This will be the last entry involving bureaucratic procedures until we have to renew our Turkish visas at the end of September/beginning of October.
Honest.
In order to clear out of Greece we had to deal with the following authorities in the right order: passport control, immigration, health, customs and finally port police to get our transit log stamped for exit to Turkey. As we wanted to leave at sparrow fart the next day, we decided to start early and at 7:30 we walked into Kos town with our documentation.
We found passport control and immigration straight away. It was easily identified by the 500 metre queue of gently baking, wilting tourists that wound its way tortuously across the sun blasted car park, snaking round rubbish bins, parked cars, coaches and fume-belching lorries. Every 15 minutes or so the queue would shuffle forwards and 2 or 3 people would step gratefully into the air conditioned office. In this time, of course another coachload would have joined the tail.
Working on the principle that the glut of potential day trippers would have cleared in a couple of hours we took ourselves off and spent a happy hour or so pottering around the castle, from where we could keep an eye on the queue. Once we'd seen that it had dwindled to the merely ludicrous we joined the end. As we approached the doors we became uncertain as to whether we were in the right place, as all those in front of us were going straight through after processing and boarding large cruise boats.
We asked a tour rep who said "Oh no - you don't want to be here - you want to be in the other office by the cafeteria." So off we went. Further enquiries at said office elicited the response that "Oh no - you don't want to be here, you want to be in the other office you've just come from". On our return, of course, another coachload of Germans had joined the end of the queue.
By now it was 11:00 and we were getting hungry and thirsty. The sign on the office door said that the office hours were 08:00 - 21:00, so we decided to have a coffee and a bite to eat and come back in about an hour. Fortified with a toastie and a fresh orange juice we returned to find that the queue had completely disappeared. We also found that the door was shut and locked.
A helpful guy from customs told us that, having just cleared all the daytrippers out, they were now all busy round the other side clearing the Turkey to Greece daytrippers in. He suggested we go and have a coffee and come back in about an hour.
An hour's stroll later found us back at immigration and the door still locked. This time we were directed down the side of the building where we found an open window. Behind this window was an office in which was a uniformed guy sitting drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. Not a day-tripper in sight.
We were just wondering about the advisability of distracting him from his labours, when a local tour rep turned up. She yelled through the window at him and he put down the racing results. On his approach, Bob explained that we wanted to clear out. "When are you leaving?" he asked. "Early tomorrow morning" we said.
"Come back at 7 p.m." he said, letting the tour rep in then shutting and locking the door in our faces.
It's fairly pointless trying to argue with a shut door so we resignedly trudged all the way back to the marina to see the port police and sort out that end of the paperwork. What naïve little optimists we were. It has to be done in the right order. No exceptions. So, we had to go back to Kos at 7 p.m. to get our passports cleared before we could clear out with health, then customs and then finally with the port police.
"Unfortunately," the charming Port Policewoman informed us, "we shut at 4 p.m."
This was getting quite Kafkaesque.
It turned out, though, that there was a Port Police office in Kos town which was open 24 hours a day, so we resigned ourselves to a lost evening and another long walk into town and back, carrying every piece of documentation we could find, which was quite a lot.
To our great surprise, our evening attempt couldn't have gone more smoothly. Smiling immigration officials cheerily stamped forms and joshed in a manly way about Bob's rucksack. Bob didn't realise when he bought it, but this is franchised merchandise of Olymbiakos football club, who are the Greek equivalent of Man U.
Apparently.
Customs and health must have also been Olymbiakos fans as we sped through there with smiles and jokes and were personally escorted to the Port Police where the same happened and we were spat out the other end after only 40 minutes with all the paperwork sorted.
No-one ever did ask us for the hard-earned receipt for the 88 cent tax either.
We left Kos early the next morning in a strengthening wind and started on a cracking sail, reaching 7 knots in a lumpy sea. Just as we were getting the hang of it and starting to really enjoy it, the wind dropped and swung round on to the nose. After that it was motorsail all the way to Marmaris.
