Annie Angelopoulou had never been to the west of Ireland before she moved in 2017 from her native Greece to Ennis, Co Clare.
“I had been to Ireland once, the year before,” when attending the Christmas party of the IT company she works for, says the 60-year-old. “I knew that [Ennis] was a small town as I’d seen pictures of it.”
Angelopoulou first spent time with Irish people when working on an IT project in Montenegro, as her boss there was Irish. “That was a really challenging project ... but I was the team leader there and managed it well.”
At the end of the project, Angelopoulou was offered a permanent position in Ireland.
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“At first it was a shock, a good shock, but I was frightened.”
Her husband, Dimitris Tsotsos, told her to follow her dreams. He also works in IT and had previously taken a job in Copenhagen for four years.
“I just dived into the deep sea without thinking about it too much. Ten days after they offered me this job, my heart started beating fast and I said, yes, this is exactly what I would love to do.”
She says Ireland is very “exotic” for Greek people as it is on the opposite side of Europe and has such a different climate. Before moving she had two main concerns. How would she cope with the Irish weather? And would she be able to build community here?
When friends from Austria, the Netherlands and Slovakia heard she was moving Ireland, she says they said: Are you crazy? “When I was working in Estonia I would stay there for two weeks at a time and would cry out of joy when I got back to Athens and saw the sun.”
Today, Angelopoulou has a considered perspective when talking about Ireland’s weather.
“You know whenever Irish people complain about the weather I say, I understand you ... because all civilisations throughout humanity’s history had deities related to the sun. But I say you have the sunshine in your hearts.”
She was in Ireland during the second Covid-19 lockdown, and says that was when she really became enmeshed in the local community.
She smiles when she talks about Ennis, saying she has been met with nothing but kindness from landlords, her boss and the wider community.
“My landlords are the kindest people. I met kindness here and respect at work. I felt that I was flourishing.”
[ ‘In Ireland I can say I’m an artist and I’m not seen as a hippy’Opens in new window ]
Initially, Angelopoulou thought she would stay in Co Clare for a year. However, seven years have passed and she doesn’t see herself leaving any time soon. Her husband works remotely and comes to stay for months at a time, and she goes back to visit Greece a few times a year.
One aspect of life in Ireland she appreciates is that she finds people value privacy.
“With my landlords, our houses are adjacent so sometimes they pass in front of my garden to go to their garden, but they never look inside the window,” she says.
“In Greece people just knock on your door and come in. This never happens here. Irish people will first text or call and say: ‘Will you be available?’ In Greece it’s completely different. They invade your space in a way which I don’t like.”
Her decision to leave Greece had been years in the making, one big factor being the unrelenting sexism she faced in her career as an IT developer.
“I got married very young; I was 20 years old. We had a child when I was 22 years old. I started working freelance [as an IT developer] in 1990. So I was young and chasing contracts on my own. The IT world is a male-dominated world. I was completely, you know, like a fly in the milk.”
Giving a sense of what she encountered, she says: “You would be presenting to a potential client about what can be done in the IT sector. You have a business meeting and at the end of the discussion with a very serious straight face the client tells me, ‘Okay, if you go to bed with me, I will consider your proposal’. So I was fed up, I was really fed up.”
[ ‘Ireland and Greece are like sister countries’Opens in new window ]
Eventually she started to work abroad for international companies as she felt the working conditions were much better.
However, it wasn’t only workplace sexism that led Angelopoulou to want to leave Greece. More fundamentally, she felt disconnected from her home country.
“I never identified myself as Greek. I am Greek in the way that I follow Greek traditions and that I love Greek food but I have always identified myself as European.”
Ireland’s housing shortage was an issue when Angelopoulou relocated to Ennis. “It was difficult to find a house.”
Though she eventually managed to find somewhere within her budget which was in walking distance of her new office, she wasn’t able to view it . Her new boss viewed the house and sent her some pictures of it. Satisfied, she signed a lease.
“I had fallen in love with the house since I first saw it on Daft.ie ... The house is small for Irish standards. I mean, it only has two rooms, two bedrooms, as they say. But I don’t need much more. And with a lovely garden in front of me.”
Angelopoulou and her husband aren’t big drinkers but do enjoy the occasional beer in one of their local pubs in Ennis. She laughs as she recounts how in Ireland whenever she asks for a beer a bartender automatically assumes that she would like a pint and starts reaching for a pint glass. At this point Angelopoulou has to intervene, “And I said, no, no, half pint, please”.
“Ireland is my happy place. It warms my heart. For me it’s everything.”
[ ‘In Ireland I can say I’m an artist and I’m not seen as a hippy’Opens in new window ]
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
