Why things in Greece are screwed up? - A personal experience

I happen to be Greek citizen. Maybe my name doesn’t suggest so and doesn’t convince some officers at custom crossings, but yes indeed, I’m a citizen of Greece. Since my childhood I've known things to work "slightly" slowly in Greece, but hey, didn't Greece import the European standards? Wouldn't this suggest that things will start improving eventually? Anyway, set aside surrealism, today (December 16th 2011) I had to call the Greek consulate in Den Haag because I need to renew my passport which is going to expire in January 2012. Before making the call I even checked my schedule to see which day will be convenient for me to make the heroic act of travelling from Eindhoven to Den Haag for this very purpose. I had a short conversation over the phone with a serious officer in the consulate, who informed me that they accept passport renewal applications only and only with appointments. After this conversation I felt as if I bumped a wall and woke-up from a dream in Wonderland. The Greek consulate in Den Haag, whose one of the main existence purposes is to renew passports of Greek citizens living abroad, can give me an appointment for July in 2012 (in other words, in about seven months)! As if this is not enough, it takes them about two months to complete the process before I can receive my new passport! What the....?!?! It’ll take me about nine months to renew my passport in a world where it takes about nine months for women to give birth to a new life! (Hey, doesn't it take only seven for some?) So, the only option I've left with is to travel to the main office in Athens to renew my passport. Anything short than that will take close to a year before I can renew just a passport. Instead of travelling from Eindhoven to Den Haag for a relatively simple paperwork, I have to travel from Eindhoven to Athens (Come-on, maybe I complain too much, what is such a small thing between a glorious country and its citizens?!) Thank you very much and I wish all the best to the new government in Greece to somehow collect about 300 billion Euros to pay the current debt. Given how "fast"(!) things work even with the simplest things, it might take them about 5000 years to achieve this.

-Ali Chousein