6. Starting a Stamp Collection

One of the peculiarities of life here is the Greek obsession with form filling and authentication. Greece is far from being a third world country and has embraced all aspects of modern technology. Nearly everyone you meet has a mobile phone; antique cars with hundreds of thousands of kilometers on the clock have been replaced by shiny new models from all over Europe and the Far East, and computers and the internet are firmly embedded in every day life.
Now in other countries all this technology has led towards the paperless society; but not in Greece. They are obsessively reluctant to do away with forms and rubber stamps. The rubber stamp seems to be coveted by private and government employees as a symbol of power and position and every document you need must have one, but preferably more! Our housebuilding friend had 5 on a one sided form to state that he had been in the country for less than 3 months when he bought his car. 1 was the police station stamp, 1 was the officers' personal stamp, 1 was the police force stamp, 1 was a date stamp and last, but not least, the stamp that actually authenticated the document!!
Our collection started when we needed to open a bank account. Before you can have a bank account, or anything else in Greece, you have to have a personal tax number, obtainable, in our case, at the local tax office in Parga.
Simple, yes?
No!!
Apart from producing your passport etc. you need a local person to vouch for you. From what we can gather this is because very few roads in the area are named, so you don't have an actual address as you would in the UK. So they insist on having someone who they already "have on the books" vouch for you in case they need to contact you. The fact that we had a Greek Post Office box made no difference.
We went down to the office with a Greek friend from the village, with our forms filled in and all the necessary documentation. On entering the office the first person he laid eyes on was his niece, and this was to prove problematic a few minutes later. After the usual pleasantries with his niece we approached the appropriate (frosty faced) clerk and a short conversation in Greek ensued as our friend explained our situation. Exchanges then became quite heated between the two and then our sponsor suddenly switched to English. In a loud voice he began to deride the staff; "Our taxes pay you lot to sit on your backsides all day and drink coffee," was the gist of it.
The frosty faced clerk unfortunately understood, took on the appearance of a bulldog chewing a wasp, and launched a very firm response.
This was translated to me as, "This bitch overheard my conversation with my niece, she knows I am going to be working in Crete for the summer and they won't be able to contact you through me. So now she refuses to let me vouch for you."
Crestfallen, we gathered up our paperwork and sloped out of the office.
As we trudged back up the hill to the car another friend (Theo) from the village approached us on his scooter and, in desperation, I nearly pulled him off it. I explained what had happened and asked if he would vouch for us, knowing him to be more likely to be able to charm the Harpie of Parga.
Happily for us, he agreed and a few minutes later we meekly followed him to the desk. The clerks expression had mellowed to that of a granite cliff face by this time, so we were not hopeful.
Theo calmly began a conversation with the clerk and after a few exchanges she visibly softened, Theo turned to us and said everything was OK, and he left us in her charge. As we waited much photocopying of our documents was taking place and printers were chattering away spewing out pages. The now pleasant faced lady explained that the whole process would take some time and perhaps we would like to sit down and wait.
We took our seats and watched as she busily filled this and that in, stapled forms together and typed away on her keyboard. Shortly she paused as though all was done and we had a clear view as she raised her hand and brought down her symbol of power onto our first official Greek document. The sense of relief was incredible, we thanked her profusely as she handed us the all important forms and we fairly skipped out of the office.
We had the first stamps of what will be an ever growing collection!!