The Whole Truth about Living in Athens, Greece - All the Pros and Cons

there you go my friends hello I'm back with your favorite grease content I know you really enjoy whenever I put some um Athens or Greece content so I don't really want to disappoint you so I will definitely be bringing on more and more grace content for you in between my you know regular or not so regular talking head videos but because I am living in Greece and I am living in nens I think this is a great opportunity for me to share with you what I know about living in this country and in this city so today it is almost six months since I moved into Athens the weather is totally different we are having summer in aens in the last few days it's just amazing and when I came here it was end of November and the weather wasn't too bad either but we will be talking about weather later on some things have changed since I moved here of course I rented my apartment and I made some friends and in general I am enjoying living here and get to know the place and get to know the reality of living in attens so I thought I'm going to share with you what I have learned what I think are the pros and cons of living in AET it is 6 months in update of course this will maybe change or I might be be able to add some things later on but for now this is all my knowledge so I heard a lot and I read a lot all over internet that there um quite a lot of people actually considering moving to Greece these days and of course a lot of people consider moving to the islands there's some digital Nomads coming to Greece there's some retirees into Greece or even business owners people that run online business business and just looking for cheaper lifestyle and cheaper cheaper cost of living in Europe still within Europe within shenen Zone let's say so this video might be for you if you want to know what is the reality of moving to Greece but this particular video is aens specific some things will obviously overlap certain things are the same here as they are on the island but some are not but if you're wondering why would anybody want to leave in Athens rather than on beautiful island of I don't know mikonos or naos or Santorini or something but you would be surprised that some people actually prefer to leave in a city they want to be close to all the amenities while still being able to travel within the country and see all the islands whatever your reason is and if you considering moving to aens this is video for you with without further Ado I'm going to start with Cons with all the not so good things about living in nens CU I want to finish this video on a high note so I'm going to talk about all the bad things or all the cones about living in attens get it done and over with and then we're going to talk about all the great things about living in aens and living in Greece in general so let's do it the cons that not so good things about living in attens number one there are some very bad neighborhoods in aens and when I saying bad neighborhoods those are pretty bad attens in general are very very safe in general as grease but there are certain areas in attens that you just don't want to go to I passed through a couple of times once because I just had to Once because I did it by mistake and I've seen things that I really don't wouldn't want anybody to look at those are areas that are very rundown there is a lot of dealing going on in there there are people R sleeping you know I don't have to tell you uh you probably know what I mean this is mainly around the amonia area and little streets around it I will be making a separate video for those that looking to come to attens and look for a place to leave or even those visiting attens because this is really really important there's probably no other city in Europe that I've been to but it's so important to know where to rent apartment Airbnb Hotel because in these areas the hotels airbnbs are super cheap and a lot of people don't realize they book it they think they got a great deal they come and they vacation their holiday is ruined because they looking at the things through the window that I don't wish anybody to look at it's not very nice sometimes even dangerous to get out of the hotel at night or come back to you don't really want to be going through that while there are such a gorgeous stunning amazing areas in aens to live in or to rent an apartment in or even stay in a hotel so I will be definitely making a completely separate video about it so please stay tuned but yes when you move into attens you really need to make a research and go on forums go on Facebook groups I am massive fan of those read blog post watch YouTube videos be sure that you stay in a safe area in attens attens are large a large area you have a lot of neighborhoods around it it spreads all the way to the coast so if you're looking to rent an apartment for longer definitely go outside of the center I am staying outside of the center the public transport is amazing you can just hop on a train or hop on a Metro and you are in a city center if you want to okay number two traffic and Pavements I put it all into one section because the traffic and Pavements is just literally one thing it's everything goes here there's no such a thing as respecting people crossing zebra Crossing you always have to be care careful when you cross the road but at the same time you can literally cross the road anywhere you would have a crossing here and you see people walking across the street just next to it and it's the same with the