Ethereum Wallet is amazingly slow to sync

Since the last hard fork, and I must say, even before that, I am struggling with the use of ethereum mist. What a nightmare, does not sync up, very slow, 27,000 blocks behind and no sync end in view...
According to the logs, worst case, it takes 40 secs to get one block, 27,000 blocks, more than 12 days! What!