Legalizing your stay

(This information applies only to American citizens. We are happy to add material regarding other English-speaking countries, if someone with experience writes it up. Also, please see our Important Disclaimer.)

Tourists and pilgrims

If you're an American coming here as a pilgrim or tourist; if this is your first trip to Europe in a while (a half-year or more); if you're visiting Europe for ninety (90) days or fewer; and if you won't be making a second trip to Europe within a half-year of leaving for your present trip — you can stop reading. You're fine: all you need for your travels is a valid American passport.

Otherwise, or for an explanation, read on:

• Greece is a member of the Schengen Zone. The Schengen Zone is a collection of European countries with certain shared immigration rules. The membership is basically — but not entirely — the same as the membership of the EU. Unlike most Non-European tourists, American tourists do not need a visa to enter Schengen Zone countries. All you need is a valid American passport.

• There are, however, limitations on the length of one's stay. First, a tourist may only travel within the Schengen Zone for ninety (90) days at a time. You may go in and out as many times as you like during that ninety-day period — but on Day Ninety after your arrival, if you are still in the Schengen Zone, you must leave. Second, once that ninety-day period has finished, you may not return to the Schengen Zone until another ninety-days have passed.

• Remember that the ninety days starts when you enter any country in the Schengen Zone, even if it is only a layover on your way to Greece. So if you have a day or two in Germany between flights, your ninety days will start when you first set foot in Germany.

Other types of travelers

What if you are not in Greece to be a tourist or pilgrim? What if you are coming for a long stay, to attend the university or to work? In that case, you will need a visa appropriate to your purpose. You can apply for one from the Greek Consulate nearest to your permanent residence in America. You cannot get a visa in Greece. You must get it before you leave America. Really: you cannot work it out when you get here. (In particular, no matter what anyone may confidently tell you, no one from the University can arrange such a thing.)

A visa lasts for ninety (90) days. Once you are in Greece, you use the visa to apply for a residence permit, which lasts for a year or more. Thus, it is a two-step process. One step — the visa — is completed in America, while the other — the residence permit — is completed in Greece.

While in America

• If you are applying for a special visa, make your application for whatever background check (sheriff, FBI, etc) the consulate requires early. FBI checks, for example, can take up to four weeks and as of this writing could not be expedited.
• Stay in regular contact with the consulate, because it's not over until you have the visa pasted onto your passport. Their requirements can and likely will change without warning, depending on the day of the week, who you are speaking with, and how that person's favorite Greek football team is doing.

While in Greece

• If you think you know something about the law that the people behind the desks do not, you may very well be correct. Don't be afraid to stick to your guns, particularly if you are following a path already trod by others.

Residence Permit (Άδεια Διαμονής)

• If you live in Thessaloniki proper, the address of the office (Τμήμα Αλλοδαπών) where you apply for a residence permit is Οδυσσέως 19. Go to Πλατεία Δημοκρατίας, then head north-west on Λαγγαδά. When you see a Champion grocery store on your left, go behind it and look for number 19, on your left. The stairway is hidden (yes) down a passageway, toward the back-left. The office is on the second or third floor.

• There seems to be a convenient recent change in the requirements for proving that you have the financial means to support your stay here: it used to be required to prove that you had 6000 euro in a Greek bank. Now you needs merely to declare, with an υπέυθυνη δήλωση — available at a street-side kiosk, that you will have the ability to put 500 euro in the bank each month.

Computing

Hardware

• For what to bring, look over the technology-related notes elsewhere on the site.

• PC warranty repairs can be difficult here. Dell in Greece, for example — unlike local Dell representatives all over the world — does not honor American Dell warranties. You'll have to deal with Dell in America directly (who, incidentally, will probably be surprised to hear about the Greek policy).

• Mac warranty repairs used to be limited to Rainbow Computing, a company so useless as to inspire public protest from Greek Mac users. Let us reiterate: do not do any business with Rainbow if you value your sanity. Thankfully, times are changing. Elite Computers in central Thessaloniki should be able to take Apple warranty repairs starting in September or October 2008. Note that not all Apple products come with worldwide warranties. iPods, Mac laptops, and some Apple peripherals do, but desktops historically have not.

Software

Dictionaries

• Magenta makes the most well-known Greek software dictionaries, not only Greek-English, but many other kinds as well. We are interested in hearing about people's experiences with them. We can't recommend their single Mac product, Magenta Gold Version 2007: it's painfully slow and not at all Mac-like.

Writing tools

• Greek spell-checking for both Windows and Mac is available from Neurolingo, in the form of proofing tools for Microsoft Word or OpenOffice (and NeoOffice and StarOffice). The software also includes a thesaurus and a hyphenator. The company plans to release a stand-alone spell-checker and hyphenator for the Mac (developed using Cocoa) by the end of 2008.

• Magenta, along with several other companies, produces tools to turn monotonic Greek into polytonic Greek.

Other

• Magenta makes an interesting-looking text-to-speech converter (Windows) that can handle both Greek and English.

Typing

General

Arranging to type in Greek is actually pretty easy: all modern computers ship with several fonts that include Greek characters, and handy Windows and Mac instructions for producing them are available online. (Incidentally, you may want to learn just a little about what Unicode is since that's what makes it all work.)

Fonts

• There are many sites offering free Greek fonts. The most complete such font that we know of is New Athena Unicode, produced by the American Philological Association. The most attractive we've yet seen are generously distributed by the Greek Font Society.
• Fonts produced by Cannibal are not free; in fact, they're rather expensive. They are, however, awesome.
• All these fonts (like all modern fonts in general) work with both Windows and Mac.

Mac tips

• You might find it convenient to add the Character Palette and Keyboard Viewer to the input menu.
• Normally, you'll be typing monotonic Greek. Typing polytonic Greek is more difficult, considering the number of key-combinations involved, so for that you might want to consider the free SophoKeys software. It includes a keyboard layout intended to be easier-to-use than the built-in one. Also, it includes software that enables you to generate Greek characters by typing in Beta Code (the method that Thesaurus Linguae Graecae uses to encode Greek).
• If you aren't satisfied with the existing keyboard layouts, you can try creating your own using a free keyboard-layout-editor called Ukelele.

Windows tips

• SIL International offers a list of utilities that let you enter text by clicking on an on-screen picture of a keyboard, so you can see what you're going to get.
• The Palatino Linotype font, which ships with Windows, has an especially broad selection of Greek characters.
• Microsoft has produced a document discussing the use of the polytonic system in XP.
• For polytonic typing, some prefer the 'Classical Greek Unicode' keyboard layout to the one provided by Microsoft.
• If you don't like the keyboard layouts available and want to build your own, check out SIL International's list of links on the topic.

Contributers: add another category of tips here!

• ...and make each individual tip a bullet-point (click on the bulleted-list icon located just above the "Format" menu). For main categories ("Legalizing your stay," "Computing," etc), choose "Heading 1" from the "Format" menu. Choose "Heading 2" for subcategories (such as "While in America" and "While in Greece," above).