cars they don't respect the pedestrians the traffic is crazy I've seen worst traffic I've been traveling in Southeast Asia so this is definitely not the worst and it doesn't scare me in particular but I know that for a lot of people this could be a bit of a issue because there is a lot of traffic and you have to be very careful when you cross the street and pedestrians are totally not respected you literally have to fight your way through it when we're talking about the Pavements Pavements are horrendous I wouldn't even call them Pavements they they are there but you will see a lot of people walking the streets instead because they are either very narrow full of holes or there's things standing in a way or there's motorbikes in there or there's cars parked where the pavement is ending so you have to go all around the car to like cross the street it's crazy like with the Pavements it's the same everything goes and nobody respects pedestrians nobody respects cars nobody respects anything for me again this is not an issue I've been traveling countries where there's no payments at all and you literally have to work on the street and and those were countries where people don't walk and I was the only one walking like in some parts of Thailand for example Malaysia so for me this is not an issue but if you are a very I don't know organized person and like everything to be organized and you want cars and to respect you or if you want to have nice Pavements to work on that might be an issue also if you have any mobility issues it's a disaster I walk those Pavements and cross the street and often think how would a person using a wheelchair ever ever cross the street ever use this Pavements it's just impossible if you have any type of mobility issues even if you just find it hard to walk on uneven surfaces you will find it hard if you have children and you want to use your proms in the city on the pavement get ready it can be done obviously there are people here using proms but it is a disaster but like I said for me this is not an issue I'm just you know I'm actually quite happy to cross the street wherever because I sometimes think putting too much restrictions like not crossing the street on the red light because it's a red light when there's no car anywhere you know but then I am a Gen X I grew up in times where we were not using seat belt in the cars nobody was using a helmet but I'm not saying that this is the right thing but for me it's not an issue number three not much of a Greenery of of parks in aens if you like to live in a cities that have a lot of green areas a lot of parks a lot of leisure areas attens is probably not the best place you can get out of attin you can go find really nice hikes around attens because attens is surrounded by mountains and on the south of attens you will have a coast so obviously you can find beautiful places to walk around or do any type of sports outside of aens in attens though there's maybe two parks that I know of I know there's probably more but until then I'm only here for 6 months I know of two parks that are pretty big and nice to walk around but at is not very um green if you look at the attens from one of the viewpoints there's quite a few nice viewpoints in attens you will see just a line of blocks it it looks from the above it looks like a concrete jungle it doesn't always feel like it when you walk in between the buildings because I don't know it's a Mediterranean type of a city I quite like the look of Aton because I like the Mediterranean look of big city but when you look at it from above it literally is a concrete jungle so now if you're looking for big parks or green areas in the center where you maybe want to go for a run or do some leisurely activities you might be a little bit disappointed now we moving to things that are true in attens and most likely through somewhere else in Greece as well number four high utility bills especially electricity the electricity the cost of electricity in this country is probably the highest I've paid anywhere else fact I have not lived in England for quite a few years but I did not pay this much when I was living in England I was not paying this much when I was living in Poland in Malta in Spain the electricity bills here are horrendous and you need electricity here there's not a lot of gas uh appliances which I'm a little bit upset about because both in Spain and in Poland I've had gas cooker which for me is great because gas is cheaper here everything is electric and I do believe that it is Electric in majority of the flats so in the winter you have to heat up your house because the houses are not made for Colder Weather so in the winter you have to heat it up in the summer you do need a condition you obviously have to cook you have to do other things around the house the electricity bills are quite High the great thing is that a lot of the water heating is heated by the solar panels on the roofs which is great I I made a little bit of a mistake at the beginning because I did I was not told that the water heater the solar water heater is still plugged into the electrics obviously when there is a sun and there is a lot of sun in this country you just turn it off I didn't I didn't know that I'm supposed to turn it off so it was basically running all the time my first bill was bad and then I was told that you turn it off and literally you just turn it on on the days when it's sunny since I turned it off last month I have not had to turn it on even once and I had hot water all the time