Author: Bart Meylemans (Page 2 of 2)

*Amuseersels is Els’ company in Belgium for creative workshops and activities.

I (Els) often get the question: “And you, Els, what are you going to do there?”. Bart has his business in international sales of fertilisers. All he needs is a laptop, a mobile phone, a good internet connection and an airport for business travel. But me? My own business, AmuseersEls…. It was a dream 6 years ago, to start my own business. Doing what I love. And I was blessed to be able to start. By 2019, I had a well-run business, in the “hobby” sector admittedly, not big money but a lot of satisfaction. And then there was a pandemic…A year of planning and organising and especially a lot of cancelling! Many choices had to be made, what do I do and what don’t I do online, but it was clear that the business was no longer like before. Gradually, bookings are coming back in, organisations now dare to look at the autumn. But I still have the feeling that it will be some time before we are back to the 2019 level with these activities… and maybe that will not even happen. Perhaps people will get together less, make more conscious choices,…. It is still a bit of a mystery which direction the workshop sector and hobbyclub life will go. I have already decided for myself that I want to continue giving workshops until the summer of 2022. And after that, I’ll be cleaning up… and I’ll be looking at Greece. But what am I going to do there?

I don’t know yet!

And I have already noticed that this shocks some people a little. How can you leave without a clear plan? Without a job? Well, those who have known me for a long time will see the common thread. It’s the story of my life. I have had many different jobs. I am rather flexible, or should I say impulsive? I am going to Greece with Bart, we can live off his business, and the rest will take care of itself. Many options cross my mind. Maybe I want to organise workshops in the tourist sector there, for example, or maybe I will make more things myself with polymer clay and sell them, or maybe I want to do voluntary work with refugees, homeless people, children, handicapped people, …. Maybe something completely different and exciting will come my way. Who knows….

What I do know

I don’t want to live too far away, I want other people around me to do things with. I will look for the mand find them, those others.

I will take my polymer clay and wool (crochet and knitting) with me. I want to be able to make things in Greece too. An own studio/workshop there would be great.

I don’t want a salaried job anymore, not in Belgium, not in Greece. The freedom to make my own decisions has become too important.

We have not decided yet where in Greece we want to live. We have a wish list, and a plan to visit some regions in the course of this year. We, would like to have made our final choice made by the end of 2021.

We would like to have the sea (Els) and mountains (Bart) nearby. Fortunately, this is not a difficult combination in Greece.

No big city, that is clear. If you would choose a big city around the Mediterranean, for us Athens is not the place to go. The uniqueness of Greece does not lie there. Thessaloniki is a lot more pleasant, I (Bart) am a fan, but it is situated a lot further north and therefore colder in winter.

On the internet you can find detailed climate info of the different regions, which we have already studied extensively. If we say that climate is a reason to move, then we want to select well on that.

It will not be an island either. I (Bart) will need an international airport nearby to be able to travel occasionally for work. The only airports that really qualify for that are Athens and Thessaloniki. That also makes Crete difficult. You have charter flights in Crete from April to October, but in the winter you have to go to Athens before you can fly on.

And there are other things to look at. Many of the tourist coastal towns in Greece are deserted during the winter. In some places, literally no one lives: everything closes down on 1 November, shutters are boarded up, shops and restaurants close for 5-6 months. If you look for a place to live, it is important to choose a place where there is also life in winter. We also want to be somewhere with a town or city nearby with some facilities. A hospital three quarters of an hour away is different from, say, a two and a half hour drive, even if the latter is as idyllic as the former. It is also good to have people around for Els when Bart is away on business.

So the shortlist at the moment:

– The Mani on the Peloponnese. On the map it is the middle one of the three fingers that stick out at the bottom of the peninsula. The region between Kardamyli and Agios Nikolaos. We stayed here last year in November for about 4-5 days, and we liked it very much. Between 2,500m high mountains and the sea, southern, a super climate. With some tourism and expats, but no high-rise buildings or mass tourism, and a charming architectural style that is maintained in the region.

