Yup, I said it. Sue me.
I just spent a week yachting around Greece—Saronic Islands, Athens, the whole shimmering blue postcard fantasy. But once I stepped onto dry land, my Mediterranean reverie quickly gave way to a recurring feeling: why is everything here so painstakingly slow, so resistant to convenience, and seemingly designed to test one’s patience?
Let’s start at the most universal level: time moves differently in Greece. And not in a laid-back, romantic “island time” way that makes you want to sip ouzo under the sunset. I mean, things just don’t get done. Ferries rarely adhere to schedules. Restaurant service can feel like a multigenerational saga. Lines for basic amenities – tickets, transportation, even the simplest snacks – stretch on as if orchestrated for some ancient test of endurance. With every bureaucratic hurdle and every hour lost, you sense a system simply not built for efficiency, but for endless, ritualistic waiting.
Now let’s talk transportation, a basic requirement for any country that welcomes, on average, more than 30 million tourists a year. In Athens, Uber was effectively forced out by regulatory pushback, leaving traditional taxi operators to fill the void. Instead of competition driving prices down or pushing quality up, you’re left with a patchwork of unreliable apps and inconsistent drivers – for often shocking prices.
If you want to call a taxi, you’ll jump through local apps that behave just as poorly as Uber; if you try to hail one off the street, prepare to be ignored, or to spend half an hour sweating curbside in the noonday sun. Public transportation, meanwhile, creaks under its own weight. Between underfunding and a lack of real-time information, even seasoned travelers find themselves stumped.
You’d imagine that, with one-fifth of the economy tied to tourism, Greece would be a model of welcoming charm. Instead, there’s an unmistakable edge in the air – a tiredness, even resentment – among locals toward the very visitors the economy relies on. Whether due to years of overcrowding or the fatigue of constant crisis (economic, migratory, and now climatic), being treated as a walking wallet in need of processing rather than a guest is a sentiment hard to shake.
Sadly, the slowness and mediocrity weren’t confined to public life – they shaped even the “premium” experiences. Before and after our yacht trip, we stayed at two well-known international hotel brands, both advertised as four and five stars. The reality was a far cry from what those ratings promise – rooms not only tired, but with holes in their walls and broken furniture, check-in processes glacially slow, basic requests greeted with confusion or casual indifference. In all honesty, I’ve stayed in tiny, independently run hotels in rural Philippines that offered more comfort, better service, and genuine warmth. Here, big European and American brands seemed content to ride on reputation, sacrificing actual quality for the barest minimum. When your luxury stay feels worse than a remote guesthouse half a world away, you can’t help but wonder: what exactly are visitors paying for?
And don’t get me started on technology. Trying to navigate, you’ll find basic information missing or outdated – Google Maps isn’t much help when bus and business schedules are off by hours or routes aren’t listed at all. Want to pay by card or use a modern booking system? Often, I found that it’s still cash-only, paperwork-heavy, and, at times, painfully offline. Attempting to enter the ATH airport lounge was met with a “we can’t let you in, the system is down.” That was a first for me in all my years of travel. A 2023 study from the EU’s Digital Economy and Society Index placed Greece well below the European average in digital public services and integration, underscoring just how far things have to go. I am not surprised.
Will Greece ever break the cycle of slow-motion service and give its economy – and its visitors – a fighting chance? Or is endless waiting simply part of the Greek deal, a feature, not a bug?
Two things are certain for sure, as I write this article from my comfy desk in Bucharest:
- I’m not too keen on finding out if Greece improves in the future – I’ll happily spend my money elsewhere.
- Any sympathy I had for the Greeks during their economic crisis is long gone. I truly believe the laziness culture and people themselves are the problem – not the government.