Chatting to couple of friends the other day, fellow ex-pats from the UK as it happens, we got around to the subject of the ups and downs of the mail system here in Rhodes. They have been here almost as long as we have and are in the habit of regularly ordering stuff from Amazon to be delivered here to Rhodes.
If you know anything about living out here, you'll know that no one really has a proper address on a Greek island. You can make one up if you like, but in general, you put your postcode and the nearest village down as your mailing address and then you go and collect your mail either from the nearest post office or, as in our case, from a taverna in a nearby village. This is made possible by the fact that one of the ELTA (Greek Post Office, or equivalent of the US Mail) employees visits the taverna in question on alternate days to do a kind of mobile post sending and receiving service.
Mr. Kyriakos turns up at the Agapitos Taverna in Asklipio village, heavy leather satchel at his side, sits at a table where he is of course served his Elliniko, and extracts all his accessories, which he arranges carefully on the table in front of him. He'll have a rubber stamp and ink-pad (of course), various forms, a wad of postage stamps, some elastic bands and a clutch of packages and letters for the locals who use the taverna as their unofficial post office. The system works well, most of the time.
There is usually a motley group of locals awaiting his arrival and the 'opening' of his tabletop 'shop' as it were. Some simply want to see what he's brought. I posted a photo of him back in January 2014, see this post. Others are able to use his service to pay their electricity bill, for example. Older Greeks still wouldn't even think of having a direct debit with the bank, or even of paying manually on-line, since they're still deeply suspicious of anything that doesn't involve hard cash changing hands. Plus, there is still a whole generation who haven't the faintest idea what the internet is. Even some who do are deeply suspicious of the whole thing. It can't be healthy, when you haven't got a wad of cash in your back pocket.
Returning to our conversation with our neighbours. They told us of a problem they had recently with a package from Amazon. Now, like I said above, they've bought from Amazon for delivery to their home here in Southern Rhodes for probably ten years or so. On occasion they've bought some pretty big stuff. I know because I've been up to the Agapitos to collect some mail and seen some packages almost as big as a washing machine awaiting collection by them. Yet this most recent package never arrived. After a respectable period of waiting, just in case it was going to turn up late (as does happen now and then), they contacted Amazon to find out what happened. They were told that the package had been returned to Athens and were given a contact number to call there.
Celia (name changed to protect the guilty) rang the number and enquired about the missing package and was told: "It couldn't be delivered because it didn't carry a proper address."
"But," replied Celia, "It's the same address we've been using for ten years and nothing's ever failed to be delivered up until now."
"I don't know about that." Replied the jobsworth in Athens, "All I know is that 'Celia Pritchard, 85109 Gennadi' isn't a proper address. The package will have to go back to Amazon."
"But, but, that IS our address!" Replied Celia, exasperation already assuming control in her brain. "There isn't anything else! Plus, every other package we've ever ordered from Amazon has arrived!"
Well, I could go on reporting this rather absurd conversation, but suffice it to say that Celia did finally get it resolved, but not without a fair degree of consternation on her part. But it well illustrates what I said at the top of this post, the fact that just about everyone in areas like ours collects their mail from somewhere, and thus as long as the letter or package carries the correct postal code, it ought to be sufficient for the thing to arrive at the correct point of collection. There are no home deliveries here. I have ordered a couple of things in the past, including a CD of an app for my MacBook from California. The usual form is, if they're using a courier (like UPS for example) rather than the regular mail, they take your mobile phone number when you place the order and the courier arrives in your vicinity, calls you and you arrange to go and meet him on the road.
In fact, even when I renewed our passports a year or two back, the UK government passport office sent them by private courier and that's exactly how they were delivered. No problem. Mind you, I was rather bemused by the vehicle that the courier was driving. I got the call on my mobile phone and told the driver to wait at the entrance to a hotel that's just down the road from us. Of course, I was expecting to see a smart van with a logo on the side, which was why I sailed straight past the hotel, imagining that the driver had got the location wrong, because outside the correct hotel there was only an ageing pickup truck with a drivers's door sporting a completely different colour from the rest of the slightly dented vehicle. When I failed to find the van, I was able to call the driver back using the list of received calls on my mobile.
"I'm there!" He declared. "You said the Rodos Princess and I'm right outside. Where are you?"
"Weird," I replied. "But I'll be coming past again in 30 seconds, give me a wave."
