"This is the way Greece is"

I hate that excuse. All Greeks like to use it when something is totally disorganized: "This is just the way Greece is...". There's an old Greek joke that says when someone dies and goes to heaven the cook is Greek and everything is organized by the British, but if you die and go to hell the cook is British and it is organized by the Greeks. This is very true. I remember several years ago driving from Germany through Switzerland and Italy before getting on an overnight ferry to go to Greece. The traffic and roads in Germany and Switzerland were organized and orderly, once you get to Italy things started getting a bit wilder and free-wheeling, and by the time you got to the ferry boat line there was yelling, honking, and you could tell you were on the way to Greece.

The reason I am a bit ticked off today is because I had to waste 2 hours to get a train ticket. Why? Because they only take phone reservations up to 48 hrs before the train leaves. So, I had to take the metro down to the Larissa station. There you have take a number (kind of like the deli in the states) and wait for your # to come up. What pisses me off is they have 2 people handling 100 customers, and then 4 people sitting on their asses in front of windows that are for very specific needs that have no people in line. Then, after about an hour, they decide to start utilizing their human resources to help clear the line since it is OBVIOUS that a magical line is not going to appear for their "specific" windows.

This is what everyone says is their biggest frustration with Greece - the bureaucracy. It would take me about a couple of days to totally reshuffle that whole station - but no manager currently cares to. They are happy with their jobs and it "seems to work", so why change anything? I mean, they have cueing lines going perpendicular to main traffic areas, so, people in line have to get out of the way when individuals need to get through the station.

With the implementation of internet booking for this train, and a couple of automated machines, you could eliminate the cue in 1/2 easily.I'm not going to hold my breathe though because "this is the way Greece is" – next time I will book the train early or just pay extra to take a damn plane.