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.

The first time I traveled to Greece, everything was reminding me of Albania. The little store fronts selling brightly colored plastic goods, the local bakeries, the old men sitting about drinking espressos, riding on a public transportation bus again, the old apartment buildings with the tattered awnings over the balconies, the street food (called by different names but tasting the same), the people going through garbage bins and loading what they considered salvageable into either hand carts or tiny trucks, the foliage, the dusty and diesel filled air, the way people were driving, the old women and their little two wheeled shopping bags. 

I have been here enough times now to not compare everything. Greece is Greece, and Albania is Albania – but there are things, every now and again, that take me straight back to my childhood. Little moments, unexpected flashbacks. Like today, when I was walking from the metro stop to the bus stop on my way to language class, and something about the color of the leaves of the trees poking through the iron fencing with the chipped paint, just sort of caught me off guard in a way that didn’t make me think of anything particular, even – just those Albanian days, in general. And in the very next moment, I was thinking ruefully to myself that I’ve not been appreciating what I’ve accomplished: that I have, just as I always wanted, gotten back to that part of the world, surrounded myself in a similar culture, am living once again in a cement and tile apartment with corner stores to pop into just down the street, a farmers market happening daily in different places where I can get all the fresh produce I could ever want (just as we used to), learning a language which has long been on my bucket list (though technically what was on my list was the ancient version – but close enough)… which is to say, I am living the life that my ten year old self so desperately didn’t want to leave, when we went back to the States. 

I have always remarked, to those that have asked, that living in a foreign country was easy as a kid. I was caught up in the adventure of it, and didn’t have any of the stresses and anxieties that my parents had. 

Now, living as an adult in a foreign country, I can not avoid such things. Learning a new language is hard. Going to church in a different language, even with translation, isn’t that enjoyable. Navigating bus routes is frustrating. Finding an apartment was hard in the US – I have even more odds stacked against me here. Figuring out where to buy different things, tiny grocery stores, running across busy streets when they don’t have crosswalks, not being able to flush the toilet paper, having to conserve the hot water, windows not having screens so all the bugs just come in… just starting over, basically, in life – it all stacks up, one on top of another, until sometimes I just want to scream. Or sleep, for a really long time. I remember watching my parents go through all of this. I shared in some of those frustrations as a kid, but certainly I didn’t have to apartment hunt or worry about where to shop. Just as when I was a kid, however, I miss American cereals…

So even though I feel like I’ve settled into a better schedule and rhythm of doing enough but not too much (I was trying to do too much, at first), there is still all this cultural stress that, adaptive as I am, is waring me down. 

Yet – there are glimpses. Like that tiny moment this morning, that small window into the past that reminded me that I am exactly where I want to be. Where I’ve longed to be. So that I can remember to take a deep breath, and take the next step, and keep pushing forward, because it’s worth it. When I long for the ease of grocery shopping at Kroger, I remind myself that when I was shopping at Kroger, I was longing to be here – and when I pass under the beautiful statues adorning the grand university building I pass every day on my way to the bus stop, and when I’m riding the bus back home and peer out the window at the acropolis, and when I’m helping one of the girls in the art class carve a pumpkin for the first time, and when I blend in with the commuter crowd so well that someone asks me for directions (which I am unable to give), and when I make a friend from yet another European country I’ve never been to… I am grateful. So grateful to be here. Even when I’m the most stressed, the most frustrated, the most at my whits end – there’s no place else I’d rather be.

I’m a stranger in this land, and yet somehow, this land is home. 

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