Thus it was that, as I drove back to the Rodos Princess, an arm extended out from this old pickup and summoned me. When I parked up, ran over to his driver's window, out shot another arm with an electronic machine awaiting my signature and, having complied, I was handed the package containing my passport. I couldn't resist, I had to ask him, "What's with the beaten up old pickup then?"
It turned out that the courier company's office here on Rhodes employed a whole team of freelance 'deliverers' to keep up with demand. Their only criteria for someone working for them in this capacity was that they have a vehicle. Well, he did have a vehicle, I couldn't argue with that. And, we got our passports safe and sound, so I had no complaints.
Thus we were lulled into a false sense of security. I recently applied for my UK pension. Now, I could go on about that for a while, owing to the fact that there must be some mixup. I mean, the paperwork says I turn 65 next month, but my mind doesn't see it that way at all. It is odd though, isn't it? I mean for decades you spend your life thinking that growing old, or being a pensioner, is for others, but not for oneself, right? Occasionally, though, the stark reality is driven home by someone in a t-shirt. I'll tell you what I mean.
I've been a lifelong Pink Floyd fan (with the exception of the truly awful "Final Cut" album of course). Due to the way the mind deceives one, I kind of feel that Pink Floyd fans are young new-age types, like me, eh? But last week I was sitting in the Top Three when an emaciated, wizened old bloke walked in, wheezing from decades of smoking too much (Yes, I know, strange saying that. To smoke at all is to smoke too much after all), propped himself on the bar, rolled a Rizla and ordered a beer. He looked like he wasn't long for this world, I have to say. The thing was though, he was wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Aaaargh! Was I looking at the truth of the matter, right there before my eyes? Probably. Doesn't mean I have to accept it though. Go down fighting, that's my motto.
Anyway, to return to my pension application. I went on-line, found the appropriate multi-page form, downloaded it and set about reading the reams of instructions for filling it out. It looked like it would take me about, ooh, say, three weeks, to fill it in. I finally got through it all and bought an A4 envelope in which to stuff the thing in preparation for sending it off. Along with the form, they required the originals of both my birth and marriage certificates. That kind of thing always makes me nervous. Nervous that is, until I remembered how they'd sent our new passports to us. Surely something similar would happen when the Pensions Office was ready to return my certificates.
Oh dear.
Of course I sent the thing off from here by registered post. I then waited a few weeks and then rang the Pensions Office in the UK to check that they'd received the form, along with those certificates. I have to say that the response I get when I call them is pretty good. Apart from the number of times you have to listen to a recorded message and make a multiple-choice decision and tap yet another number on the keyboard. Once you do get through, however, each time I've spoken to someone, they've been helpfulness itself. A tick in the credit column. The conversation I had with them on this occasion was pretty satisfying. Yes the form had been received and yes it had been processed and yes my pension was approved and I was going to receive it directly into my UK bank account for the rest of my... well, let's move on.
A couple of weeks later (I know, you're losing the will to live, but I am getting there...) I decided to call them again to ask about the return of my Birth and Marriage Certificates. Now it gets fraught.
"Ah, yes," said the person at the other end of the phone, "we did send them back, but owing to the fact that they couldn't be delivered, they came back here."
This was the point at which I had to fight to remain civil and respectful. After all, this person wasn't to blame individually. I sooo wanted to...
My Certificates had travelled 4,000 miles. 2,000 from the UK to Rhodes, then 2,000 miles back again because someone over here claimed that they couldn't be delivered. Actually, counting the first journey they made when I sent them with the form, they'd now travelled 6,000 miles.
Good eh? There was no point in arguing with this poor UK civil servant. The fault obviously lay with some berk over here. But after 13 years of living somewhere with an address that amounts to a five figure number and not much else, this was the first time that something didn't reach us, and it had to be two rather essential legal documents. I called the UK Department of Work and Pensions again and arranged, finally, for them to send them to our landlords John and Wendy and they'll bring them out next time they come.
Tell you what though. When your mail arrives at a taverna, despite the fact that you have to go and collect it, the plus side is - no JUNK mail!
And, finally, to cheer you up a bit after all that, here are some photos I took yesterday whilst wandering around town, yet again!
If you know anything about living out here, you'll know that no one really has a proper address on a Greek island. You can make one up if you like, but in general, you put your postcode and the nearest village down as your mailing address and then you go and collect your mail either from the nearest post office or, as in our case, from a taverna in a nearby village. This is made possible by the fact that one of the ELTA (Greek Post Office, or equivalent of the US Mail) employees visits the taverna in question on alternate days to do a kind of mobile post sending and receiving service.
