Well, not exactly. Not yet. I’m still in Athens. But that doesn’t mean issues haven’t already cropped up.

For one thing I realised I can’t get electricity connected to our property till we have an official road. I THINK we can get temporary power in order for construction to continue, but in order to get a regular connection we need a gate/entrance to our property where the electric company will build housing for the electricity meters… Right now all we have is permission to drive through a neighbour’s land to access ours… not a real, legal road.

Sigh.

And that’s the Paros issue I have to deal with soon as I get back.

There’s also an Athens issue.

The tenants in the upstairs apartment I finished renovating last year let me know that their electricity bill says they are being charged for a 140m2 house – which is the size of the entire upstairs, not the smaller apartment I created when I separated it into two. Turns out I had to go through a few more steps which I was unaware of in order for that to happen.

I made some calls… Apparently I need an electrician to give me a certificate for both upstairs apartments (even the one which is currently lying idle cause I have no money to fix it). I thought I’d done that, given you can’t rent a place without a certificate of some kind from an electrician, but it turns out thats a DIFFERENT certificacte. I need 2 OTHER certificates.

Once I have those, I can apply to the power company for a new meter. They will then give me a connection number (before or after they actually install a new meter?) I take that to the municipality with the certificates from the electrician, and get some paperwork from them which I have to give to the electricity provider of my choice in order to amend the size of the apartment and thus the base charge per month…

If that makes sense.

The only good news about this is that when I get the certificates, I can do the application online, and once I get the connection number I can give it to the tenant and they can chase up the rest of it. I (sincerely hope) I dont have to be in Athens to do that myself.

I am really looking forward to going home…

z