Entry into Turkey requires flying the Q flag and then visiting the following, in the right order: Harbour master (where you obtain a transit log and pay harbour and light dues); health (where you sign an affidavit that you're not importing any unauthorised unpleasant infections); immigration and passport control (where you need to obtain visas valid for 90 days); Customs (where you list every item on the boat worth more than £2:50, along with the relevant make, model, colour, age and serial number) and finally customs patrol who, if they're particularly bored, may want to come on board and have a rummage through your knicker drawer.
This is the peculiar phenomenon of deja vue.
The fees for all of this amounted to about 130 euros. For an extra 20 euros you can pay an agent to do it all for you. This involves handing over all your papers, including passports, boat registration documents etc and not seeing them again for 24 hours. So we chose an agent linked to the marina. Then at least we know where to point the finger if Birvidik suddenly turns out to be owned by an Albanian people-trafficking ring and we get pulled up at any borders because some computer links our passports with actions by assorted terrorists, international prostitution barons, political dissidents, mafia hitmen, money launderers, Shin Bet agents, illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.
Your starter for 10 - which two of the above might have some basis in historical truth?
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Attentive readers (you know who you are) will already be aware of the complexities of Greek bureaucracy as it applies to cruising yachts. There is a theoretical requirement (unmeetable in practice) to visit the port police and clear in and out of every port visited within two hours of arrival or departure. This is honoured more in the breach than the observance, but it becomes more complex when you intend to sail out of Greek waters.
It's bad enough going to another EU country, but to leave for a non EU country sets alarm bells ringing in the bureaucratic brain. If said non EU country happens to be The Old Enemy, namely Turkey, it immediately arouses deep suspicion in what passes for the official neocortex that there is some reprehensible motive behind such a visit. The fact that the Turkish coast is often within spitting distance of the Port Police office seems irrelevant. Or possibly even contributory.
Most marinas have come to some form of accommodation between the ludicrous demands of officialdom and the economic realities of trying to make a living out of the waterborne community. All the paperwork, if done at all, can be done in one go, usually by the marina staff. Kos has the (mostly deserved) reputation of being one of the best in Greece. As a result, Bob tripped with light heart and heavy document case to the marina office to deal with the paperwork and clear in.
At first, all went according to plan. Transit logs were stamped, passports perused, crew lists photocopied to within an inch of their lives and florid signatures inscribed on any blank areas of paper that had so far escaped unblemished. Just as he thought it was all done and he was about to leave, the charming Port Policewoman added as an aside "Oh and you have to pay a tax." This was a new one on Bob. "Oh - what's that for?" he asked. She looked a bit confused by this, and said that she didn't really know but thought it might be something to do with light dues.
"OK", says Bob with some trepidation - "How much?"
"88 cents" (= about 72 pence).
Bob proffered a 1 euro coin, expecting on previous experience to be sent to the nearest knocking shop to try to get some change. "Oh no - you can't pay it here" he was told "You have to pay it at the local tax office." Upon enquiry it turns out that the tax office was local in the same sense that Alpha Centauri is referred to by astronomers as local. It may be the nearest star but it's still 3 ½ bleedin' light years away.
The exact whereabouts of this tax office appeared to be covered by the Official Secrets Act. The Port Policewoman said something about go out the main gate, turn right and go on until faint from hunger and then ask someone else. The guy in the marina office was trying to impress a rather attractive new recruit. He smiled knowingly at her and bemusedly at the map - it didn't help that he held it upside down. Then he very confidently said "Ah yes - it's here" and, with a dramatic flourish, drew a circle on the map. The trouble was that this circle covered an area only fractionally smaller than Greater Manchester. Bob pressed him for more accuracy and got an embarrassed muttering of "somewhere behind Goody's bar" before he hustled the recruit into the stationery cupboard to explain the intricacies of the photocopier.