so that's a good thing but apart from this this you use electricity for everything and the electricity bills are high from what I've spoken to different people obviously it depends how big is your house how much of heating or air condition you're using how many people in a house it can be anything between 40 or 50 up to even €150 or €200 per month crazy other other utility bills are also pretty horrendous like internet in attens I don't know in Hall of Greece is also crazy expensive the cheapest package for Wi-Fi to have a routed at home was 30 something EUR for me this is really expensive um I paid around this money in Malta for really highspeed internet and Malta is expensive and in Malta I was earning three times more than I am earning here so I could pay €35 or 38 for internet there I cannot pay 35 for internet here I run everything on my Hotspot basically there are ways around it but if you want to have a highspeed internet and if you want to have a TV and cable TV in a house that is not going to be cheap the water is really cheap and the heating of the water if only you have a solar panel heater it's fine but I still think that considering how much people are actually earning in this country expense the utility bills are Sky High that's it about the bills but number five and now the church bells are ringing so I'm just going to wait a little bit because this is really loud number five is general cost of rental in comparison to local wages if you are coming with Western salary okay if you're a digital NAD or you work remotely and your compan is paying you Western salaries anything about 1,500 a month after tax you are fine but if you want to leave here get a job here and Greek wages the cost of rental in comparison to to earnings in Greece it it's crazy people can earn here as little as 7750 per month and the rental the like I pay €450 for my apartment one of the friends that I'm working with she's renting 410 and we are talking about studio studio Flats so anything between 400 and 450 for a studio flat you can rent room in a shed house can this is cheaper and a lot of people that move to at do that especially young people students then you pay maybe around 300 350 with bills included but if you want to leave by yourself and you we are talking about longterm rental not Airbnb or anything like that proper rental contract then you need to look for the studio for minimum 400 but this is really hard to find or it's going to be in a bad area or it's generally not going to be a very nice place if you want a nice place I would say for 20 430 and above of course and if you want like one bedroom or two bedroom you know the sky is the limit but like I said come to Greece with Western with Western salary or your Western retirement money or anything like that the prices of course are really good because in some other countries you will pay 2 ,000 for the apartment and here you pay 500 or 700 if it's a bigger one but for someone that lives in Greece and earns money here it is really really expensive and with this also comes the cost of enjoying Greece if you're earning money here because Greece is such a popular tourist destination and there's so many airbnbs here and airbnbs as we know really brought the rental prices up I spoke with so many people they live here permanently and they say they cannot afford holiday in Greece they cannot go on vacation to Greek island because those prices are made for Western tourists people that live here and earn money here they cannot afford it and I'm one of them I want to go to Creed and I want to take you with me to Creed because I really want to go and see this island but I am struggling to put the money together to pay for the ferry or pay for the flight to get there and to pay for the accommodation there for a week or something it's the prices are crazy especially if you leaving here and earning money in gree hotels are expensive bnbs are expensive and rental apartments are expensive all right so let's move on to number I hope I got the numbers right I think it's number six the bureaucracy is another level in this country I've been in countries where the bureaucracy was crazy Poland is not the easiest when it comes to bureaucracy Malta was horendous but this country they took bureaucracy to another level if you want to get anything sorted here anything just you have to go into your Zen mode because you will need a lot of patience I was very very lucky when I was renting this apartment when to rent an apartment long time you need a lot of paperwork you need your tax number you need um fill in like a form online like a tax form it's called taxes net you need all this all these things are in Greek I um was very lucky that the lady that was the owner of the agency that R me the place she literally done everything for me she called people at my workplace she got all the paperwork for me she uploaded things like it was crazy because if I was about to do things like this by myself I think I would literally have to pay someone to do this for me because I would not be able to do that there is a lot of paperwork that you need you need all sort of tax numbers Insurance numbers but this is everywhere else if you want to leave here permanently if you just come in here for 6 months or for one year or if you coming on like a digital normad Visa or something you don't need these things but to use the services in gree to use the health services to be able to rent fulltime you also need a tax number you can rent the Airbnb but if you want a long-term