Leaving Greece

Me and Martin left for Corfu on the 6.00am Thomson flight from Birmingham and Russell on the 6.15am from Stansted.  Both planes were scheduled to land at exactly the same time and I thought that might be quite interesting!  But I reckon our pilot cheated and speeded up.  So we got there first. 

So far so good.  Until we found that all the taxi drivers – throughout the whole of Greece – were on strike!  Something about not having any money I think, and this on the day when we (well, the Germans mainly) have given them a load more money.  Ungrateful buggers!

Anyway, being a resourceful fellow, I left the milling crowd and went back into the terminal to rent a car.  The lady at Hertz was great, and had a great sense of humour ‘cos she gave us a Fiat Panda – a ‘pink’ Fiat Panda!  For three blokes and three cases! (I didn’t know Russ could get his knees up behind his ears.  Did you, Lisa?)   I really meant to take a photo of this car but they took it away when we weren’t looking!

So we arrived at the boat and all was fine.  Martin set about fitting the anchor motor we’d brought with us and me and Russ set about drinking beer.  No we didn’t – we went shopping – aah!  The anchor now works perfectly.  He’s a genius!

After that we needed to go to the Port Authority to have our papers stamped so that we could leave Greece.

Now, I know why the Greek economy is in a mess.  No, I really do.  But I can’t say because I’ll be accused of being racist.  But I do know, honestly.

Let me put it this way.  Mercedes, BMWs and Audis are really good cars, aren’t they?  But Greek cars are…well… no… they don’t make any, do they?  So what do they make (except yogurt, and maybe urns)?  Now, the reason for this is because they’re really, really nice, friendly, relaxed people (except taxi drivers, obviously) and they simply do not have the time to do any real work!

You’ll realise why I say this when you read the next bit…

How to Leave Greece

1.     Go to the Marina Office and be told to go to the Harbour Authority – which is shut! (Hours – 9am to 2pm)

2.     Go on another day, when it’s open, and fill in a form with a list of passengers.  These are now different passengers from when we arrived as Jayne and Ros are back in England.  But apparently, that doesn’t matter.  But it does matter because no one checked our passports when we arrived so, if we’re not here, how can we leave?

3.     Get lots of stamps and then be told we have to go to Passport Control (for a stamp) which is in the Ferry Terminal in Corfu Town, about four miles away.  Luckily we still had the ‘Pink Panda’ otherwise we would have had to get a taxi………yeh, I know!

4.     Drive to the Ferry and Cruise Ship Terminal, go to the wrong place (twice!) and finally go through Cruise Ship Security (x-ray machine and all!) to Passport Control...... which was shut!  They said they man would be back in 10 minutes but after 30 minutes he wasn’t back so we tried to leave – except that they wouldn’t let us.  But that was OK because they said he would be back in 10 minutes…..  (the Germans would have assembled three Audis while all this was going on!)

5.     He turned up, told us we didn’t need our passports stamped and said we have to go to the Port Police – for a stamp!

6.     We drove there, still in the Ferry Port, got another stamp and were proudly told that we could now leave Greece – even though we weren’t here!

Driving back to the Marina we were very puzzled.  We’d spent the whole afternoon trying to leave Greece.  But does anybody care?

We’ve decided to go straight from here to Montenegro today and miss out Albania.  ‘Couldn’t go through any more bureaucratic sh**!  Apparently, the Albanians are worse than the Greeks!  And anyway, we only have 11 days and there are things to do and places to see.

Bemused!  After a day's 'stamp collecting'.

Now that's better!

PS.  I was going to take another photo of the boat again but it’s parked amongst all the superyachts and looks tiny.  So I didn’t .