# Best place to lıve ın Greece wıth Chıldren



## Nisan1967 (Jan 23, 2011)

Hı,
I am goıng to Rhodes thıs saturday for a day trıp and need to know where to get ınformatıon about relocatıng to Greece. We are on a lımıted budget and were consıderıng vıllage areas where we understand that rental propertıes would be cheaper. Also, and thıs ıs the maın concern we have a chıld of 5 years old comıng on 6 ın september who wıll need to go to school. He goes to a turkısh school at present and ıs fluent ın the turkısh language. We also have no form of transport so would have to get about on foot or by the local transport system. I am also type 1 dıabetıc and need to know about whether I pay for pescrıptıons etc or whether we need medıcal ınsurance. In the UK I receıved free medıcatıon for dıabetes but do not know the rules ın greece.
I hope someone can help me and guıde me ın tıme for the weekend so I know where to start.
Many Thanks !
Nısan x:juggle:


----------



## tpebop (Nov 2, 2009)

Hello we live on Rhodes. No point on coming on a Saturday.In order to rent a property here , the landlord will want to see you have a Greek Tax number.
This can ONLY be obtained by a personal visit to the tax office in Rhodes Town.It will not be open at week ends.The Tax office is very busy & it took us almost half a day to get our tax number.
Before we relocated from the UK , we came on a weeks holiday.That way we had a roof over our heads, whilst we got the tax number, opened a Greek bank account & looked for somewhere to rent.
It was a very close thing . Because the rental contract had to be translated to English, which took a day or two [ This is Greece ] , we signed the contract the night before we flew back to the UK
We live in Kalithies , where there are plenty of shops & A regular bus service


----------



## Nisan1967 (Jan 23, 2011)

tpebop said:


> Hello we live on Rhodes. No point on coming on a Saturday.In order to rent a property here , the landlord will want to see you have a Greek Tax number.
> This can ONLY be obtained by a personal visit to the tax office in Rhodes Town.It will not be open at week ends.The Tax office is very busy & it took us almost half a day to get our tax number.
> Before we relocated from the UK , we came on a weeks holiday.That way we had a roof over our heads, whilst we got the tax number, opened a Greek bank account & looked for somewhere to rent.
> It was a very close thing . Because the rental contract had to be translated to English, which took a day or two [ This is Greece ] , we signed the contract the night before we flew back to the UK
> We live in Kalithies , where there are plenty of shops & A regular bus service


hello and thank you for replyıng.
We are comıng over on saturday purely to get our vısas updated for another 3 months so wıll need to arrange a stay over on another occasıon pendıng fınances. I wıll have a look on the ınternet for the area that you lıve ın does ıt have a school? also ı know ı am repeatıng myself but how do ı go on about my dıabetes. Perhaps we can get together at some stage as ıt would be nıce to make frıends.
Hope to hear from you agaın.
Nısan x


----------



## tpebop (Nov 2, 2009)

Hello I have sent you a PM


----------



## kerri2 (Nov 17, 2010)

Nisan1967 said:


> Hı,
> I am goıng to Rhodes thıs saturday for a day trıp and need to know where to get ınformatıon about relocatıng to Greece. We are on a lımıted budget and were consıderıng vıllage areas where we understand that rental propertıes would be cheaper. Also, and thıs ıs the maın concern we have a chıld of 5 years old comıng on 6 ın september who wıll need to go to school. He goes to a turkısh school at present and ıs fluent ın the turkısh language. We also have no form of transport so would have to get about on foot or by the local transport system. I am also type 1 dıabetıc and need to know about whether I pay for pescrıptıons etc or whether we need medıcal ınsurance. In the UK I receıved free medıcatıon for dıabetes but do not know the rules ın greece.
> I hope someone can help me and guıde me ın tıme for the weekend so I know where to start.
> Many Thanks !
> Nısan x:juggle:


I am in Evia but from the uk, sorry if I sound negative on your matter but believe me stay where you are, everyone is trying to get out of greece and you want to get in, the school here for the kids are terrible and if you dont pay a futune for private lessons they wont learn, medication is not free and neither are doctors, health system is terrible, you will be lucky to get 600euro from your work and generally the life is terrible for everyone here so think before you make this move.


----------



## tpebop (Nov 2, 2009)

kerri2. I find it odd, that you joined this site in 2010. Yet you wait till now to make your first post. In our experience , we have nothing but praise for the health system.Take yesterday. I had to go to our VILLAGE doctor to have stitches put in a head wound following an accident. In the UK how long would you wait @ A & E at your local hospital ? I had a tetanus injection, pain killers & ani biotics.Total cost 9 €.Going back this morning to have the dressing changed


----------



## kerri2 (Nov 17, 2010)

tpebop said:


> kerri2. I find it odd, that you joined this site in 2010. Yet you wait till now to make your first post. In our experience , we have nothing but praise for the health system.Take yesterday. I had to go to our VILLAGE doctor to have stitches put in a head wound following an accident. In the UK how long would you wait @ A & E at your local hospital ? I had a tetanus injection, pain killers & ani biotics.Total cost 9 €.Going back this morning to have the dressing changed


Well I have been in Greece for the past 20 years and believe me the longer you stay the more you will understand what I mean, I have 2 children of 14 and 17 and I have send my oldest to the uk as I needed more that 500euro in private lessons and believe me that is not a lot compared to what some parents are paying, you will see the older your children get. 

