How things work in Corfu... Part One: Mail

There are a million reasons why Ben and I decided to come to Corfu. There are endless beautiful aspects of living here and positive qualities about this place.

  Organisation is not one of them!

  How things work in Corfu for someone whose friends describe her as OCD -is quirky to say the least.

  One of our first questions was the mail- You know that stuff that in civilised countries just gets posted through your door each morning. Well here it doesn't work like that. There is only one postcode for the whole of Corfu and our unique address is composed simply of the name of the first resident of the villa and the village name.

    We asked the previous resident of the house where to get mail sent- she has owned the property  for over 15 years but of course she didn't know where the mail gets collected- that would be too easy wouldn't it? We are learning that  Corfiat villagers apparently see the mail a bit like a sport, you can't just have it delivered it must be hunted down and captured. Barbara said "There used to be an old man in the village who collected it for everybody and who you would visit if you were expecting something" But that as far as she knows he has retired from this duty.

 So she gave us a key.

  The key was apparently linked to a postbox on the corner of our road. She thought we might be box number 1. The key of course did not fit box number 1 (...which incidentally was also numbered 112). In fact the key did not fit any of the boxes!  Several of the boxes were open since it turned out they couldn't be closed, these boxes contained things like: mail for several different people who live at different addresses all stuffed into the same box,  snail shells, leaves and dead woodlice....  So it was back to the drawing board.

  We asked our very helpful neighbour who has lived in the village for 7 years. "Ooo, I don't know!" declared switched on, fast talking Maria. "There used to be an old man in the village..."
  So she too gave us the old man speech and then said that her father in law delivers her mail to her and she didn't know where he got it from...  So it was back to the drawing board.

  Maria suggested we go to Karousades which is the main office for the mail in our area. We drive for 15mins through the winding mountain roads and asked several people in the village to help us find the office.  We arrived victorious, it looked legit like a post office, here would be the end of our quest... We were wrong.
    The two people working shrugged when they saw us, "Are you expecting anything in particular?" The lady asked. "No, we don't know where to get it sent" We answered. She frowned called up another local office and asked if there was any mail for us, they of course had no clue (as we  had already said we weren't expecting anything anyway) and she said we should ask the previous owner then she said goodbye and carried on her work!....  So it was back to the drawing board.

 Still none the wiser as to where we get our mail we continued our quest.

  Another expat informed us that we should have something sent to the house and see where it turns up.  He said cheerfully that he ordered some things off ebay 3 months ago that still haven't made their way to him!

  This was tricky as we have a few important documents that we need to receive, it could make things hard for us if certain documents get lost in some sort of Greek Postal Vortex for all eternity (-as despite the Corfiat inefficiency with mail they do love their paperwork over here.) We  decided to test it out with some bank statements. Our ex-pat friend suggested that we pop in to Kavadades office. He said we needed let the two women who work there get to know us a bit, that we should give them our telephone number so they can call if a parcel arrives and pop in every few days if we are expecting something important.... as it may end up there... or at the postbox.... or at the larger office in Karousades... or at the house...or at the old man's house who used to do the mail... or the bakery...etc

   I am considering breeding messenger pigeons. It may be a faster way of acquiring mail.
-Seriously if anybody has any advice on keeping pigeons send me an email I am all ears, it has to be easier then this madness!

  Two weeks into our stay here we found the bank statements at Kavadades. We will now collect mail there from a box saying 'German/English' (!!!)

Yay! Mystery solved.... for now.

     We are enjoying the many 'puzzles' Corfu is throwing at us.
        - Toto we aren't in London anymore!

      :) s

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