Does your door have a letter slot?

[SatCure]

I see mention of "collecting your mail" now and again. How does the postal system in Crete work in practice? Does anyone have a letter slot in the front door? Do you have a box near the road? Do you have nothing and have to collect your mail from somewhere? What form does your postal address take? Do houses have numbers?

[margarita]

We have postbox on a communal post near our house. Our box is number 5, therefore, our address is the name of our village followed by 5 - nothing fancy like a street name. The system seems to work.

Prior to that all the post was delivered to the village cafeneio and was housed in a cardboard box on top of the ice-cream fridge.

Wonderful thing progress.

margarita

[Nita]

Letter box in front door - never seen one, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Box near the road - yes, there are many post boxes attached to front walls, fences, houses etc. We have a box near to the front door which can be seen easily from the road. The postman never uses it, he prefers to come to the back of the house and either leave the post on a patio table or, if he's in a rush and therefore doesn't actually stop and get of his motorbike, it gets chucked in the direction of the table.

Some people, especially those who live some distance from the main village, collect their post from the kafenio.

Most houses appear to have numbers but not all. In the first apartment I lived in we had no house number, to try to help the postie we included in our address "next to KEP", it seemed to work, well 80% of the time!

[lshall05]

Our friends have a box just to the right of their front door but I've never seen them using it.

Our Greek female friend gave us her maiden name because she said that the postman would know who she was - we sent letters/cards to her husband before they were married so we know it gets there!!

Their mail either gets given to her parents who live above their apartment (in the old town) or it gets handed in at the family apartments (near the beach - about 10 mins drive away) or at the pub our friends run (on the main road through Malia) - no difference in distance for the postie!!!

[Kilkis]

In ten years I have never seen a letter box in a door in Greece. Post boxes on the house wall or on the garden wall are common IF the postman actually delivers to the house. In our village he does but in many areas this does not happen. Sometimes people then have a post box in the local post office, a box in an array of boxes somewhere on the main street or collect from the local cafe. You need to ask locally.

Warwick

[margarita]

Occasionally, if we have a packet which is too big to go in the post box, Manolis the Post will stop his motor bike at the bottom of our steps and shout "Meester Pheeleep" until some one answers him.

I presume that if we don't answer, that's when he leaves the note in the post box and we collect the packet from the Post Office.

margarita

[Retired in Crete]

For over 12 months when we first moved here we had no address at all as there were no boxes available!

To pay bills we went, every so often, to the electricity co, water co etc with our meter numbers and asked for a bill which we then paid. I assume that they must have sent a bill somewhere but we never saw any post.

During this time we bought a car - the log book just gives the name of our village.

John

[filippos]

Like you, John, when we first moved here our address was the name of the village plus the name of the larger village 3Km away and the area post code. All mail delivered to the kafeneio.

Bills were also delivered to the kafeneio (some people's still are) - electricity by the postman and water bills by an employee of the dimos. With the water bills word circulated that the council man was at the kafeneio and people wandered down to collect them. The delivery man consumed a fair quantity of tsikoudia while this went on. Now they arrive by post for those who have boxes. The remaider are bulk delivered to the kafeneio.

Filippos.