At 3:30 am, we were off and running, we borrowed Arthur's fathers van for the day and drove down to Pireas Port, Athens (200 miles from Kalampaka). We arrived just before 7:30 and found a spot at the port just before the police blocked off the area for vehicles to park for free. We had a greek coffee at a very lovely Internet cafe (the cleanest toilets in Athens that I have seen), then we went to the shipping company to get the official papers to allow us to enter the port and get my stuff at the warehouse. P.S. that shipping company was a rip off, even the port official said they had charged to much, so do not use Delpa shipping if you can avoid it.
And our Odyssey begins:
GREEK BUREAUCRACY
We arrived at the warehouse holding my belongings, we gave the proper papers to the port official, he gave us another paper to go to the entrance customs building. We double parked so I stayed in the car and Arthur went inside, to get the official papers to get into the warehouse and to view the belongings. He was gone so long that I was getting a little concerned and was thinking of leaving the vehicle to go investigate, but he came out with a tale of many windows many stamps and signatures. With the papers we received we showed the port official and he allowed us to look at our stuff and then they looked into two boxes and he gave us another paper telling us to go to the port customs office. At this customs office our main goal was to get the proper stamps and signatures allowing us to remove the goods from the warehouse, another hour goes by and we have finally gone through all of the steps to remove our items. We go back to the warehouse and a nice forklift guy helped bring my belonging out and then we loaded the truck up and left Athens. We left at 1:30 six hours of running around and no food in our stomachs, later I will write to you about what we had to eat on our trip home.
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