rental you need tax number you need all sorts of documents so please be prepared the bureaucracy here is crazy the same when you go open the bank account the amount of paperwork I needed to open the bank account in Poland I went with my national ID I didn't need anything I just went there with my national IDs I gave them all the information here you need paper from work from apartment paper from the tax you need paper for everything which I don't understand because I'm just opening a bank account I am I am not taking any money from you I'm not taking credit I'm not taking credit card I'm not taking anything I just want to put my wages into your bank account but I don't know maybe I don't know something and when we talking about the bureaucracy and offices and everything like that we come into number seven number seven is opening hours of some of the institutions around here if you working Monday to Friday 8 to 4 or 9 to5 forget about going to bank banks are closed quite early 2 3:00 to be honest with you I cannot give you a very specific times because I I don't really go to Banks or any institutions a lot but also shops are open very irregular even regular shops they close earlier on Mondays and Wednesdays I think it's 3:00 if I remember well but as I said I'm not sure if this is changing or I just don't go out on Mondays on Wednesday Wednesdays but whenever I do go out I do find things open but I do close at random days as well you have some national holidays and Sundays everything is closed as well you need to be aware that on Sundays shops are closed you will find the random shop every now and then that is open by majority the supermarkets obviously Banks and stuff like that everything is closed on Sundays so you always have to think ahead but if you are a regular shop goer a regular Bank go or you basically go out and use shops and institutions on a regular basis you need to be aware that there are really crazy opening hours here majority of the things that I just mentioned they don't really bother me that much I don't really find them to be a deal breakers but we all different different things are important to different people there's a lot of people leave even in attens complaining about attens a lot what I complain is more of a things that are Greece related because I am employed in Greece I pay by bills in Greece and unfortunately the ratio of cost of living to the wages is not so great if I complain I complain more about these things and maybe some general employment regulations but everything comes with a price because now we are coming to all the great things about living in attens and some of them will also overlap with great things about living in Greece in general in my opinion a lot of the great things about the city really um overlap the bad things but like I said I'm giving you all the information if you'll be up to you to decide which of them are important to you and which are not important to you so let's go ahead and talk about all the pros all the great things about living in aans so let's start with number one and number one is definitely general for the whole of the country and that is the weather I wanted to move here because I wanted to move to one of the Mediterranean countries I love Mediterranean weather I love Mediterranean climate you have most of the time around 300 days a year of sunshine you do get rain and colder days in the winter but on a sunny day you can walk out of your house in February with a short sleeve if you have a really really hot day or if you don't get cold easily as I do because as I was walking around at the other day H with my sister because I had my sister visiting here we were walking with short sleeves and we're hot but there were still some people in winter jackets so yeah so it all depends how do you react to different temperatures but for me the weather is is glorious right now we have end of April and it's literally a summer it's summer you could go to the beach and just enjoy the beach enjoy the sea and see outside until late hours and you are warm and it's beautiful and everybody leaves outside and this is number two on our list of pros of living in a is the outside living because of the weather everything is going on on the outside you can go to the restaurant and eat on the outside you can go to the bar and drink on the outside you can walk around on outside you can go to walk around the coast you can go hike in the mountains you can literally spend all your days on the outside because there's very few raining days or very few really cold days that are more in the winter but still it's not as much as in some other countries you can you're free to leave your life on the outside and you see this when you walk around the city you see people enjoying themselves walking around eating in restaurants outside it's amazing this for me is what Mediterranean lifestyle is about and if you move in here for this reason you will love it there is no question about it and the third Pro which should be really number one depending on your priorities but for me this is a third Pro attens is literally living history anywhere you go around Each corner you will see some Monument or ancient ruins or then then there's a lot of museums in the city that we know what at are famous for I'm am standing here on my balcony and I see aop from my balcony it's just like for real I go for a walk and I see Acropolis it's just crazy this is a city like no other in the world of course some people compare it to Rome and whatever but you know what