Hello from Athens!

Welcome on board Emmanuel!

You'll see that we are very curious here ... here is our favourite poll: Why did you move to a foreign country?

Do you speak Greek?

All the best,

Julien

Hi Julien

I have participated in the poll.  The reason I moved wasn't for love...the love bit happened a few years before - my Greek wife tricked me into thinking that our move was a joint decision!  No I'm joking, we were both tired of London and the constant cloud cover.  I didn't notice how much bad weather can affect your before - I was just used to rain!  But now if we have even one or two days of bad weather, it starts to depress me, as it does a lot of people here. We find that it is much nicer to return to London as tourists on holiday. That way we can do all of the things that we used to love, including eating out - sushi, curry, Chinese. The Greeks are trying with foreign restaurants, but it tastes like it came out of a jar, a lot of the time.  Perhaps the flavours are toned down for the Greek palate, since traditionally they are not used to these types of foods. Foreign restaurants are always very expensive here for some reason - perhaps because it's a novelty and people think they can make a lot of money off it - whereas sushi and curries are very reasonably priced in London if you go to the authentic places.  Wow...feeling really hungry now

I do speak Greek - I couldn't live here and not speak the language.  Although some expats I have met, have lived here for 15 years and can only barely manage "hello" and "thank you".  I find that a bit sad, but it doesn't seem to bother them!  My Greek does still need a lot of work though.  I'm a freelance translator so I work from home, which makes it more difficult to practise my Greek. I speak to the cat, but the conversation is a bit one-sided! I set up an expat club here in Athens (mentioned in another post) so that I could get out and meet more people - but that doesn't help my Greek much, but it's good for my Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish, Italian etc!

Anyway, enough about me...

Emmanuel

Happy to know you a little bit more Emmanuel

I agree with you it's much better to speak the local language. I couldn't live in a foreign country without trying to learn the language.

I know how complicated it is to work from home when you're abroad, I've done that last year in Madrid. As I haven't got a cat ... I spoke to my computer, which created Expat.com

Do not hesitate to invite your friends here. The free blog platform will be available very soon!

Take care,

Julien