Intro hi guys welcome back to my channel my name is tiffany i'm an expat living in greece and today i'm going to talk to you all about the changes to the travel restrictions to enter greece and a lot has changed and this is going to be a little bit confusing i've even started and stopped this video a few times because i realize that i'm not explaining it very well so as always if you have any questions please ask me in the comments below okay so it used to be that you had to be on this list of countries that was allowed in it included like the eu and the schengen zone and like 30 something countries that you could come from and be able to enter greece that's not the case anymore anyone can come to greece now so if you're coming from somewhere that's not the eu or the schengen zone and you're coming now and you're not coming from either the united states canada or australia then you need to take a either a pcr test 72 hours before arrival or a rapid test 24 hours before arrival now you may be asking well what if i'm coming from australia us or canada if you're vaccinated fully vaccinated within the last nine months then you can come to greece without taking a test now you can also come if you have a certificate of recovery um and there's some restrictions about how you approve that i'm gonna put the link to the travel website the grease travel website and it will have more details if that's how you're deciding to come now if you're not fully vaccinated you will need to take either the pcr or the rapid test depending on where you're coming from now if you're coming from the eu or the schengen zone you need to have the digital code pass so that you don't have to take a test if you're not coming from one of those countries with the pass then you can't come untested that slightly confusing if you're coming from the eu or the schengen zone and you don't have a digital code pass for your vaccines then you can't come without a test now there are a list of countries that are allowed in without testing if they have a recognized digital pass from the eu and it's a long list and i'm not going to go into the list here i will put those countries down in the description box below and if those countries are also on that travel website which if you don't want to go click on the link and you want to just head there directly it's travel.gov.gr and that has been the case this entire time Passenger Locator Form so no matter where you're coming from though you still need to fill out a passenger locator form and that form is also on that website one stop shopping here in greece now i've gotten a lot of questions lately about the passenger locator form and the kinds of tests that are allowed to be used to enter to into greece so i'm going to talk a little bit about the passenger locator form first and then about the tests the passenger locator form is really just for tracking and tracing purposes so it's going to ask you where you're staying now obviously lots of people come to greece and they come to athens they go to santorini they go to another island and they may come back to athens you don't need to have like listed all of those addresses it gives you options for two so just fill out the two first places that you're staying so let's say you're staying in athens for a night or two do that and then the first island or the next destination that you're going to you don't need to fill out a second form in fact you'll probably confuse the system if you do that so just put the first one and the second one depending on how long you're staying if you're staying five days and happens then just put the athens one don't worry about the rest because they're pretty much going to know within the 21st 24 hours of your arrival if someone on your flight tested positive for covid when they landed and that's because sometimes they are doing some random testing on arrival when i came back from the u.s in january i saw about two or three people get pulled over uh to get randomly tested and it was i don't even know if it was people from my flight because there were several other flights coming in at the same time Acceptable Tests now the types of tests that are allowed and acceptable i get this question all the time because i know that in the us the bionx now tests are like monitored rapid self-tests we don't really have those here in greece so i would avoid those at least to come to greece because i don't know if they're going to accept them or not it should be but i don't know if you want to take the risk that your test may or may not be accepted um and really if you have flown in the last year or two then you know that it's really the airline making these decisions because that's when they're checking your test they're not checking your tests necessarily at the border what they're going to be looking at here in greece is they're looking at your qr code that you get on that passenger locator form so it's really the airlines that are sort of scrutinizing your test results to see if they're acceptable so i would say that you either need to get your test done at a lab where you're going to get a very formal report with either a qr code or a barcode not that i've ever even scanned the qr code on my on my test results but um the other thing that you want to do even though it's not clearly a requirement is if you can get your passport number included on your test results that would be helpful it's just sort of like okay the person that took this test is the person that is checking into this flight the other option you could do is to go to a pharmacy in the u.s and get your pcr or your rapid test taken there i think that would be an acceptable thing to do just make sure that they do give you some sort of official document print out i think it's just save her bet that way and do make sure that the name and the date of birth match your passport so that way there's no confusion about that i think that's more important than anything else is that the information on the documents match your document that you're traveling on you can't take a self-test it's not allowed it's just not something they're accepting in lieu of either pcr or rapid test there are lots of things still happening here in greece as far as restrictions that you should be aware of now they are saying a lot of these restrictions will go away by march and i know we're sort of at the halfway point here in february so it's possible that what i'm mentioning now be changed by the time you come if you're coming in march so i will be making any announcements to travel restrictions over in my community tabs you want to make sure you're subscribed to my channel if you're coming to greece in the next say six months because i'm going to be doing these monthly and then i'll be updating over there as well in greece we are still required to wear masks inside and outside and if you're on public transportation or you're going into a supermarket you need to be wearing an n95 or an ffp2 mask in those situations um you will see people running around outside without masks on i think people are getting pretty tired of it here uh so just be aware though that it is a requirement so if someone were to stop to you and say why don't you have a mask on you could be fine and the last time i checked the fine was 300 euros so it's not cheap um Unvaccinated so wear your mask definitely wear your mask inside now a lot of places are not accepting people who are unvaccinated inside and there are some places that you can go inside if you have a rapid test within the last 48 hours showing a negative result so if you're coming unvaccinated you really need to consider about what it is that you're wanting to do while you're here and whether or not you're going to be able to do those things because you're not vaccinated i know this is a lot of information so again ask me in the comments below if you need clarification or if you need assistance like judging whether or not the test you're taking is going to work for you and i will say that if you have questions about your tests that are beyond me that you should probably contact your airline because they're the ones that are going to be able to answer that question best for you and i don't know what this situation is in a lot of countries as far as applying for a visa because i do know that a lot of countries you do need a visa to come here even before covid so i know that for a lot of embassies they weren't issuing visas um now that may be changing because it is opening up more so if you've been waiting to apply now is the time to contact your embassy in your country to see if you can apply for a greek schengen visa so that you can come because they may be backed up for a while so i would say that the sooner that you can get in with them the better because if you're wanting to say come in like september you may need to start that process now or at least get an appointment because i don't know how backed up they're gonna be all right guys i hope this was helpful i'll see you guys in the next video