Bowing to the inevitable, we set off in search of the elusive tax office. We found Goody's bar about 5 miles away in the centre of Kos town. Alongside it, rather than behind it, was a large, imposing building with high gates, intimidating steps, a huge, sod off, Greek flag and a sign saying 'Tax Office' in Greek.
Bob bounded up the steps, approached the young man behind the desk and intimated that he'd like to pay some tax. Offering to pay a tax without the application of thumbscrews and the threat of defenestration was obviously a novelty to the young man who was temporarily flummoxed, but recovered admirably. "What tax?" he asked. Bob produced the 'instruction to pay a tax' piece of paper that the port police had given him. Unfortunately it had been printed on the back of what appeared to be a summons for some major infraction of international maritime law. The Greeks have managed to engineer a system that combines the most complicated red tape imaginable with a chronic shortage of paper.
Once this had been clarified, luckily before the expected telephone call and subsequent arrest, he said that what we wanted was not his establishment, but the LOCAL tax office. "Where, exactly, was the LOCAL tax office" we asked? "Behind Goody's bar" he said, as if to a particularly thick and inattentive teenager. We risked official wrath and disdain by asking for more explicit instructions and were told to go out, right, then left, then left again and it's down an alley.
It was, indeed, down an alley. It wasn't marked or signposted. In fact it was one of the few buildings there that didn't have a bloody great Greek flag outside it. What gave it away was a combination of its rather dingy appearance and the constant flow of people in and out carrying sheaves of paper and wearing that expression, equal parts anger, irritation and resignation, common to those dealing with tax offices the world over.
Bob climbed the dingy staircase and found himself in a large room, cluttered throughout with shoulder high piles of cardboard boxes, all of which were stuffed to overflowing with files, folders and loose papers. They blocked access to the numerous booths, each of which had a long queue at it and none of which had any indication of what they dealt with. There were boxes stuffed under desks and piled up in front of the fire exits. Loose papers that had escaped the overstuffed boxes were trampled underfoot like autumn leaves. "That's where all the paper's gone" thought Bob. "There are probably hundreds of rooms like this in every Greek village, town and city. The entire country's one big fire hazard."
The question now was which queue to join, only to wait for half an hour to be told that you were in the wrong queue and will now have to join the end of that really long one over there. However, we've seen the technique in action at Greek post offices. Bob looked for the queue which had someone at the front holding the rest of the queue up whilst he laboriously filled in some form or other. He then nipped in front of everyone waving his piece of paper and asked the guy if he should join this queue. Obviously, the guy pointed him to the longest queue in the room, which he meekly joined.
Upon reaching the front he waved his piece of paper at the woman behind the glass and made 'I want to pay' noises. She looked at him and said 'Passport!' It was, of course, on the boat. Bob's Greek wasn't up to bureaucratic wrangling and his nemesis wasn't going to admit to speaking any language other than Greek but he refused to be dismissed and let the rest of the queue through. He was rewarded by a very helpful and probably self interested Greek gentleman from further back who came forward and translated, only to be rewarded by the dragon behind the glass with a scowl that could curdle milk at twenty paces.
After he'd argued with her for 5 minutes it turned out that a passport wasn't required at all, she only wanted it to see how Bob's name was spelled. The fact that it was PRINTED IN CAPITAL LETTERS on the piece of paper he'd given here had somehow passed her by. With consummate bad grace she completed a form, stamped it in several places, signed it in two places got Bob to sign it in three places and gave him the top copy.
Bob got out his 88 cents and offered it.
"Not here - Pay over there" she said in English, pointing at the longest queue in the room.
It only took another 20 minutes after that.
So - 88 cent tax paid. Now all we had to do was clear out through passport control, immigration, customs, health authorities and port police and we could go to Turkey.