Mr. Kyriakos turns up at the Agapitos Taverna in Asklipio village, heavy leather satchel at his side, sits at a table where he is of course served his Elliniko, and extracts all his accessories, which he arranges carefully on the table in front of him. He'll have a rubber stamp and ink-pad (of course), various forms, a wad of postage stamps, some elastic bands and a clutch of packages and letters for the locals who use the taverna as their unofficial post office. The system works well, most of the time.
There is usually a motley group of locals awaiting his arrival and the 'opening' of his tabletop 'shop' as it were. Some simply want to see what he's brought. I posted a photo of him back in January 2014, see this post. Others are able to use his service to pay their electricity bill, for example. Older Greeks still wouldn't even think of having a direct debit with the bank, or even of paying manually on-line, since they're still deeply suspicious of anything that doesn't involve hard cash changing hands. Plus, there is still a whole generation who haven't the faintest idea what the internet is. Even some who do are deeply suspicious of the whole thing. It can't be healthy, when you haven't got a wad of cash in your back pocket.
Returning to our conversation with our neighbours. They told us of a problem they had recently with a package from Amazon. Now, like I said above, they've bought from Amazon for delivery to their home here in Southern Rhodes for probably ten years or so. On occasion they've bought some pretty big stuff. I know because I've been up to the Agapitos to collect some mail and seen some packages almost as big as a washing machine awaiting collection by them. Yet this most recent package never arrived. After a respectable period of waiting, just in case it was going to turn up late (as does happen now and then), they contacted Amazon to find out what happened. They were told that the package had been returned to Athens and were given a contact number to call there.
Celia (name changed to protect the guilty) rang the number and enquired about the missing package and was told: "It couldn't be delivered because it didn't carry a proper address."
"But," replied Celia, "It's the same address we've been using for ten years and nothing's ever failed to be delivered up until now."
"I don't know about that." Replied the jobsworth in Athens, "All I know is that 'Celia Pritchard, 85109 Gennadi' isn't a proper address. The package will have to go back to Amazon."
"But, but, that IS our address!" Replied Celia, exasperation already assuming control in her brain. "There isn't anything else! Plus, every other package we've ever ordered from Amazon has arrived!"
Well, I could go on reporting this rather absurd conversation, but suffice it to say that Celia did finally get it resolved, but not without a fair degree of consternation on her part. But it well illustrates what I said at the top of this post, the fact that just about everyone in areas like ours collects their mail from somewhere, and thus as long as the letter or package carries the correct postal code, it ought to be sufficient for the thing to arrive at the correct point of collection. There are no home deliveries here. I have ordered a couple of things in the past, including a CD of an app for my MacBook from California. The usual form is, if they're using a courier (like UPS for example) rather than the regular mail, they take your mobile phone number when you place the order and the courier arrives in your vicinity, calls you and you arrange to go and meet him on the road.
In fact, even when I renewed our passports a year or two back, the UK government passport office sent them by private courier and that's exactly how they were delivered. No problem. Mind you, I was rather bemused by the vehicle that the courier was driving. I got the call on my mobile phone and told the driver to wait at the entrance to a hotel that's just down the road from us. Of course, I was expecting to see a smart van with a logo on the side, which was why I sailed straight past the hotel, imagining that the driver had got the location wrong, because outside the correct hotel there was only an ageing pickup truck with a drivers's door sporting a completely different colour from the rest of the slightly dented vehicle. When I failed to find the van, I was able to call the driver back using the list of received calls on my mobile.
"I'm there!" He declared. "You said the Rodos Princess and I'm right outside. Where are you?"
"Weird," I replied. "But I'll be coming past again in 30 seconds, give me a wave."
Thus it was that, as I drove back to the Rodos Princess, an arm extended out from this old pickup and summoned me. When I parked up, ran over to his driver's window, out shot another arm with an electronic machine awaiting my signature and, having complied, I was handed the package containing my passport. I couldn't resist, I had to ask him, "What's with the beaten up old pickup then?"
It turned out that the courier company's office here on Rhodes employed a whole team of freelance 'deliverers' to keep up with demand. Their only criteria for someone working for them in this capacity was that they have a vehicle. Well, he did have a vehicle, I couldn't argue with that. And, we got our passports safe and sound, so I had no complaints.
