Movin’ on out

Where you live is essentially the backdrop for each different period of your life. Alexia Amvrazi, who has moved six times in 15 years, shares her own experience and some valuable advice.

I simply can’t understand the common practice of buying a home, which usually involves throwing huge amounts of money into it (and paying back a mortgage over many, often painful years), and then staying there … forever. The mere idea of it makes me feel trapped. For me, it’s always been important to experience not just visiting but actually living in various locations, as each place I’ve lived in has offered profound experiences that came from my new surroundings, the people who lived and worked in them, and the ways in which I created my personalized navigational maps around, or even away from, them. This in turn gifted me with the ability to gain fascinating perspectives on myself and the (immediate and wider) world around me, to discover how to make each place my home and to better understand the concept of home.

Maybe I got the “moving bug” because of the way I grew up. As the child of a diplomat I lived in three different countries in the first nine years of my life, from the elegantly smiling ancient beauty of Rome, to the glaringly hot, chaotic, poverty-ridden set of Cairo, and finally Athens, where I finished school in the bubble world of an international school and life in the cool and leafy northern suburbs.

Upon returning from university in England, I started work in central Athens, and soon I rented out a friend’s humble abode in Mets. Despite being just off the noisy, polluted and aesthetically displeasing Vouliagmenis Avenue, it was close enough to the center, and I explored the old neighborhood with its statue-filled cemetery, jazz club and scenic cobbled streets.

After a few years I felt it was time to get away from busy traffic and seek a home in a tranquil, historic and central part of Athens. I found a place in Thissio, an area studded with ancient ruins, dressed in greenery and surrounded by neoclassical buildings and pedestrianized streets lined with busy cafeterias. My 75m² home was on a quiet street by a church, next to a park where I could safely walk the dog I had just adopted at any hour of the day or night.

During my Thissio years I fell in love and got engaged, and this spurred my fiancé and I to find a bigger place where we would start a life together. We found a 115m² apartment in Lycabettus, with an open view of the city that looked like a beautifully lit, boxy theater set at night. We relished long leisurely walks (and sometimes champagne picnics with friends) on the verdant hill, which offers amazing views of Athens and late-night rooftop BBQs.

During our years there we also left for a while to try living on an organic farm in the Peloponnese – a move that was meant to last longer but ended at three months. We went from our large apartment to a tiny wooden cottage with a fireplace, nestled in an olive grove where our neighbors were a wild ram, a melancholic sheep, many cats, chickens, ducks and dogs. During “working hours” I picked organic fruit and vegetables and made them into chutneys and jams as well as cooked meals for paying guests. In my time off I explored the groves, read by the fire, practiced yoga and watched the sun rise.

Five years (and a burglary during our absence) into our Lycabettus life, I suddenly felt the urge to leave that quirkily laid-out apartment and move somewhere new, to a place more quaint and peaceful. Within only a few days of searching, we came upon our dinky but adorable new home right under the Acropolis, just two roads down from the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and Dionysiou Areopagitou St. It had the quiet of a remote village and from both our living room and our rooftop we could take in the astounding magnificence of the Parthenon, seeing it in every single light of the day, with all shades of sky as its backdrop, all in absolute silence. Within only a few weeks of moving, I found out why I had felt such an urgent need for this move – I was pregnant. Both throughout my 10 months of a growing belly and the first two years of our son’s life, I cherished both our easy, compact flat and the incredible neighborhood we were in, with its pedestrian roads and stunning ancient ruins. We had endless walks on Filopappou and Pnyx Hill, paid visits to the ancient theater in the rain and were delightfully close by foot to Koukaki, Syntagma and Monastiraki Squares, Thissio and the National Gardens.

Yet, after a point, the flat started to feel too cramped, which spurred us once again to seek a new home for a family with a growing boy. This time it took far longer to find the right place, perhaps because we had many more prerequisites and saw it as a longer-term stay, but eventually we were thrilled to settle for a 105m² home back in Lycabettus, this time facing the thickly forested hill and with enough space for everything and everyone to have its place.

Although some say that moving is one of the most stressful things you can go through in life, I have always embraced the process (and even the challenges). In each neighborhood, I patched together more of my city’s social and cultural history, discovering more about what Athens has to offer, and similarly, what its limitations are. I have definitely learned a few things along the way that I wish I’d known right from the start, so I will share them here with you:

• Creative visualization: Have a clear vision of what you want and need, and indulge yourself in child-like fantasy, without any “realistic” limiting ideas about what you can and cannot have. I am a true believer in the saying that he who seeks finds. Even quantum physics proves that things respond according to the attention we focus on them. Write lists of all the things you want in your new home – from practical things like having large rooms or plenty of storage space to things like the kind of view you would like, or how much sun will pour into your bedroom. Visualize it often, with a sense of excitement and hope, not anguish and desperation, and enjoy imagining that you have already found it.

• Search consistently online on reliable real estate sites like Chrysi Efkairia and spitogatos.gr (both in English, too) where you can list all the things you are looking for, from location, rent prices and size to views, garden access and more. New listings appear all the time, so it’s worth checking in every few days. If you want to call a real estate agency directly, be aware that they will charge you the price of a rent once they find you a home, while you will also have to pay at least one rent in advance to the landlord.

• Look at places above your budget. Greece is still in crisis and landlords are likely to lower the rent by even a hundred euros if you possess a healthy haggling spirit and can strike up a good deal.

• Go and see lots of places. Even the ones that don’t seem that great (or look that good from pictures) can turn out to be a good way of seeing what’s out there and helping you determine what you really do or don’t want.

• Walk, walk, walk around the neighborhood of your dreams. Look carefully for ENOIKIAZETAI (for rent) signs stuck on poles, walls and doors. Ask local shop owners if they know of any places for rent in the area.

• Use social media. Post an occasional call-out on your networks telling friends what you are looking for, join groups (there’s a real estate group for foreigners on Facebook) and also tell everyone you know that you are looking.

• When you’ve found a place that interests you, check that everything works properly (wiring, plumbing, etc), ask the landlord what the neighbors are like and explore the area to see whether it’s suitable for you (transportation, safety, shopping).

• When moving, call at least five moving companies to get quotes for prices. Know that those who pack for you often charge at least 300 euros on top of transportation costs. Before the move, also make sure that the movers will position your belongings where you want them to be.