I have not been on this site for ages because I was not getting any e mails from them in ages so sort of forgot about it.

Regarding medication I have spend until now more then 6000pounds on operation for my daugther who had a problel with her eyes and 4500euro on braces for 2 children, not to mention ow much I have spend on dentistry and injection and checkup for my children so maybe this will give you a better idea why I feel like I do. I hope you are in a better place to me, maybe an island somewhere and things work better there, I agree with you where you dont have to wait for appointments, well inless you have ika where you have to wait about 2 months, but although you get an appointment fast you pay for it, as I pay every year 150euro for my cancer smears and mammagrams.


----------



## tpebop (Nov 2, 2009)

kerri2. Why would you get e mails from this site ?
You only made your FIRST POST today. So no one would know about you


----------



## kerri2 (Nov 17, 2010)

kerri2 said:


> I am in Evia but from the uk, sorry if I sound negative on your matter but believe me stay where you are, everyone is trying to get out of greece and you want to get in, the school here for the kids are terrible and if you dont pay a futune for private lessons they wont learn, medication is not free and neither are doctors, health system is terrible, you will be lucky to get 600euro from your work and generally the life is terrible for everyone here so think before you make this move.


Well I am not surre why they sent me a message after so many months but they did, and yours was one of the questions that was on a list of 4, I failed to look at the date you posted, if I had then I would have understood that answering to you was a waste of time as you would have already made the move. If you are happy here then that is great, I have seen a not more over the years, a country which was great, lived for its people and a place for a nice life, over the years things have changed, maybe if I went back to the uk I would feel the same about the uk as I remember it as a different country.


----------



## xenos (Dec 20, 2009)

Kerri2,

First of all, Ive been here close to 15 years, not quite your 20 but I feel qualified to disagree with you.

Having personal (and painful) experience of the Greek medical system (and Im talking IKA), after spending over a month in hospital with 2 double herniated discs in my back, I can only sing their praises. Beurocratic yes - it takes an hour to get discharged from hospital! - but they are nothing less than excellent when it comes to the actaul medical care.

From what you say I can only assume you are talking about a private medical practise / hospital, where of course you will pay a lot of money. Even taking into account the "envelope" for the surgeon - which I can assure you is not 100% neccessary - IKA is as good if not better than the UK NHS. In fact I believe if you look for more than a few minutes on various news sites you will find that the NHS have been sending patients to Greece for treatment for a number of years.

BTW I live in central Athens not on an island.

The only sensible thing I can say is that if you dont like the heat, get out of the kitchen. Go back to the UK and let the rest of us suffer.

I have been a member since 2009 and HAVE NEVER received an email fro the site......maybe they dont love me.


----------



## wka (Sep 18, 2009)

Your original question asks what is the best place in GREECE to live with children, but you say you are going to Rhodes specifically. I take it that the trip to Rhodes is related to your visa issue, and you are still looking at the whole country for relocation, and are open to anywhere; my personal experience is that a lot of people who want to relocate to Greek villages start looking at islands. If this sounds like you, I would aim for a large island (like Crete or Rhodes) or a medium sized one (like Naxos, Paros, or Limnos). I have heard from lots of people who are attracted to the really small islands because they fit much more closely to what many people imagine Greek island village life to be - slow pace of life, beautiful vistas not interrupted by hotels and souvenir shops, etc - this is true, but I think you should be cautious and I don't think I could recommend SMALL island living to someone with a small child. So just in case you were considering it.... I live on a much smaller island than others on this thread (Evia, Rhodes) and there are some plusses and minuses, like anywhere, but some things you may not have considered - and yes, I know I have posted most or all of these points before on other threads, but just in case it MIGHT help you... (and EVERYTHING is based on my personal experience 2009-2011, YMMV, I am not claiming this is the case on all small islands or for all who move to them, all other disclaimers apply, etc etc...):

- we only have a single doctor (agrotiko iatreio) and a helipad for emergency evac to other islands or Athens. It is a problem for some of the parents of very young children because there is no pediatrician and the village doctor isn't really qualified to replace one, not to mention equipment is very rudimentary. For most anything medical, people go to a larger island (if there's a boat the same day, that day; otherwise, wait until there is one; at this time of year you can wait a week because of winds), spend the night (at least 1, often 2-3), see the doctor, dentist, get tests done, whatever, and then come back - regardless of how much the services of the doctor/dentist/lab cost you, which may be nothing if you have insurance, you still have to pay transportation and hotels, which adds up very quickly. All the women on the island who have children go to Athens (or wherever) a few months before they give birth and come back to the island a few months afterwards. And so on. My point in all of this is that a parent of a young child, especially one with a chronic medical condition such as yourself, should think seriously about relocating to a small community with minimal medical facilities. Also, although the village doctor will treat you (for free) for a variety of things, technically they are a triage facility, and their main job is to determine if you need to be sent to a larger facility elsewhere. Because they are staffed usually by very inexperienced doctors who are fulfilling their field service requirement before being able to do a residency, they will often err on the side of caution (which is actually the case with all Greek doctors I've come into contact with, to be honest) and send you out for treatment. (This is not to say that they don't provide a valuable service and they are all qualified doctors and all the ones I've met have been wonderful people - and extremely patient with the locals who have no qualms about waking them at 3am to put Betadine on a cut - true story.)

