Yes Pippa, I guess everybody is surprised when they are first confronted with this and many other things in Greece. Greece is very much like Africa in many ways. Maybe that's why I like it so much

Just never come to Greece with the expectation to be in Europe!
Greece is just starting to supply seperate dustbins for splitting recycable rubbish like plastic, glass and paper. Until today everything lands on one big mountain of rubbish dump outside Athens. Can you imagine? A rubbish-dump for 5 million people without seperating the rubbish at all !!!
Greek ID cards are in Greek letters, no-one outside Greece can read them, so Greek people have to travel with their Passport within Europe !!!

Getting official papers can take months !!

Importing a car from anywhere in Europe, you pay upto 80% tax !!

Driving a motorbike without helmet? No problem, the police don't care even if you stop right next to them!!

... I could go on for ever, but I love the Country - maybe because of this :-O

we separate our rubbish but they just put it together in some places in germany...a scandal
the passport thing should be an issue for the eurocrates!
and the car import thing should be reported to the EU kommission! i don't think this is legal because greece has ratified schengen agreement on free trade which also covers the fact that a eu citizen shall pay only once VAT and NO import tax!

take a look at the Greek Embassy (Berlin) website and see yourself...

[URL=http://www.griechische-botschaft.de/wirtschaft/meldungen/40211.htm]Greek Embassy Berlin - Car import[/URL] (German language only).

Should we send this link to Brussel? But you can be sure they know about it.