– Also on the Peloponnese, Messinia, the region between Koroni and Pylos in the south-west. On the map the left one of the three fingers at the bottom of the peninsula.

– The island of Evia. Closer to Athens, connected to the mainland by a bridge in Chalkida and ferries in the south and north. That is what we want to explore on our next trip.

Last week we were in Messinia to explore the area, next we will go to Kardamyli, in the Mani, for another week to compare. But we already know: choosing a region will be a luxury problem. There is no lack of beautiful places!

In the wild-idea-phase (which especially Bart suffers from) there is no lack of destinations: back to Sri Lanka? New Zealand? Fiji? Els is more down-to-earth and wants to stay close enough to allow for easy contact with the children and other people back home. We agreed a few years ago that our destination must be within Europe, that’s the limit.

Because we are looking for a better climate, we have to go South, towards the Mediterranean Sea. Greece is a little less known in Belgium, except for the islands. But the Greek mainland is unique. It is very varied: most of it is mountainous, and Greece also has 13,000 km of coastline. This gives an endless variety of microclimates and landscapes. Almost 11 million people live in Greece (about the same as in Belgium) on a surface area of 130,000 km² (4.3 x Belgium). But about half of the population lives in and around Athens, and another 800,000 around Thessaloniki in the north. The rest of the country is sparsely populated. This makes for a unique country in terms of nature and landscape. Often breathtakingly beautiful, a different landscape behind every corner, some almost deserted regions. Here you can drive around for years to visit beautiful places.

There are also beautiful Greek towns, but unfortunately that is not the standard. Greece is not Italy where you can visit town after town and walk between Roman, medieval and 19th century palaces over and over again. The heritage in Greece is much less well preserved, cities are often dirty and full of uninspiring concrete buildings. You can’t have it all.

What they do have in Greece is a good feeling for beautiful locations. Ancient Greek temples but also more recent buildings are often located in places with the best views. The villages have a relaxed Mediterranean atmosphere. A taverna with a terrace by the sea, local wine, vegetables, and fresh fish or meat, where the menu does not matter but the cook comes to discuss what he has that day. Honest, fresh, tasty cuisine.

Of course, life is much more than climate and beautiful surroundings. We are social beings and need other people. In that respect, too, we like Greece. We experience the Greeks as very friendly, helpful and hospitable. This certainly has something to do with the Greek traditional value “filoxenia”, literally translated as “friend of the stranger”. Filoxenia is translated as “hospitality”, but it is more than a custom or obligation to do things selflessly, it is a genuinely warm attitude from which helpfulness comes.

I also like the Greek philosophical reflections and discussions that are part of life, even though sometimes there are more words than deeds. For sure something is correct about the cliché of the Greek as a bon vivant. Greeks are also collectively allergic to rules. This is a country of anarchists, who, wherever possible, circumvent the rules or make their own. It causes some chaos and is the cause of many things not working, but at the same time it has its charm. We are not blind to the difficulties, and we will certainly be regularly frustrated as West-Europeans by things that do not advance well. We see the two sides of the coin, but we trust the equilibrium will be OK.

People who know us well know that this old dream has always remained alive. Sometimes hidden a bit deeper because it wasn’t the right time, sometimes more alive.

Our mission to raise our children in Belgium is almost accomplished. All three are grown up. The youngest will graduate next year.

Of course, they are what we hold most dear, we continue to need them and they need us. But a relationship with grown-up children is different than when you are still in a more caring role. With today’s means of communication, a lot is still possible. And Greece is not so far away that we won’t see them again. We will have to search together, but it should be possible to find a way together.

After my (Bart) resignation from SQM at the end of 2019, I started Ag Ambition, my own business in international trade. I can basically run that from anywhere in the world, as long as I stay near the European time zones.

And finally, there are also financial reasons why the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 is a good time for us to move to Greece. This is not the reason to choose this project or Greece, but it is useful to define our timing.

