Sunday, October 24, 2004

Athens Journal, Part one

Here begins a series of posts from my weekend in greece...
Whew! Back from Athens (a great, great city - more on that later) and a
trip where my stupidity, and the mayhem that is the French conspired to
making it one of the most arduous travels i have ever taken (beating the
10 hour trip to munich earlier this month). So here's the part where
i'm stupid - I forgot my passport at my apartment (i had a copy
though). and it's a 50 minute bus trip back to my apartment (should be
25, but the shuttle driver is a maniac) Here's the mayhem of the french.
From Marseille, they'd let me get to Paris, but wouldn't give me a
boarding pass to Athens. Then when i got to paris (missing my
connecting flight), They were going to give me a boarding card for a
later flight, but somehow, they decided they couldn't. So, i got hauled
into french customs police. This was where it got interesting, and my
french got remarkably good. So, after convincing them that i was not a
terrorist, they made me sign an affadavit stating i didn't have
identification, and then let me on the plane. Exhausting.
I arrived in Athens, and was instantly impressed. I know they poured a
lot of money into improving the city for the olympics - but this was
amazing. The highway from the airport to the city was pristine (and i
had the best cabbie in the world - he was going 140kmh the whole way),
and the whole city sparkled at night. I went to this bar, galaxy, which
was on the roof of our hotel, and it had just an amazing view of the
city (and a stiff martini).


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