Tangled webs & Gordian knots
04 August 2009
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.