Our New Home

We arrived at our new apartment on July 16 mid-afternoon. We got a quick tour from a representative from my school, and then we were left to get acquainted with our new place. It is a beautiful apartment, in the perfect part of town. Both bedrooms have queen beds, the bathroom is quite large for European standards, we have closets (!!!), we have a HUGE TV in the living room, and, since we have the penthouse, we have a gigantic balcony that overlooks the sea. 

The unfortunate part was that the person who lived there before us left it extremely dirty with a lots of random items (bricks, a broken alligator toy, an empty beer bottle, decorative plates, a biscuit container, Greek chess, and much more). So, we decided not to unpack right away. We rested the first night, and got to work the next day. We deep cleaned the whole apartment, sorted through all the random stuff to see what we could use and what was garbage, and made a list of essentials we didn't have and would need to buy at the local IKEA. We have an excellent landlord that helped us get a few things fixed in our apartment (the shower, a light, and a screen on a door). Even though they don't speak any English, they patiently worked with us as we used Google Translate to talk to each other. 

After three days of hard work, we finished! The apartment is clean and decluttered, the suitcases are unpacked, and it is starting to look like home here. We are excited to start to enjoy Thessaloniki like our home. In fact, today we have had a very "normal" day. We slept in, had a great brunch (there is a super yummy bakery right across the road and we bought donuts to supplement our breakfast), went for a walk by the water before it got too hot (it has been in the high 90's everyday), and then relaxed, played games, and hung out together the rest of the day.

Below is a map of the general area we live in and a video tour of our new apartment!

This is the general area we live in. It is about a 25 minute walk from the city center. We live right by a pharmacy, grocery store, great Friday farmer's market, bakery, and a few yummy restaurants. We have two excellent bus stops right out of our apartment. We are also a short five minute walk from the path that runs along the sea. 

Above is a video tour of our apartment. 

Our apartment building is pretty interesting. Because this apartment was built in the late 60's/early 70's, it has an old-school video system to see who rings the bell for your apartment. It also has the coolest old elevator. When you want to use it, you push the button to call it like you would any elevator. When it arrives on your floor, you open the big metal door yourself (it isn't heavy) and enter the tiny elevator. You must close the metal door and the panel doors inside the elevator before you push which floor you want to go to. Because it is Europe, the first floor is called the ground floor. Then the floors are listed as floor 1, 2, 3, etc. Here, we live on the 6th floor. However, in the United States, it would be called the 5th floor. You can open the panel doors in the elevator at any time. It sounds dangerous, but it isn't. The elevator will simply stop. The problem lies in that if you open the doors early, you will end up between floors. This happened to Miller a few times. However, it is pretty easy to know when you should open the elevator doors. When it is time to exit the elevator, it will come to a complete stop with the usual elevator lurch and loud bump sound. So, as long as you a paying attention, you will not get stuck. If you do get stuck, you simply reclose the doors and click the floor you want to go to again.