My thoughts on Corfu. Pros and cons

Γειά σας φίλοι, I'm from Italy and have been coming to Corfu for five years in July and August. I have a half Italian and half corfiot girlfriend so I stay at her family's house. Since I hang out with locals, have learned some Greek, know many places frequented by locals and I'm a frequent traveler I am basically the exact opposite of the typical Italian tourist in Greece.

Here is a list of positives I noticed:

1. Free and abundant parking spots. In my home country you have to pay, and most of the times A LOT, to park you car on the street! And also parking spots are most the time non existent in cities. While obviously is not so easy to find a parking spot in Corfu Town in the evening in August, I always find one eventually. In Italy it would be impossible in 99% of the cities.

2. Psistarias. So delicious, convenient, cheap and are everywhere.

3. Pharmacies. There are a lot of them everywhere and some drugs cost 1/10 of Italy even if they are exactly the same!

4. A huge variety of restaurants, bars and things to do for visitors, mostly with a high price quality ratio if you do a little bit of research.

5. A huge variety of free beaches with clean, crystal clear water. In Italy, not everywhere but always in the most touristy places especially in the north, you have to pay outrageous prices to access the beach since 90% of the beaches are "owned" by establishments who infest the beaches with umbrellas and sunbeds and charge from 30€ to even 90€ a day to use them. Things are slowly changing since some of them are illegal and sketchy, but still free beaches are a minority, too small and obviously with no parking spots. Like I said it's not like that in the whole country but still it's a huge problem. In Corfu there are WAY fewer establishments and they are always cheaper anyways.

So in a nutshell, as a tourist your experience will be awesome.

However, hanging out with locals, I noticed that life for the average citizen is not so great most the times.
Some negatives are:

1. Basic infrastructure. Yesterday there was a rather brief thunderstorm, most the town was flooded and half of the island remained without electricity. In my area, which is Tzavros, we stayed without power for over 24 hours! Corfu has a huge problem with electricity, water and sewage infrastructure. The most shocking thing for me is that nobody does anything about it and for most people everything is NORMAL. Like it's normal staying without water or electricity. Here is an article about it.

2. Mobile data and signal. Your signal is absolutely ridiculous and the worst I have ever experienced in my life. And I have traveled in poorer countries, including Albania, Romania and Bulgaria. Not only that but you're mobile data offers are outrageous, 13€ a month for 1GB of non existent signal.

3. Mentality. Greek mentality is kind of the same of the south of Italy where I grew up. You could write an essay about it but in a nutshell is μάγκας attitude, ripping other people off and unwillingness to improve things in general.

4. Very low salaries for the cost of living.

Despite all this I love the island and always enjoy my time here. I hope things will improve faster that I envision.

By the way, if anyone in the area wants to hang out feel free to DM me! I'm also always happy to discuss about things and improve my Greek 🙂