Tuesday, September 30, 2008

My kingdom for a number

Our area of the village is fairly unpopulated, one of the most recently developed areas of the municipality. There are a handful of houses up here, and the trek to the village proper is at least a mile (perhaps more, I’ve never done an odometer check to be certain). So our street is relatively new, in fact, it may have just been a dirt/stone road when I first moved to Greece and came up to visit our house while it was still in progress. Despite having nomenclature, our road has not been officially numbered, either by the municipality or the post office, so we are without an official address. This is slightly annoying for a variety of reasons, given that the post office (and our P.O. box) is well out of our way (we end up getting our mail about once a month). Although it would be mighty nice to have mail delivered to our house, it would be nicer if, god forbid, we ever had to call police/fire/ambulance, we could actually give them a freakin’ address.

It doesn’t help matters much that our neighbor, in true Greek fashion, has apparently arbitrarily decided upon a street number for his house. How exactly he came up with this number is beyond me, but it has been made even more complicated by the fact that someone closer to the beginning of the road has decided their street number is 8 (higher than our neighbor’s 5), and posted it proudly. This would mean that our street numbers are ass backwards from the rest of the world, since there is no way there are seven properties between the beginning of the road and the illustrious number 8, and with our neighbor’s chosen number, this means that the numbers would have to start at the end of the street instead of the beginning (and since the end of our street is a dead end, obviously that isn’t the beginning of the street, is it?). If we can just pick our own street number, I think we should come up with something like 6242 and really throw people off, which is the kind of thing I am inclined to do but I don’t think my in-laws would go for it.

Here’s hoping that some day we actually do get this sorted out, so when I’m 90 years old and having a stroke, someone can actually give the EMT an address. That gives them about 50 years to figure it out.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL, I got such a chuckle out this that I had to read it to Zoe. Zoe's comment was "only in Greece!"

Anonymous said...

LOL! Don't worry, both the mailman and the emergency people know exactly what house you live in if the necessity arrives! It's one of the good things of living in the countryside in Greece: things are uncomplicated and easy.

Anonymous said...

ha ha - too funny!
I think you should opt for the number 007 and really throw everyone for a loop :) ahhh, good ol' Greece!

popi

Cheryl said...

It cracks me up! I say pick # 1.
We have been told that we could pick a name for out dirt road if we wanted to. We were thinking Martin Luther King Drive or something! Haha! no, we wouldn't -but just the thought.
Your road paved? Lucky you. Ours is paved in front of our house but all the way to it is dirt.
We don't have any light out here either. The municipality said they'd put a street lamp in front of our house. But of course...when farmer George heard about the possibility of a free light on the road...he wants to put it over his field. No house, no nothing...just a field. That's definitely where we need the light. :(
I haven't been here a lot lately because my laptop is way old. It doesn't get along with your page or many pages. All I want for Christmas is a new laptop!

CaliforniaKat said...

I vote for 007. :)