Living in Athens would NOT be EASY!

the country we're going to talk about today has been on several of the xat top 10 lists lately it's especially popular with retirees because it has good Healthcare a low cost of living at least compared to other countries in the region and the winters are mild some people are even calling it the next Portugal so in today's video we're going to take a look at the pros and cons of this popular place and answer the big question could we live there but before we dive in we want to remind you of our website Amilia jp.com we post a lot of free articles over there about how to embrace an unconventional Life by living abroad earning online income or retiring early if you're wondering if we've covered a topic there is a good chance you'll find it on our website scan this QR code or check the description for a link so you can see what we post next I have always wanted to visit Greece and Athens seemed like a really good place to start Greece has over 200 inhabited Islands but they're not as popular in January so we're going to go check them out when the weather is warmer but January is the perfect time to visit Athens because it's a low season for tourism and we enjoyed seeing the sites without the big crowds well it's fun to do a few touristy things our focus on these exploratory trips is to see if we could live there long term I'm not so sure JP could handle living there because he had some culture shock and there are a couple things that really drove him crazy but he's going to talk about that later in the video we're going to start by talking about the Visa options because if you don't qualify for a Visa you can't live there longterm Greece is part of the Shen gen Zone which means you can stay there for 90 days out of every 180 days on a tourist visa they have a digital Nomad Visa with a 3500 per month income requirement and they have a golden Visa or investment Visa just requires €250,000 they also have a retirement or passive income Visa which they call their financially independent person's visa and for this you need to have at least €2,000 per month in your pension and this Visa does come with tax benefits which is is a good thing and after 7 years of residency you can apply for citizenship and be have that EU passport now let's talk about the things we loved about Athens and the first one is the incredible history it is unbelievable it draws millions of people from around the world every year to see it I loved walking around and exploring Athens and just turning the corner and saying hey there is a 200-year-old monument there it was just mind-blowing the Acropolis of course is probably the most famous monument in Athens it means high city in Greek and it was built during the 5th Century BC that's over 2600 years ago it's during the Bronze Age it is a UNESCO red heritage site and it is it's just unbelievable you really need to see it in person our video and pictures are not doing it justice you see it up on the hill and it kind of looks small it's imposing but small but once you're up there in the whole complex you get the full scale and it is much larger and so impressive W who knew the ancient Greeks had all that scaffolding at their disposal I know they were very inventive they were able to without the tools that we have today is incredible the ancient Agora of Athens was the center of public life in Athens or or kind of the marketplace it was the commercial judicial administrative cultural and had other activities that took place there from the 6th Century BC the Roman Agora or Roman form of Athens was constructed between 19 and 11 BC with funds donated by Julius Caesar and it also had shops and offices Hadrian's library is next to the Roman Agora it's the biggest library where they stored books and other important state archives monaki square is next to Hadrian's Library the name means small Monastery although the monastery isn't there anymore but there is the Byzantine church and the mosque and there's also a main Metro station there plus you have the flea market and a lot of other shops and restaurants this area is very popular of tourist and it was pretty crowded when we were there Hadrian's gate or the arch of hadrien is also a famous and important Monument it was built to honor the emperor between 131 and 134 ad sagma square is known as the Constitution Square this is the area where the people demanded a constitution from King Otto on September 3rd 1843 it is also a busy Transportation Hub it is where the tram ends the Tomb of the Unknown sold is located just across the street from sagma Square that's where you can watch The Changing of the Guard I thought the tradition was fascinating and very impressive because they are elite soldiers that undergo specific training to perform that perfect March Athens has lots of beautiful Parks they have small neighborhood parks and big parks in the middle of the city Athens National Garden is a nice Flat Park that is really popular also s Nia smey is in the neighborhood of Nia smey it's on the tram line about halfway between the city center and the coast phip poos Hill is a Mountain Park in the middle of the city and it was our favorite it has multiple entry and exit points and we loved walking around it and lots of people use it for exercise there are nice trails and we even saw people rock climbing there and the views of the city all the way out to the Sea are amazing plus you have the incredible views of the Acropolis I love walking up this hill to this incredible View of the Acropolis unconventionals it is unbelievable it's early January we are bundled up cuz it is a little bit chilly but this is a great time of year to visit the Acropolis cuz you probably can't see from here but there's not that many people there leab Bettis Hill is the highest point in Athens you can take a cable car up to the top or you can walk up there the cable car was 8 each which seemed a little expensive to us it only takes a couple of minutes and we were kind of crammed in there we took it up to the top I decided to walk down and