Who wants to Hear about my Day(s)?

'The Great Journey' has taken on completely new significance courtesy of the 'good' people at British Airways and Heathrow Airport. If I can help it, I will never fly with them again. Now I left my last post anxiously awaiting my connecting flight from Heathrow to Athens. This was supposed to be a moderate 2 hour stop (as we were running a little over time from SIngapore). Put it this way. 6 Hours after getting to the boarding gate, I was still sitting there. In Heathrow. It all started when..............(insert flashback splash scene):

We received the Gate number for our Athens connection. 'FANTASTIC! We can finally get going.' So I hop on the tram system to get to the correct part of the terminal (Heathrow Terminal 5 is MASSIVE. Its really cool!). I was supposed to be meeting one of the peeps from the dig who jsut happens to be getting on the same flight although she is connecting from the USA. I walked around the gate area for AGES trying to find her but no luck.

The boarding time came and went and still nothing happened. Eventually a bunch of names were rattled off by the ground staff, but I wasnt on that list so I jsut sat and waited. After an hour or so, we were told that there was a 'technical' fault with the plane anda new plane had to be organised. This was all well and good, as these things happen. Unfortunately British Airways, in all their wisdom, did not have the same SIZE plane available and had to settle for a smaller one. Some people were therefore forced off the flight. As I am a single adult male travelling alone, I am of course first off the list. The customer service aspect was SHCKING handled by the groundstaff. It took a full 3 hours for us to be told ANYTHING. I was standing in line to talk to these people to figure out what was going on for AGES and they jsut werent having anything to do with us. By now, the groundstaff on scene had multiplied exponentially and it seemed like some management was floating around too. I now believe that the size of the stuff up is directly proportional to the amount of groundstaff partaking in a pow wow, seemingly NOT sorting it out. This is a new 'law' that I will be proposing, and just may be the answer to Stephen Hawkings quest for the ultimate laws of the universe.

Eventually we were told (I still had not been spoken to directly NOR had my boarding pass checked or anything) that we were going to be booked onto an Olympic Airways flight, leaving a couple of hours later, but we would have to be reissued with tickets and go through the palava of security and check ins again. We awere also given a nice sum of money as 'compensation'. We eventually got to the check in counter and LOW AND BEHOLD the Olympic Airlines have already given their flights to a bunch of Americans who had been delayed and missed their earlier Olympic Airlines flight. I thought this was perfectly justified as our problem was a BA problem and not Olympic. The result was that only a few of us managed to get onto the Olympic flight. I was one of the lucky ones it seems, although it was quite the miracle. I got the LAST possible seat. I just felt horrible leaving about 15 odd people behind, some of whom were really nice people with the patience of saints. I attempted to give up my seat to a girl who was particularly struggling with the situation and offered to stay the night at Heathrow instead. However this didnt seem possible, and we both agreed that we had already been through enough and didnt need to start causing problems.

It now entered my mind that I needed to get in contact with Jasha somehow, as he was patiently waiting for me at Athens for a flight I wasnt on. Unfortunately, he is only able to receive text messages and I still did not have a European Sim Card. I had the bright idea of trying to call home and get my parents to text him my details for me. A lovelly women lent me her phone for the international phone call, and this was organised quickly. I thank my parents for not asking questions when I did not have time to answer them, and simply agreeing to follow my instructions. That helped a lot. Jasha received the text message and was waiting for me when I eventually stumbled into Athens Airport.

We managed to get the final subway out from the airport (it was now almost midnight) and we were on the way to Akropoli station. I purchased my ticket fine (I managed to do it in broken greek too!) and got on the train, failing to notice some random yellow boxes at the entranceto the station. We had to change lines down the way, and got off at a station. While walking around that station we were stopped by a ticket inspector. I have lived in Sydney for almost 6 years now, taking public transport fairly frequently, and i have NEVER been stopped by a ticket inspector. I was in Greece for little more than a couple of hours and BOOM there he was. Amazing. He noticed I had not 'validated' my ticket by putting it in the yellow machine at the start of my trip, but he let me off with a warning. Literally 2 minutes later (while Jasha was apologising for not letting me know I needed to do this) we were stopped by another ticket inspector and this one was not so understanding. She promptly wrote up a fine. I dont understand much of what is written on this pink ticket, but from what I can make out, I now have to pay a massive sum of 210 Euro. However, I was talking to the hostel people and they say I dont have to do it. I will find out for sure, and if I do, possibly contest the fine. I was in the country for 2 hours and already I was in trouble with the law. Good work Chris!

When I eventually stumbled into the hostel, I managed to confirm my booking fine and was given a key to my room. Mumbling something to Jasha about meeting him in the morning at 10:30 in the foyer, I stumbled up marble stairs to my floor and boom crashed my way into my dorm where 6 other people were already snoring away (and when I say snoring I MEAN snoring. Chronic snoring and Backpackers must go hand in hand). Stuffing around with my packs in the dark was great fun, until I found my torch. I managed to SOMEHOW organise everything in a manner that things wouldnt get stolen, changed, and crashed onto the thin hostel mattress. I had been on the road for 35 hours straight, with precious little sleep for 44 hours and thousands of kilometers of travel behind me.

It is now the next morning, and I got surprisingly little sleep considering how tired I was. I woke up at 6am (5 hours sleep) and managed to have a long hot shower, change clothes, brush my teeth and generally feel human again. Breakfast was meagre but free. A few pieces of stale toast with chocolate spread and jam, plus a couple of boiled eggs and tea. I am meeting Jasha in an hour, and playing tour guide for the day I think, considering Ive been here before and Im the anceint history nerd.

Got to go.

Chris