- there may not be a pharmacy on the island. In this case, you have to order medicine and have it sent over - not good in emergencies or when there are winds and boats don't run for several days, or when there are strikes (which is quite common). People living with chronic conditions have to be prepared. Also if you have drugs that need to be refrigerated, be aware that power cuts are common on the islands, especially little ones. We have lost power more than 30 times in the past 6 months although never longer than a day. If you keep insulin at a set temperature you may need a work-around for that somehow. Since power cuts often coincide with boats not arriving, you can imagine that people can have problems.

- the elementary school may only have 1 teacher for all the classes (1st through 6th grade) with all the students together in one room, or maybe 2 teachers (1,2,3 and 4,5,6) or 3 (1,2; 3,4; 5,6), and your child may be the only child in his grade. (On my island it was 1 teacher for the first month of school, 2 for the second, and has been 3 since then. There is one kid who is by himself in his grade. The next island over I am pretty sure has just 1 teacher for all 6 grades.)

- the elementary school teachers will probably be first-year teachers trying to earn points to be able to work in larger cities (on our island 2 of the 3 are first-year and the other is 2nd year) who may not know how to deal with a non-Greek-speaking child (here on my island - the teacher is 22, never taught before, and has two Albanian kids and has no idea what to do with them as they do not speak Greek). 

- the island can remain shut off from the outside world in winter; the combination of strikes of various kinds (which tend to be highest during the winter months) and the weather can combine to create a situation in which no boats come or go for weeks. This causes food shortages (especially dairy and fresh foods), drug shortages, fuel shortages, and other problems. (Here, this winter, we had to do without milk, vegetables, fruit and such for about a week; we never had fuel shortages because we don't really have roads, but I heard that some other islands did. This may not sound like a big deal to most people but if you have a special diet or a child with special nutritional needs it can be a problem.)

- it is hard to get communications on the island. If you want a phone line or internet at your house, for example, you may have to wait a month or longer for someone to come to the island and they won't usually come for one customer. If something breaks (which has been very frequent for us) the wait time for getting it fixed ranges from weeks to months. You also don't have access to the heavily advertised cheaper packages, and there is a monopoly.

- if you are sensitive to such things, small communities can be very closed to newcomers. Even with the best of intentions, it can be difficult to make friends with the locals. (On our island, we have lots of friends, but almost none of them are really from here. They're mostly Greeks and a few foreigners who moved here for work or bought property here and live/work here now. We have a great time but our reactions with the locals are just polite. This despite both of us being very active in the community (especially my husband, who is one of the most active on the island in running community groups and such). 

- likewise, the political situation in a small community can be volatile. Here, the island is basically divided in two along local political lines and it makes things very difficult for people. For example, a political feud is the reason that the community center building is now off limits to most of the community, including the school, which uses it regularly as the school itself has a space problem; if you have children in school, this would directly affect you. If you are not a local, you can never win in these situations.

- you can only get the most very basic things at the shops. (On our island, just a few of the things that I wish I could get but can't: mozzarella, skim milk, beef, white vinegar, whole wheat pasta, decaf coffee, brown sugar, limes, any newspaper, a can opener, cumin, etc etc.)

- you will pay a lot for most things. Although there is a reduced VAT on the islands (in most of Greece, for example, they pay 13% tax on food; we pay 9%), they more than make up the price because small communities don't have supermarkets with store brands, there is very little competition, and they jack up all prices for transport costs and low volume. For example, 1 L of milk here is 1.50 for the imported kind and a lot more for the Greek brand (which I don't ever buy so I don't know how much more exactly). 

Obviously there are plus sides to anything. I actually love living here, although my husband hates it and we will be leaving the island in June after 2 years here; it is long enough. Personally I couldn't live here forever either, and with children - forget it. But it's all based on your personal needs/wishes.

Also - and maybe this is totally irrelevant to the OP - I just wanted to comment on the stitches thing - since it was something I was discussing recently, and tpebop mentioned that he got stitches from the village doctor. They will do this for adults but since the OP has kids, and kids tend to get injured fairly often - many village doctors (this according to a doctor who told me this two days ago - I don't have kids so I can't swear to it) will no longer agree to do stitches for children because they worry about causing scarring and getting in trouble, so will try to send you to a pediatric surgeon which means a delay in treatment and of course the cost of getting/staying there.


----------