Long ago, just after we both graduated, we left for Sri Lanka. There we lived and worked for 4 years in the beautiful town Kandy. Driven by curiosity for distant lands and other cultures, dreams of adventure and a drive to make the world a better place. It was an experience that changed us and that we continue to carry with us. We came back to Belgium after four years, mainly with the idea of letting our children grow up there. In terms of education, healthcare and opportunities, Belgium is a fantastic place, and we wanted to give our children at least the same opportunities that we got ourselves. But Henk, a Dutchman who had dropped anchor in Kandy, said it upon our return, shaking his head: going abroad is a virus. And you have that virus. And you can go back now, but you’ll never get rid of that virus. We will see you again.

The easiest thing to explain why is the climate. We are now more than 25 years back from Sri Lanka, but we never really got used again to our Belgian winters. More than the cold, the lack of sunlight is difficult. Those endless dark, grey weeks in December-January give us a dip every year, and for 26 years now, somewhere after New Year, the topic of emigrating comes up again. In Sri Lanka, we threw open windows and doors every morning for a whole year. Visiting Belgium in winter, we also discovered what you don’t see when you live there, and you experience the gradual change of seasons. People in Belgium are different in winter than in summer. More short-tempered, in a hurry, stressed, less social, less spontaneous. Winter is not only a cold period, it is also a state of mind. So a longer summer and a shorter winter: please.

When you arrive in another country with a different culture, in an environment where everyone thinks differently, nothing is self-evident anymore. You learn to question yourself and your own culture. And every time you learn something about the other person, you also learn something about yourself. It doesn’t work like that for everyone; there are people who are so convinced of their own rightness that they don’t question themselves. But in any case it has made us much more open and humble. We have learned to let go of judging other cultures, different is different. Fascinating, but therefore not better or worse. So being in a different environment with a different culture does not frighten us, on the contrary, it has continued to fascinate us to get in touch with other cultures.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to explain is what it does to a Westerner to live in an environment where nothing is certain and where planning is no more than a vague idea, as it was in Sri Lanka. We started our day like real Western Europeans, with a plan of what we were going to do that day. But then all sorts of unexpected things happened, or you depended on people not doing their thing on time. And so no day ever ended as planned. But you adapt: it makes you alert, flexible and creative. Stay calm, analyse, and come up with a new plan. After a while, I enjoyed handling things my way, I had satisfaction in finding solutions. It made life much more intense, every day was different, every day an adventure. It somehow gave me the feeling that I was really alive. Greece is not Sri Lanka, but it has something of it.  With apologies to my Greek friends, but Greece is a chaotic, anarchist and unpredictable country, I sometimes call it “the most Sri Lankan country in Europe”. Not always easy, but it has its charm. It is going to be super fascinating.

1992 was a different time. Leaving for a faraway country back then was really leaving everything and everyone behind and jumping into the unknown. We had barely been in an aeroplane, there was no internet or mobile phone. In the beginning, we had to drive for three hours from Kandy, the second largest city in Sri Lanka, to buy a pair of jeans. We had pampers for the baby sent from Belgium. But above all: contact with friends and family was limited. Gone was gone. We wrote letters home that took two weeks to arrive. If they were answered immediately, we had an answer a month later. Telephone calls went through a telephone exchange where you had to request numbers, which did not always work, and costed a fortune. Compared to that, this time it’s simple. Mobile phones, video calls, Whatsapp messages, news that you can follow anywhere, and a reachable destination. You’re away but you’re not: being reachable makes a very big difference.

When do you really leave? When you close the door behind you? Or much earlier, when the dreams in your head become clearer and sharper. When you can gradually formulate more clearly what you do and do not want. Wild dreams that gradually crystallise into something concrete and achievable. Leaving is a process, not something you do in one moment. We have recently turned a corner. A dream has become a project. The end of 2022 is now our target date. Then we want to move to Greece. And once you fix the date, everything changes. Your routine is broken. Everything becomes dependent on that date. Am I still doing it, or is it not worth it? You start planning, gathering concrete information… We are really going to do it now. But leaving is still a process. Many things are still undecided, and they don’t have to be. Step by step.

With this page, we would like to share our departure process with our family, friends and supporters, for all those who want to follow.

To Greece = Stin Ellada (in Greek στην Ελλάδα)