Greece - Korina Miller [594]
Receiving Mail
You can receive mail by poste restante (general delivery) at any main post office. The service is free, but you are required to show your passport. Ask senders to write your family name in capital letters and underline it, and also to mark the envelope ‘poste restante’. It is a good idea to ask the post office clerk to check under your first name as well if letters you are expecting cannot be located. After one month, uncollected mail is returned to the sender. If you are about to leave a town and expected mail hasn’t arrived, ask at the post office to have it forwarded to your next destination, c/o poste restante. In Athens, both Athens Central post office Click here and Syntagma post office Click here hold poste restante mail.
Parcels are not delivered in Greece; they must be collected from the parcel counter of a post office.
Return to beginning of chapter
SHOPPING
Shopping is big business in Greece. At times a tourist town can look like one big shop with all kinds of goods and trinkets on display. Shops and kiosks in major tourist centres are often overpriced and it’s often better to find out where the locals shop. That said, Athens’ flea market Click here has a bewildering array of items on sale and you can find some good bargains. Throughout Greece, shoes and clothes are often excellent buys, especially in post-seasonal sales. If you have room in your suitcase or backpack there are some really excellent quality artisanal works to be picked up from small boutiques and galleries, including pottery, jewellery and metalworked objets.
Bargaining
Getting a bit extra off the deal through bargaining is sadly a thing of the past in Greece. You might be offered a ‘special deal’ but the art and sport of bargaining per se has gone the way of the drachma. Instead, know your goods and decide for yourself if the price you are being offered is worth it before accepting the deal.
Return to beginning of chapter
SMOKING
In July 2009 Greece brought in antismoking laws similar to those found throughout most of Europe. Smoking is now banned inside public places, with the penalty being fines placed on the business owners. Greece is home to some of the heaviest smokers in Europe, so it will be a challenge for these laws to be enforced and many believe they will be imposed in only a nominal way in remote locations.
Return to beginning of chapter
SOLO TRAVELLERS
Greece is a great destination for solo travellers, especially in summer when the Greek islands become an international meeting point. Hostels and other backpacker-friendly accommodation are good places to meet up with other solo travellers. Dining solo in restaurants is not an issue with restaurant owners and there are no real disadvantages to travelling solo – other than that you are unlikely to stay solo for long.
Return to beginning of chapter
TELEPHONE
The Greek telephone service is maintained by the public corporation known as OTE (pronounced o-teh; Organismos Tilepikoinonion Ellados).
The system is modern and reasonably well maintained. There are public telephones just about everywhere, including in some unbelievably isolated spots. The phones are easy to operate and can be used for local, long-distance and international calls. The ‘i’ at the top left of the push-button dialling panel brings up the operating instructions in English.
Note that in Greece the area code must always be dialled when making a call (ie all Greek phone numbers are 10-digit).
Mobile Phones
The number of mobile phones in Greece now exceeds the number of landline phones. If you have a compatible GSM mobile phone from a country with an overseas global roaming arrangement with Greece, you will be able to use your phone in Greece. You may need to inform your mobile phone service provider before you depart in order to have global roaming activated. US and Canadian mobile phone users won’t be able to use their mobile phones, unless their handset is equipped with a dual- or tri-band system.
There are several mobile service providers