Thus we were lulled into a false sense of security. I recently applied for my UK pension. Now, I could go on about that for a while, owing to the fact that there must be some mixup. I mean, the paperwork says I turn 65 next month, but my mind doesn't see it that way at all. It is odd though, isn't it? I mean for decades you spend your life thinking that growing old, or being a pensioner, is for others, but not for oneself, right? Occasionally, though, the stark reality is driven home by someone in a t-shirt. I'll tell you what I mean.
I've been a lifelong Pink Floyd fan (with the exception of the truly awful "Final Cut" album of course). Due to the way the mind deceives one, I kind of feel that Pink Floyd fans are young new-age types, like me, eh? But last week I was sitting in the Top Three when an emaciated, wizened old bloke walked in, wheezing from decades of smoking too much (Yes, I know, strange saying that. To smoke at all is to smoke too much after all), propped himself on the bar, rolled a Rizla and ordered a beer. He looked like he wasn't long for this world, I have to say. The thing was though, he was wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Aaaargh! Was I looking at the truth of the matter, right there before my eyes? Probably. Doesn't mean I have to accept it though. Go down fighting, that's my motto.
Anyway, to return to my pension application. I went on-line, found the appropriate multi-page form, downloaded it and set about reading the reams of instructions for filling it out. It looked like it would take me about, ooh, say, three weeks, to fill it in. I finally got through it all and bought an A4 envelope in which to stuff the thing in preparation for sending it off. Along with the form, they required the originals of both my birth and marriage certificates. That kind of thing always makes me nervous. Nervous that is, until I remembered how they'd sent our new passports to us. Surely something similar would happen when the Pensions Office was ready to return my certificates.
Oh dear.
Of course I sent the thing off from here by registered post. I then waited a few weeks and then rang the Pensions Office in the UK to check that they'd received the form, along with those certificates. I have to say that the response I get when I call them is pretty good. Apart from the number of times you have to listen to a recorded message and make a multiple-choice decision and tap yet another number on the keyboard. Once you do get through, however, each time I've spoken to someone, they've been helpfulness itself. A tick in the credit column. The conversation I had with them on this occasion was pretty satisfying. Yes the form had been received and yes it had been processed and yes my pension was approved and I was going to receive it directly into my UK bank account for the rest of my... well, let's move on.
A couple of weeks later (I know, you're losing the will to live, but I am getting there...) I decided to call them again to ask about the return of my Birth and Marriage Certificates. Now it gets fraught.
"Ah, yes," said the person at the other end of the phone, "we did send them back, but owing to the fact that they couldn't be delivered, they came back here."
This was the point at which I had to fight to remain civil and respectful. After all, this person wasn't to blame individually. I sooo wanted to...
My Certificates had travelled 4,000 miles. 2,000 from the UK to Rhodes, then 2,000 miles back again because someone over here claimed that they couldn't be delivered. Actually, counting the first journey they made when I sent them with the form, they'd now travelled 6,000 miles.
Good eh? There was no point in arguing with this poor UK civil servant. The fault obviously lay with some berk over here. But after 13 years of living somewhere with an address that amounts to a five figure number and not much else, this was the first time that something didn't reach us, and it had to be two rather essential legal documents. I called the UK Department of Work and Pensions again and arranged, finally, for them to send them to our landlords John and Wendy and they'll bring them out next time they come.
Tell you what though. When your mail arrives at a taverna, despite the fact that you have to go and collect it, the plus side is - no JUNK mail!
•
And, finally, to cheer you up a bit after all that, here are some photos I took yesterday whilst wandering around town, yet again!
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| It always pays to look up above street level. You often wouldn't otherwise see some of the more unusual and attractive buildings that pepper the town centre. |
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| An example of the moorish influence in much of the architecture about the place. This building is right behind the Court House in the Mandraki area. |
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| You'd never guess that this old and stylish, yet sadly derelict house is smack dab in the urban area of Rhodes Town, would you? |
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| The clock tower is clearly visible in this one. See this post. |
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| There are so many sites like this around Rhodes Town. You can walk straight past them if you're not careful. I love examining the inscriptions that one sees and to think about the fact that someone's hands carved them a couple of millennia ago. |
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| Streets like this are immensely enjoyable and interesting. All winter long one can come into town and enjoy a spot of people-watching. To me, streets like this are what make towns worthwhile. It's the life-affirming vibrancy of these places I suppose. |
Very interesting piece. Your photos are fab,love hto see your Ramblings xxx Annette
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