there's a small Church on top and a restaurant and amazing views of the city we cannot list all of The Monuments and other important historical artifacts around the city you really have to see it for yourself shopping is next on the list of things Athens has going for it they have a lot of nice pedestrian areas for shopping and dining and those areas are throughout the city and other neighborhoods too not just in the city center it's a combination of locally owned stores and international chains something I'd ever thought I would see come back want some Moon boots God it rindes me of being a kid back in the 70s no I do not Athens has great food the food is fantastic I have always loved Greek food and it is even better in Greece we ate at several Greek restaurants and dining out is very affordable there's other types of Cuisine besides Greek although we did not try any because there was no way I was passing up authentic Greek food they have delicious affordable produce as well the farmers markets are huge there's one in each neighborhood every day of the week so you can go to a different one every day if you want to we spent €24 for a week's worth of produce and that was a big haul the vendors D speak enough English so that you can make your purchases but you can only pay in cash so I had an allergic reaction to olives while we were in Greece I ate 5 lbs and it swelled right up but let me tell you I gained so much weight eating all of those olives we went to the market market and this old man was helping us order he spoke English and the vendor didn't he's like just tell him how many euros that you want in Ali so I said H three of those and three EUR of those and he filled up a bag this big with the first one I'm like oh no no less two let's just do two EUR for the others and it was almost as big and this other guy looked at me he said first time in a Greek market I I had to say yes because we walked home with with two massive bags of olives and I was not going to let them go to waste yeah I'm olived out now me too the drinking water tastes great you can drink the tap water and boy it reminded us of our Mountain Water from quka and they have really good water pressure Athens has great public transportation you have the Metro tram buses you have the taxis including Uber taxi they don't actually have regular Uber but it does work the app works just like uber only just for taxi so it's just as convenient we absolutely loved taking the tram it is easy cheap and it's a nice way to get to the center of Athens and to the beach it costs €120 per ride but make sure you scan your ticket and have that with you or they may kick you off the train or the tram they actually do have people on their checking the Metro goes to the airport is €1 one way from the to or from the city center the coastline is beautiful the beaches are really pretty and the the water is clear calm and clean but we could not believe people were out there swimming in December and January it was cool to see the views of the islands from there it's really nice to be able to walk on those wide sidewalks and we really like the green linear parks along the coast it's nice and clear but it's a little chilly I'm surprised to see so many people out here swimming Sun's pretty strong I guess I don't know I guess you adapt but probably a little too chilly for me there is a variety of neighborhoods at different price points konaki and the areas closer to the Acropolis District are more expensive but of course they're more popular as well Kaki is southwest of the Acropolis it has a lot of mid-rise condos and lots of shops and restaurants in that area we stayed in nail Kosmos which is an older neighborhood and well honestly it was not as pretty there was lots of graffiti and motorcycle stores and auto shops but the location was perfect it was a 25-minute walk to the Acropolis from there 30 minutes by tram to the beach and the locals were actually really friendly and helpful when we got overwhelmed at that farmers market there are other nice neighborhoods on the southern side on the way to the coast and these have newer condos with big balconies and you've got bigger grocery stores and nice pedestrian areas along the coast you have C View Condos it's right along the tram line in that walking trail on the beach and they they go all the way south to gleif and actually Gata looks like it's its own City but it's considered a suburb of Athens and we saw a lot of high-end housing there and lots more families it actually kind of reminded us of Cherry Creek and Denver and lots of new construction and Renovations going on there before we talk about the downsides of living in Athens hit that subscribe button if you're dreaming of moving abroad because it might be easier than you think and our videos can show you how and now for the downsides of Athens greets and the first one is the language barrier it is so hard to learn Greek to understand it there's an old idiom that it's Greek to me and that's actually been around for hundreds of years even before Shakespeare because it's just so hard nobody can understand it and the mainly it's because the alphabet is different they're different letters they have they look like the same letters but they have different sounds like the P sounds like an r and it's just so hard yeah it was very confusing it was hard for us to read labels because most of the labels were in Greek we ended up using our camera on the translate quite a lot to get the basics done and that did work luckily some of the signs are in Greek and in English but it was definitely painful yeah that was a big source of culture shock for me not being able to communicate and a lot of the people in the area where we stay just didn't speak English so it was a real challenge it is not pedestrian friendly there either no and Equador I call it pedestrian blindness in Athens I'm going to call it pedestrian Warfare they are are extremely aggressive drivers and they do not slow down for pedestrians even if you have a green walk sign they're going to try and pull in