# moving to corfu



## nomoregrey (May 2, 2014)

Some advice would be much appreciated. We are tired of living in a grey house surrounded by grey people under a grey sky. We lived in Crete for a number of years but left five years ago (before the crash) for family reasons. However itchy feet, a longing for good food and decent weather prompt us to think about returning, However this time we are thinking about Corfu. 

Is it realistic for us to expect to find a long term unfurnished rental house with a garden for veggies and up to 10 olive trees?

Also, though familiar with Greek bureaucracy we fully understand things have changed a lot, particularly regarding health care. Do we still need E111? Are we better to get private healthcare? Will we be able to get our prescriptions drugs easily? Can we leave our bank account in UK?

Thanks for reading this and for any advice you may give


----------



## concertina (Oct 18, 2012)

*corfu*



nomoregrey said:


> Some advice would be much appreciated. We are tired of living in a grey house surrounded by grey people under a grey sky. We lived in Crete for a number of years but left five years ago (before the crash) for family reasons. However itchy feet, a longing for good food and decent weather prompt us to think about returning, However this time we are thinking about Corfu.
> 
> Is it realistic for us to expect to find a long term unfurnished rental house with a garden for veggies and up to 10 olive trees?
> 
> ...


They will love you if you want to rent their house long term,sure income for them,and prices are down for you,you could vegi and chickens,ducks,keep looking till you find with olive trees.Your prescription drugs are easy to find,you may need a GP to write them out which you will pay a small fee for,however many drugs here are available over the counter unlike UK,you dont always need a prescription,maybe only first off as they sometimes go under different brand names.More generic drugs are sold here than the UK so look out for that,to get the real thing you will have to pay more,if you can find,but I take copies like my blood pressure tablets and I take a Greek version of a thyroid tablet.Your health care will need sorting,you will have to be private,I believe it to be much cheaper to obtain here in Greece not the UK.As you probably remember from Crete that its fairly cheap to see a GP(pathalogo) here and any specialist doctor,40 or 50 EURO,20 for the GP and there are lots of private clinics to have blood,urine,smears,xrays, MRI,its so easy here,you dont wait and wait like UK,I pay 60 for a digital mamagram once a year,better to pay these things than claim off the insurance,keep the insurance for big bills like hospitals,you would be private and they dont come cheap,however thats better than being butchered in the public hospitals,they are not all bad but you would not be entitled anyway not even as an emergency now I think.You may find a policy like in France where even simple tests are covered,my husband works at Athens airport where they have medical cover paid for them with Allianz and General,one for tests and one for hospitals,they do pay up because I had an op in Eyeea hospital which is posh with one of the best surgeons in Greece and the bill was about 20.000,Im covered with my husband,what luck!Ive briefly seen some General policies and one where they covered if you were out of Greece say on holiday,it was good,all ambulances hospitals.ops the full monty as well as the cover whilst living in Greece.I keep 2 bank accounts in the UK,never close those,mine remain as silent accounts.You should find a house with a solar hot water system,it will save you money,I cover mine in the hot months with sacking as they get too hot and the water is almost bursting out of the pipes.Lovely fresh real food here,I buy sheeps milk from a farm and free range eggs.I wish you a good return and NO MORE GREY.well, not too much


----------



## nomoregrey (May 2, 2014)

thanks for your informative and quick reply.


----------



## aliland (Jul 19, 2013)

I'm trying to mentally compare the present situation with 5 years ago. The E1 11, was never technically acceptable for long term use, but hospitals never minded as long as they got paid. In fact the practice of 'padding' tourists bills in the knowledge that the NHS will just pay is actually worse now. In the past, they might have just added a few extras, but now everything has to be strictly accounted for. Last summer, I knew some doctors who went to a holiday resort and were told by the manager that they were required to use as much medicine and equipment on UK tourists - eg, a possibly painful but harmless jelly sting requiring perhaps a 50 cents ammonia was treated with adrenaline shots and/or being placed on a saline drip. I don't think I've heard any bad stories which were not related to tourist though. I'd advise getting some sort of emergency cover, but (where I live at least) the toughening up of detailed bills has dropped the costs of visiting a doctor for those niggely things. As an example, I had a not very serious looking lump of few months ago. Five years ago, I'd probably have left it, as it didn't seem worth sepending a ridiculous amount of time queing in the hospital- to then be asked why I didn't just pay a doctor, or (I do have full IKA, so it should be free) taking a day off work to see the IKA doctor, who would almost definitely agree it wasn't serious enough to investigate, or go to a private doctor who would probably do 'the full works' and which might be much cheaper than a private doctor in Britain, but was still enough to put me off. However, 3 consultations, a couple of blood tests, a mamma gram, and an ultra sound - over the space of only a week, cost a little over 50 euro. To be honest, I kept thinking they had made a mistake! I had been 99% sure it was nothing, and it wasn't! But that was really cheap price of mind. Another nice change, is doctors are no longer allowed to specify brand names on prescriptions (many don't seem to like this, and they will advise a brand to you) this results in being able to get cheap generics. I've always found pharmacists here excellent, and I totally trust them saying the half priced medicine is exactly the same. (If you do have any medicine you know you need, do keep stocks though as strikes and shortages are becoming less of a problem, but haven't quite stopped.
so, I think you might find on balance things actually a little better than 5 years ago, but do read that E1 11 carefully as most private stuff is very affordable, but an uninsured overnight hospital stay will be very unpleasant.


----------