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The trip to Kalymnos was uneventful, apart from what we suspect to have been a sonic boom which made Liz jump out of her skin. Bob dozed on contentedly. We entered a very protected anchorage in Emborius and picked up a buoy that had been laid by one of the local tavernas. This, of course, obliged us to go and eat there in the evening, but such are the trials of the cruising life.
We were last here on a package holiday in 1998, when it was hitting 45 degrees during the day and 35 degrees at night. It's not much cooler now.
One thing we have noticed in the Aegean is the relative dearth of Brits. There are plenty of Red Ensigns, but the boats are all owned/crewed by other nationalities, mainly Greek. It turns out it's a tax dodge. With Gordon Brown banging on about tax havens the words 'mote', 'beam' and 'eye' spring to mind.
Other than that there are plenty of Dutch, Germans, French, Austrians and Norwegians with a scattering of Swedes and other nationalities, but very few Brits. This isn't much of a problem as all of these nationalities converse with the others in English, but it's not quite as relaxed as conversing all together in the same native tongue.
There was, however, a Brit boat with a Brit crew in the anchorage and they went ashore and took a table in the taverna. We arrived later and sat a couple of tables down. We had thought of acknowledging them and striking up a conversation on the way in, but decided to get a drink first. It was just as well we did.
One of the three had managed to work his was through 2 litres of wine before the meal had even started. He was one of the most unpleasant, arrogant, pompous, inconsiderate, boastful, loud, obnoxious, overbearing, boorish, argumentative, xenophobic saloon bar bores we've ever been unfortunate enough to come across. We just sat in the corner avoiding eye contact and trying to look foreign. Luckily he was so self-obsessed he didn't even give us a second glance, let alone try to engage us in conversation.
We left the next morning for Kos. This is very close to Turkey and there are patriotic symbols all along the coast. On the Greek side this usually takes the form of huge Greek flags (100 + metres across) made up of blue and white stones strategically placed on hillsides facing directly towards Turkey. The Turks counter this by erecting bloody great flagpoles all over the place and flying Turkish flags the size of marquees from them. The symbolic equivalent of the playground 'Nyah nyah na na na!" . As Bertrand Russell so aptly put it "Nationalism is just tribalism with flags."
Kos is a brilliant marina in a lovely town on a fascinating island. This was just as well as we were stuck here for 5 days due to a slight technical hitch.
Bob was performing his thrice daily obeisance to the ammeter when he remarked "Blimey that solar panel's pushing in a lot of amps." Then he had a thought and reckoned it was too much current even for a 135 watt panel. So he disconnected it. Still loads of amps going in. Strange. So he disconnected everything that could put current in or draw it out. Still loads of amps going in. So he isolated both battery banks. Still loads of amps going in.
He was getting quite excited by this time, reckoning he'd inadvertently found a way to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy. A glittering future of limitless clean energy on tap beckoned for mankind, not to mention fame and fortune for Bob.
He left everything disconnected and went to sleep to have a think about it. He couldn't sleep. But he could think about it.
On further investigation he found that one of the five series pairs of batteries was a trifle warm. Well, hot actually. Bloody hot. These were rapidly disconnected and extracted. On reconnecting the rest of the batteries and bridging the gap where he'd removed the hot batteries he found the problem had gone away, as had his chances of revolutionising energy technology. It turned out that one of the pair had sulphated, causing a short. This resulted in the other one discharging into the shorted battery, producing heat, a second knackered battery and spurious readings on the ammeter.
All that was needed now were two new deep cycle, 90 AH wet batteries which fitted into the available space. Bob went, more with hope than confidence, to the local chandlery who said they could have them by the next morning. Which, much to our amazement, they did, and quite reasonable at 135 euros each. Having hacked off a few flanges round the edges of both batteries he managed to fit them in and all was now well.
All that was left to do now was to explore the island of Kos and to work our way through the labyrinthine Greek bureaucracy so that we could clear out of Greece in order to be able to clear into Turkey.
The former was relatively easy and painless. The latter will be described in tedious detail in the next entry.
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