It's a Mad, Mad World

Greece has to be one of the few places as chaotic as we imagine our Motherland (China) would be. The locals refuse to line up in an orderly fashion at the restaurants, pubs, ferries... everyone crowds around the cashier, ticket agent, etc., and those that aren't in front skip to the front by going around the sides of the lines. The buses, ferries and subways are always late, making it pointless to rush around trying to catch the next, scheduled transport.

Riding the high-speed ferry from Santorini to Mykonos was an experience! We arrived at Athenios Port and saw an enormous, mile-long line trying to squeeze into this narrow (think 3-5 people wide) entrance way to the docking area. After about 15 minutes, we started getting worried because our boat had almost emptied out all the arrivals and we were probably numbers 150 and 151 in line; there was no way all these people were getting onto that boat. We inquired with the man who seemed to be running the show. All of a sudden, he started yelling for everyone on the 11:50 AM high-speed ferry to move to the front of the line along the sides of the line.

From that point on, it was madness. The people already in line for our high-speed ferry didn't appreciate people passing them on the sides. One Aussie tried to start a fight with a group of teenage American girls. To make matters worse, there were a bunch of people waiting in line who weren't on our ferry; they were waiting for their non high-speed ferry boat which was delayed by an hour. Obviously, they didn't appreciate getting bypassed by all the people waiting for our ferry. Meanwhile, people were getting squeezed up against the 3-5 person wide dock entrance way... sorta like cramming into a cool concert... only without the cool concert part. Finally, they started letting people onto our boat. Unfortunately, many of the people who were waiting for the delayed boat were already inside the terminal, meaning that they had to squeeze against the sides of the terminals with their luggage so that we could get past them!

It was even worse once we all made it onto the ferry. They had these little stations inside the boats for people to store their luggage. Of course, there was no queue for the luggage stations. All the frustrated travelers fought their way to the front of the luggage station lines so that they could put their stuff down and take their seats. After everyone finally got settled in, we started our 3.5 hr. journey to Mykonos... we both got seasick. Good times!