Editor’s note: This story was originally published here Live and invest abroad.
I recently sat down to talk with Jackie and Joel Smith, who have an amazing story to share about their expat experiences after relocating from Seattle to Greece in 2017…
Kat: So, what brought you to Greece?
jackie: “It wasn’t really a straightforward decision. We had been traveling between the US and Europe for years, and Greece was the place we came back to again and again.
“It stopped feeling like a trip and started feeling like we were borrowing time from a life we haven’t even stepped into yet.”
How did you discover this little niche you’re in?
joel: “We found it on one of our road trips, and actually, we found it by accident.”
jackie: “We were headed to a neighboring village where we had a reservation and were hungry so went to Agios Nikolaos for lunch.
“We decided to look around a bit, and as we walked over Joel said softly, ‘If we ever get serious about moving, this could be on our list.’
“And now we live here! It’s about an hour from Kalamata, which is about three hours south of Athens.
“That’s how it all happened – it wasn’t some long-planned retirement plan or a goal of moving to Greece.”
joel: “It’s not curated. It’s just life happening slowly near the ocean.”
Have you moved to Greece full-time, or are you still traveling a bit and spending time in other places?
joel: “Well, we maintain a home in the United States, but we only go there once a year.
“One of the reasons we went to Europe was because we wanted to travel more in Europe, so we still do that.
“And we have a love affair with Southeast Asia, so we travel there regularly, too.”
So if you’re not here full time, what type of visa did you decide on?
joel: “We went for a permanent residence permit. We renew every three years, and it allows us to stay longer than the 90 days allowed in a Schengen visa.”
What does a typical day look like for you now?
jackie: “A typical day might be that I go to the beach to meet a girlfriend for coffee. I pass by an olive grove, because our road goes through one and goes to the sea. It’s about a 20-minute walk.
“We girls meet for a while, and then the husbands join in, and it turns into long conversations – we’re all just sitting for ages, talking.
“After that I can do some work… but you don’t cram a lot into a day, and things take longer.
“We don’t have garbage collection facilities, so one day you plan a trip to take your garbage to the municipal centre… We don’t have a post office, so we have to go to the neighboring town to send or receive letters.
“Your rhythm has to slow down. At the end of the day when you get home you say, ‘Okay, we bought some groceries, drank a cup of coffee, and stopped at the hardware store and the day is done!'”
Have you taken up any new hobbies after relocating?
joel: “Growing olives!
“We have about 17 trees. We pick the olives, then take them to the local processor. There are maybe four or five of them in the community, and everyone comes to them so people can press.
“We process about 40 to 50 liters in an average year. We use some ourselves and give some to friends.”
jackie: “This could be an extension of our new talent. He was born and raised on an apple orchard, so we thought he’d have some experience.
“But it’s a completely different world when you’re growing olives!
“The other thing we’ve done is get involved with animal rescue programs. I think once we’re in Washington, we’ll send money to organizations.
“Now, we’re working on raising money and baking and serving cakes, adopting cats! You get personally involved.”
The big question, especially for retirees, is the language question… how have you dealt with Greek?
joel: “It’s not really an issue for us. The Greeks are so fluent in so many languages that we rarely find ourselves in the position of being able to speak Greek. The younger generation, people 50 and under, speak English. An older person probably won’t speak English or if they do, they won’t use it.
“I’m learning Greek on Duolingo… and after two years, I can give one-word answers but I can’t hold a conversation with anyone.
“I can read some Greek. But road signs are made in English and Greek.
“Technology now makes it all very easy for people. Many of our activists, some of whom are Albanian, have come and they will have programs where you speak into it, and we speak into it and talk to each other.”
How about social interaction—have you found other English-speaking, other foreign friends? Are you friends with the locals?
joel: “You’d be surprised at the number of foreigners here. We’re on the edge of a tourist hotspot, and our village still feels heavily crowded in the summer. The tourists here aren’t Americans, they’re mostly Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Chinese.”
jackie: “As far as our world, our little neighborhood, there are maybe 10 houses on our street and it’s like a little United Nations – we’re American, and for neighbors we have Germans, a Peruvian woman, Greeks, British, French…”
When you thought of going to Greece, what did the people at home say?
jackie: “Our close friends thought we were a little out of our minds. They used to argue, ‘You’ve got everything here. What more do you need?’
“And our reasoning was that we didn’t want any more.
“We wanted less. So, we wanted to slow down the pace. We wanted less traffic, less taxes, less big cities and just get back to our roots a little bit.”
What about the negative aspects – what has been the most challenging thing about life here?
jackie: “We’re amazed at how long it takes to accomplish things that should be fairly simple, like getting the plumber out, getting the electrician out. And when the plumber says he’ll be out that afternoon, he comes in at 8 p.m., arguing that it’s still the afternoon…”
joel: “And bureaucracy is so prevalent here. People complain about bureaucracy in the United States. It doesn’t hold a candle to it.”
jackie: “And I think we brought our American mentality.
“Getting coffee in the United States is a quick thing, but here it can take several hours. People come and go, the fruit guy comes and you buy your fruit from the truck…
“You have to slow down your expectations as well as your lifestyle, which I think we’re getting into now because we’ve been here for a while.
“Another thing about life in Europe that I’ve discovered and I love is the flexibility you have. You don’t necessarily have a plan that you follow every minute, you go and see what happens.
“The fruit vendor comes and has some great strawberries. Then you have to go to the bank to get cash because the fruit vendor can’t take cards, so it becomes a whole adventure.
“And, that’s what I like about rural life in Europe, the fact that you have to be less attached to a plan, I would say, and go with the flow.”
Has there ever been a moment of panic, a moment when you wondered if you made the right choice?
jackie: “My moment and it wasn’t really panic, but I think it was when the enormity of what we had done hit me…
“After we actually moved our stuff around, my college roommate and her husband came to visit, and she and I were walking down the village street. She turned to me and said, ‘Can you believe you live here?’ And I thought—’No, I can’t!’
“Now sometimes I look around and think, ‘How lucky am I to be here?’
“We’re so glad we had the courage to take this step, because we were afraid we were too old for all this…
“We had all the questions that everyone has, you know, are we too old? What about health care? What, what, what, you can sit on the sidelines forever or just call it quits.”
joel: “And we gave ourselves a five-year option when we bought the house, which was in 2014, a few years before we made the big move. We said, ‘If we don’t like it in five years, we put it up for sale. We go back to life. We had the fling we wanted.’
“So every year on the anniversary of our buying a house, we do a little re-evaluation.
“At this point we’ve been here longer than we planned.
“We live on a hill, so we have stairs. There may come a time when we’ll be too old to go up the stairs, but even then, we used to say we’d move back to America; now we’re saying, ‘Okay, maybe we’ll get a condo in Kalamata.'”
What would you say to someone who is considering moving abroad in general or perhaps to Greece in particular?
joel: “In short, I would say do it.
“First of all do your research. Not just in the summer or when, you know, there’s beautiful weather, but maybe even in the winter, or the standard advice is to rent for a year for sure or rent for your entire life.”
And is there anything you would have done differently or wish you would have done differently?
joel: “Oh, I wish we had done it five years or so ago. We would have had more time here. You know, time is flying by.”