Petrol Crisis? What Petrol Crisis?

EllasDevil on his blog has highlighted Athens' current lack of fuel which has meant that petrol pumps up and down the country have run totally dry. The unthinkable has happened. Athenians are being forced to walk short distances! To walk! They never do that! Walking when you could have been driving turns your bleach blond hair black again and makes all the hair on your chest fall off. I kid, I kid!

But did the lack of petrol stop people being out in force in their cars these last few days? Did it hell! I took a walk yesterday evening and noticed next to no reduction in the number of cars on the main road. So long as the people who really needed the fuel were getting it, like ambulances and food transporters, I thought the strike would be a good thing and would finally force the drivers of Athens into the city's admirable public transport system.

But no! Public transport, didn't you know, is the reserve of the poor and the foreign. No car owner would be caught dead on it.

The Greeks and their cars are totally inseparable. A few years back the government tried to cut back on downtown congestion by allowing even number plated cars to drive on one day and odd on the other. That should have cut the congestion by about 50% in theory, right? All it did was make everyone run out and buy a second car, so they had one even and one odd. Genius!

I've also noticed and failed to understand the large numbers of gigantic cars in Athens. It's a really badly planned city with tiny, winding roads. Therefore it makes sense to have a compact city car that's easy to move around and easy to park. Heck no! I want to show off how much money I earn, or at least make my neighbours jealous and give the impression that that's how much money I earn. So I'll buy a huge black SUV and park it poking off the sidewalk and halfway into the road. So what if it's too big to negotiate tight corners? So what if I'm actually too small to be in control of such a car and send it juddering around into everyone's path? It's my right to be a pain in your ass, and I want to be a really big pain in your ass with my really big car.

Logic. That's a Greek word.

Image: Corrupted from http://hybridvehiclesguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/2007-ford-escape-hybrid-suv1.jpg and http://bunnyjo.blogspot.com/