I mean you come here and you need to pinch yourself because you are walking in the city there is a crowle of democracy CR of civilization of many things a lot of the words that we don't even think about like biology math physics they come from Greek the the history in this city is incredible and you will see it on every corner you just walk around and just randomly you will see some ancient ruins and this is this is really great so if you a history PA this is definitely a city for you now we coming to number four which is many things to do I believe there are many things to do in art especially usually comes warmer weather comes the spring there's a lot of festivals as well there's a lot of outdoor events there's a lot of ad hoc events there is one going on this weekend I'm don't know if I'm going to go and see it tomorrow maybe like a The Organic Food Fest or Market something like there's a lot of things going on there's in the summer there's a lot of outside festivals opener Cinemas and of course there's a lot of cultural stuff there's tons of amazing museums and cultural events not even mention a lot of restaurants bars clubs there's loads and loads of things to do I actually uh looked up something recently and I wanted to buy some books in English all the book shops that I've seen around here that were only selling books in Greek so I looked up some um English bookstores and I found a few really great that are combined with cafe or some vintage shop stting next week I'm going to go on a little bit of exploration of interesting book stores they combine cafes and vintage shops and whatever I can make a video about it as well if you want to and if that's something that you'll be interested in um definitely let me know because I'm going to start from next week so if you interested let me know and I'll take you with me so yeah there's a lot a lot of things to do and when we talking about things to do and restaurants and bars we come into the great thing by living in aens number five which is everything here is open all the time and until late if you hungry at 11:00 at night no problem you will find a restaurant you will find a place to eat if you want to go out you'll find place to drink you find place to have a coffee everything is open till late when my friend came here to visit me for a weekend uh she was coming late from the airport and I was a bit stressing if we're going to get a table so I called the restaurant and I said oh um instead of 9: we might be coming around 10 10:30 and the guys said to me no don't worry we open till 1:00 you just come and eat you know what I mean so it's great it's really great especially if you're in the center of attens because where I am some restaurants closed a little bit earlier but there's always something open here but especially the closet to the center you will always find something open you will always find somewhere where you can eat or have a drink Supermarket will close at 9:00 but if you just out to have fun you can stay all night definitely so the this is a great thing it's not like you know in some countries 10:00 11:00 you go home and everything is closed no no no here Life is starting late you will probably see even people going out at like 9 10 11:00 so if you if you here for the party if you here to enjoy and night life attens might be the right place for you and also there's so many quirky cute really interesting bars and so many really great areas to enjoy night life so if this is something that you like to do on your day off on your in your free time you will definitely have a great time in atam so I think the next number is number six and and I'm going to talk about number six briefly because I kind of mentioned it already before so this is the night life night life is great in at whenever I walk around town center later in the evening I see many many people sitting in really great bars some of the bars are really awesome just enjoying the evening and there's um nightclub there's places where you can go and dance salsa and there's lot of different places so the night life in aens is great if you're looking for a place to let your head on at the end of the day attens is your place and on the other spectrum of that will be number seven which is culture if you like doing cultural things you will find anything here there so there's a lot of cultural events there is an incredible amount of very interesting museums you will have the classical museums but you also have some some really interesting museums you will have a lot of cultural events outside Cinemas and you will have some outside concerts especially in the summer maybe not so in the winter but comes the summer there is something new happening and in almost any neighborhood of at and talking about the lifestyle in general coming to number eight which is generally a relaxed lifestyle a lot of people say that actually but I did find it slightly strange because although the lifestyle is relaxed there is this famous Sega Sega which is like slowly slowly every Mediterranean country have something like that and people do take their time and they like to relax and they like to sit outside and have one cup of coffee for 2 hours but yet I find Greek people to be in general people that leave you for a little bit longer to be complaining a lot and maybe be a little bit don't know stressed sometimes which is strange but in general if you the person that enjoys relaxed lifestyle probably you'll have more of it on Greek island than in aens because attens is still a city