between pedestrians crossing the street they'll honk at you if you're in the middle of the street we saw them honk at an old lady I mean it it was crazy to see how they drive and and the pedestrians there just are meaningless to them I don't think there is enough parking because the drivers park anywhere they can and they block the crosswalks yeah they Block Park all the way around the corners and bumper to bumper so there's not even enough room to walk between them if you wanted to I felt like going full Dukes a hazard a few times and just slid right across the hood of those cars because you couldn't get around them you have to walk halfway down the street just to get an opening wide enough to walk through and then you're in the middle of the street you can't see the crosswalk or the the street sign to see if it's safe to go or not and and they're not looking out for you so we we felt a lot of anxiety every time we left the house to walk somewhere some of the sidewalk walks are narrow and they are broken and sometimes you're going to see a motorcycle driving on the sidewalk when we were walking around we saw a sign that said danger always look before Crossing some drivers tend to violate the red light and take care of your health so the bottom line is you need to be alert as a pedestrian I'm still trying to get used to all the store closures in the middle of the day and on weekends so the pretty much everything is closed on Sunday in Athens and we were there during the holiday so Christmas and New Year got see the fireworks but the the stores were closed on Sunday for Sunday and then they were closed on Monday for the holiday then they were closed on Tuesday because that's also a holiday so we had three days where the all the grocery stores were closed everywhere we went we and we ran out of food but we didn't know they were going to be closed because it didn't say that they were going to be closed online and they didn't post signs on the door saying we have special holiday hour so we didn't know and it wasn't obvious to us that they would be closed for three days in a row we experienced some poor air quality while we were there there is a lot of pollution despite the electric buses tram and Metro and it was often pretty hazy it's also very crowded and especially in the tourist areas we were there in the off seon it was really hard to walk around parts of Centro and because the sidewalks are narrow and the drivers don't look for you it's even it makes it even feel more crowded some of the buildings have old plumbing and that means that you cannot flush the toilet paper yeah and you're going to have to embrace the Beday I've embraced the bedet I've given in so just get used to it because a lot of places you can't flush a TP I know that's a big deal for a lot of you let's talk about graffiti we were shocked by the amount of graffiti it is all over the place it's basically on every flat surface and even the round ones yeah we even saw a guy walking down the street with a magic marker tagging street signs it looked like it was just his initials some of it is Art but a lot of it is vandalism and it's really unfortunate because it makes the city look kind kind of dirty and scary now before we talk about whether or not we could live in Athens we want to share a couple interesting observations with you and the first is there are cats everywhere throughout the city I love seeing all the cats they're really cute they look very healthy and wellfed the locals take care of them and they're very friendly the only bad thing is that you may occasionally smell a little cat pea yeah quite a bit actually another thing that you need to be prepared for is that if you have a damaged Euro no one is going to take it I had a 50 EUR that I had been carrying around since Portugal I had a tiny little tear in it and no one would take it the cab drivers the restaurants the vendors at the market no one would take it they told me I had to go to the bank to change it so we went waiting line at a bank to to get a new 50 and the woman at the bank said they couldn't take it either and she said we had to go to the Central Bank of Greece to change that out luckily though we went to have a drink a glass of wine at this place and we kind of made friends with the bartender and at the end I said is there any way you guys could take this €50 off my hands for me and he has to take it back to the manager and ask for permission to take this 50 with a tiny tear in it so if you're going to carry around euros and they're quite flimsy take good care of them I now I'm keeping them in my wallet so that they don't get so damaged that they like in my pocket so now let's answer the question could we live there My overall thought is yes Athens is very livable I like the fact that you have all the amenities of a major Metro but you also have the beach close by yeah it has a lot going for but I think Emilia would have to live there without me because there was just too much culture shock for me I haven't felt culture shock like that since I went to India and the longer I was in India the less culture shock I felt but in Greece the longer we were there the more I felt I think most of it was due to the language barrier to be honest with you and I think you would really need to learn Greek in order to be happy living there and I'm just not sure I'm willing to commit to that at this phase of my life I'd much rather Master Spanish finally then try to tag on one of the world's hardest languages let us know in the comments what you think about Athens as a place to live and if you want to learn some Greek if you're planning a trip or a move to southern Europe then check out these videos next and remember to check out our website Amilia jp.com as well if you need some more help and information about living abroad that's all we have for this video we will see you all in the next one yasas yasas

Channel: Amelia And JP Abroad

Views: 255,195

Keywords: greece, grease, athens, athina

Id: SqOsCA9rdKs

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024