – different stores can post their items, and Skroutz is basically just the marketplace. For some reason, a lot of the items I order seem to come from stores in Thessaloniki – one time I got shoes from a store on an island I’d never heard of before. Other times, they’re just coming from suburbs of Athens that are more trouble than it’s worth for me to actually hike out to – I’d rather just pay three euros to walk fifteen minutes to pick it up from the locker than take the train for thirty minutes to the store. I have also definitely used it to find out what stores near me sell the item I’m looking for though.

Between Reto, IKEA, Facebook Marketplace, Leroy Merlin, Skroutz, and a local pet adoption agency, my house was transformed into a home! Also thanks to my friends who helped me haul furniture and took me on shopping trips – especially to the one that helped me move the washing machine. So sorry. I promise I’ll pay for delivery for that one next time.

If you live in Athens, which resources did you find most helpful when setting up house here?

Until next time!

The post Acquiring Furniture, Adopting Cats, and the Lifesaver that are Facebook Groups appeared first on Any Day In Athens.

This should be a simple process, really. Since I’m going as a student, and surely Greece wants students to be paying their schools for international programs, as long as I bring all the documents required to my appointment at the consulate, it should be no big deal, right?

Wrong.

Greece is, unfortunately, known for being difficult about the visa process. Actually, I’m pretty sure every country is, but the fact that it seems to depend on the mood of the people in the office on the day of your appointment is… discouraging, to say the least. The good thing is that the Atlanta consulate was pretty good about emailing back when I had questions about what to bring, and they let me continue to submit the extra documents they asked for at my appointment through email after my appointment. The bad thing is that they asked for extra documents.

I’ve talked to several other people who have come on student visas, and though the extra documents they were asked to acquire at their visa appointments varied, pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has run into this same hurtle. The really bizarre thing is that, in my case and in some others, they didn’t end up needing the extra stuff anyway.

Here were the issues they had with my paperwork: You have to prove that your parents can finically support you while you’re in school. This doesn’t change, no matter how old you are or what level of education you’re going for. Now, at my appointment, I was told I could submit my own bank accounts as well, to bolster the number, but that’s not listed as an option in the visa document. So take that with a grain of salt. As I’ve just alluded to, they didn’t like the numbers I was submitting, even though my Dad is very comfortably middle class, and an empty nester. My mom and I would be his only dependents. I was very confused by the math the consular agent was presenting to me, and ultimately I think he was looking at the numbers wrong, and either later realized his mistake, or someone else realized it for him. You’re only required, as per the visa document issued by the Greek government, as a student, to have 500 euro at your disposal a month. This is definitely an expense my Dad could afford.

The second problem they had was with my insurance. Even though I’d bought the Greek insurance plan that I was told to get by those advising me from Greece, and was told even by the insurance agent – when I later talked to him over the phone as we were both confused by the consulate’s demands – that this is the insurance plan that people get for their visas. The consulate wanted the plan to have a higher hospital coverage, and to include repatriation. Though I found travel insurance plans that covered the higher hospital amount (the company I’d gone through didn’t go that high – he did email the consulate on my behalf to try to figure out what they wanted, but they never replied to him), I never found anything that covered “repatriation.” Emergency evacuation, yes, but repatriation under the conditions the consular agent described to me: “if you commit a crime in my country”, was never listed under anything I was finding, so finally I googled, “do travel plans cover repatriation for crimes.” The answer is, no. From what I could find, you will be held responsible by your government for the cost of getting you back home if you commit a crime in a foreign country, but health and travel insurance doesn’t cover that. So, in exasperation, I emailed the three plans I’d found that seemed closest to what had been asked of me to the consulate office. This was the day before the expected two week wait time to hear back about my visa. The next day, I received an email saying my visa had been issued. Queue a sigh of relief (or rather repeated exclamations of “oh my god oh my god oh my god” as I’m near tears in my brothers car), but I still have no idea what the consular agent was talking about. In the end, they must have decided the insurance I had was enough after all.

Someone else mentioned that they were asked for an acceptance letter from the university in the US that has a partnership with the Greek university they were applying to, and the school here in Greece had to call and say no, they don’t need that. So it’s nice to know that the school could have called and come to my defense, if need be, but talk about a stressful two weeks! I was really convinced I wasn’t going to get it. That I was going to have to figure out how to apply in another state, under another consulate’s jurisdiction, or who knows what else – but in the end it all worked out.

Now that I’m in the country, I have to apply for a residency permit, since my student visa is only good for three months. Before I can do that, however, I had to have a tax number – which will be another post. Needless to say, don’t come to me for any visa advice, but this is a record of my experience. I’d been warned that getting a visa to Greece could be tough, but I really thought I was coming in well prepared. So this is my word of caution: no matter how many boxes you’ve checked, they just might find more for you, and in areas that you would never expect to be an issue.

So all I can say is: Best of of luck!

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