This is a guest post by the love of my life, my wife Alexandra. Her passion for running is a great source of inspiration, as are her achievements! Our kids and me are enormously proud of her, although we begin to worry what on earth might be her next “running goal” As some of you may [...]
Greeks are people who have a sense of realness and of genuineness about them. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have in this country the status of “politeknos“, i.e. someone with many children. To actually reap the benefits of this status, it is required to possess a “politeknos” ID card, issued by [...]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,681184,00.html
Two days ago I wrote about our experience in obtaining a Greek passport for our daughter. The Greek authorities use the Greek spelling from the birth certificate and then translate this phonetically into Latin characters. In our case this led to a “new” Latin name – STOLZ became STOLTS. You can read about it here. [...]
Greek authorities can be quite stiff about their regulations. They can also be quite irrational up to the point that it’s simply beyond any logical argument to refute them. In 1998 my eldest daughter Sophia was born in London. We got her British birth certificate in the ever so efficient British way – it [...]
I have noted years ago that every conversation between Greeks will at some point turn to politics. I do not know of another nation where politics plays such a dominant role in everyday life. When I saw that the Prime Minister of Greece, Georgios Papandreou, is using twitter, I followed him. He is not an [...]
What comes to mind when thinking of Greeks? Foreigners will likely mention the ancient civilisation, democracy, or philosophers. However, for someone living in Greece, the answer is far from the nobility of the sophisticated heritage of ancient times. A concurrent phenomenon has spread throughout this country to the point that it is now an ingrained [...]
There are many good things about having four kids. And there is one good thing in particular, about having four kids in Greece. It gives the family a special status, called polyteknos, which means the equivalent of “with many children”. The state offers support to these families in several ways, as a social contribution and [...]
Birthday parties are a non-event for adult Greeks, as name days are far more important. For children however, birthday parties are imperative, which is of course as it should be. When I was a child, I would invite 5 to 10 friends to my house, and lots of games would be played. In today’s world [...]
I have been living in Greece for six years, and even now it sometimes happens to me that I feel bewildered whilst dealing with usually routine situations. Every now and then I fall prey to some of the more deplorable tactics used in this country. The weather is still warm and mild in Athens, but [...]
