angry eyes

This is how we're feeling about Cyprus today.  And yesterday.  And probably for a few weeks.  Bureaucratic hogwash, cultural clashes, and general nincompoopery have left us downtrodden.  Not exactly how we were expecting the week leading up to Christmas to be.  

We're trying to buy a car, but we can't buy it without insurance.  We can't get insurance until we get a work permit.  We didn't get the last forms for the work permit until last Friday.  Our boxes have arrived from the States but are being held at the port until we can get a form to them.  Which we couldn't do, because we couldn't buy our car.  So we tried renting a car online, paid for it, and then no one showed up at the rental agency.  For three days.  So Mr. F calls the Port to find out what we need to do and they tell us that the moving company usually handles everything and they're very surprised that we are the ones making these calls.

Then today, the car rental moron showed up an hour late and we made our ride to the immigration office late.  We had our photos taken in front of a white screen hanging from a tree behind a scooter in the parking lot.  We waited nearly three hours in a dirty, gross hallway only to be told that we didn't have the right form.  The form we need can only be gotten from the States.  A form we thought we had, but the Cypriot Embassy didn't give us all the details of.  Or the company Mr. F is working for.  Or anyone else.

So we still don't have a work permit, are renting our THIRD car on this island because we can't get insurance so we can't buy the car that would be cheaper than renting all of these other gas guzzlers so we can't get to the port to drop off the forms that will probably be wrong anyway because our moving company for some reason isn't handling it so we probably won't have our stuff until after the new year.

I usually like Cyprus.

Just not this week.