Trip to Thessaloniki

Last tuesday we had to go to Thessaloniki, which is in the north of greece. We needed to take the marriage certificate to the Albanian consulate to get it translated into Albanian and stamped at the embassy, so when Oresti takes it to Albania, he can get the paperwork that he needs there. This is all to finalize my visa so I can stay. So, we set out at 5:45 in the morning on the train. We got there in about 3 hours, and headed over to the consulate. We were met by a guy outside who spoke Albanian with Oresti and all of the sudden we were following him. Apparently there are guys that do all the running around with your papers for you and you just have to take them into the consulate to get stamped. But I still felt like it was a little shady. We gave him all our documents, he got them translated, took them to another office, while we went to the consulate with another paper. we walked up some steps to stand outside an office with a crowd of people. everytime the door opened, people would try to sneak in before an official guy could catch them and make them go out. There was no order at all. I think the guy who was helping us bribed the guy so we could get in. So we got the paper stamped. Then found the guy outside, he took the paper to go do something else with is while we had coffee. Then after an hour he came back and we took the next paper back there to get another stamp. And we were done. It was all very strange to me, but interesting. It seems you can't get anything you want without bribing. I suggested they just have a jar on a table for bribes, like a tip jar! I think they're considering my idea:)