and in City you will have a little bit more of a hectic lifestyle but you can do it here you can definitely do it here if this is your mindset you can just come here have fun relax and enjoy the beautiful outdoors and and for these activities you don't really need that much money that's the great thing because you can just hop on a bus and you be in the on a coast and you can just walk around or you can go hiking or you can just sep a cup of coffee which is not very expensive glass of wine in a nice B evening is also not very expensive you can just enjoy your day enjoy your evening and um you you don't have to spend so much money on this so now because I mentioned already the coast we have number nine I don't know I'm completely lost but I think number nine is the surroundings of ATS if you want to live in the city but be close to the nature this might be the best city for you because this city is surrounded by mountains so you can go hiking on any day or you can h on a tra of the bus and you can go to the coast and you can just walk along the coast around Gada for example you can just walk around the coast there's beautiful walks all around there or you can just go to the beach or you can enjoy yourself in one of the beach bars or Beach cafees and it's not too far you still have to travel there it's not like you can walk depending where you are in that but still you have to get there I went there last weekend and with the bus and walks and Tra and everything it probably takes around 45 minutes but you can do it the the beaches in some places are actually so beautiful and the water when I was the last weekend the water was glorious the sunset was amazing yes so there's amazing things to do outside of aens you can go to the Sea you can go to the mountains and you can take a great day trips as well you can take few great day trips to places that are super cool either historically or naturally or they just beautiful and interesting just maybe hop on a train or bus and be somewhere cool in 1 hour maybe sometimes 1 hour and a half so as a base at might not be a bad idea if you're thinking of moving to Greece and when we talking about transport we come into the last great thing about living in at what last Pro but very important for me it's number 10 I really think it's number 10 I'm not sure but that's public transport I love great public transport I use public transport everywhere I do have a driving license but don't really Drive these days I love public transport and public transport in aens is great if only you leave near by Metro or the electrical which is part of the Metro System you are sorted you can can go it anywhere cheaply and smoothly anywhere in at a lot of people say that when you a little bit more far from the tube uh from the metro and you need to start taking buses it's a little bit more of a pain in a butt but to be honest with you I have good experience with the bus maybe it's just me because some people said that buses often don't arrive on time or some sometimes they don't arrive at all yes they can be crowded in the peak hours yes there is a traffic on the streets so when you take a bus you will be stuck in the traffic the if there is one there's no going around about it but there is also there's also a trump system which is quite cool so for example if you leave in a place like nor Cosmos for example there's trums there and if you want to go to the coast you can just go by Trump all the time I think the public transport system in in aens is great you have at the moment three main Metro lines apparently they building the fourth one but we don't know when that's going to happen but there's also buses trolley buses and trums and also you have port with feries from where you can take Fair too many of the Greek Islands there's also airport here the the flights to at in general are quite cheap from many places around the world and so if you want to Bas yourself and maybe you travel around Europe you could probably get some good prices for the fs so in general I think the public transport the transportation in aens is great if you live in aens and you don't agree with me leave a comment below and tell us why but me I like it those are the main pros and cons about living in aens I am enjoying it it's really great I'm having a great time but I am not really a c girl anymore and I am very very seriously considering moving to cre I don't really know how I'm going to go about it yet because moving to the island is a bit it's going to be a bit tricky but I definitely definitely want to experience the island leing and I've heard all the great things about Creed I've been to Creed many many many years ago but I definitely want to go again the reason why I'm considering crit is because out of all I is probably in heracleo in cre is the easiest to find longterm rental because otherwise it's literally impossible it's I mean it's possible but it's very very hard because of the airbnbs but this is not the video about that but like I said I am enjoying living in aens and could I live here forever maybe maybe not but for now I am having great time and if you enjoyed this video please give me a thumbs up so thank you very much for being here I hope you enjoyed it and hope you enjoyed the rest of your day whatever you are and I will see you in the next one you take care bye now

Channel: The Timeless Traveller

Views: 1,764

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Id: hYz-s4A_Y-g

Length: 40min 40sec (2440 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024