Athens · Chapter 1
Greece is the word
I’m about to hit my half century of countries before 2014 finishes.
Greece is the word
Oh, hello London Heathrow terminal 5, BA galleries lounge. What an excellent place to be on an excellent day. Though obviously it rarely fails to be an excellent day when I’m on the free scran and sauce about to board a plane. This is a bit different though - I’m not just flying somewhere random, I’m about to hit my half century of countries before 2014 finishes. And I’m quite chuffed about that.
I wrote about my supposed quest to reach 50 countries last year. I really wasn’t sure I’d make it so soon back then, but this has been a bit of a decent year for travel even without the assistance of any GCERC-style lunacy. And in fact, if plans had gone as they were meant to go I would have been finishing 2014 in country number 51, and that country would have been North Korea, and I would have been in a brewery, and I’m not even joking. But then ebola broke out in various west African nations so Kim decided to close his country’s borders to everyone - after I’d already booked flights and a tour, dagnabbit - so I had to scrabble around for an alternative. So this post finds me settling in to a couple of cans of London Pride and some thoroughly disappointing elevenses prior to a flight to Athens in that there Greece.
As it goes I’m really quite ambivalent about the North Korea thing. On the one hand I’m really fucked off about it - it’s my absolute number one dream destination to visit and they had best not have some form of populace liberating transition to unity and a removal of their pariah status before I get my mollycoddled guided tour. On the other hand, I would have been out of the country when AFC Wimbledon host Liverpool in the 3rd round of the FA Cup and fuck that for a lark. I’ve missed enough big games and I have not looked forward to a game like this in fucking years. A decent silver lining that.
Aaaaanyway. I haven’t been so unprepared for a trip in ages. I left the house at 0840 having started packing at 0825. I washed some clothes at 0030, after I got in from a night out boozing and stuff. I haven’t printed out the address of my hotel, any guides on how to use the Athens metro, or in fact anything at all. I have no euros and the only thing I know for certain is that when I get there I shouldn’t moon people because the UK government says not to.
I presume that everything will work out just fine because it basically always does. I’m staying in a hotel with Acropolis in its name, near the Acropolis, near Acropolis metro station. If I can’t find the Acropolis in Athens then I should have my passport confiscated. Pfft.
So my journey here. Meh. Woke up to an email telling me my flight was an hour late, then another saying it was 45 minutes, then 19 minutes, then on time. I was kinda hoping it would stay an hour late tbh. Left the house way earlier than I do for work and suffered a horrific rush hour bus ride to Kingston followed by a much better one to Hatton Cross. Lots of people confused that the bus was terminating there rather than the central bus station and a bit angry, none of them seemingly aware - or believing the driver - that they will get to their terminal much quicker by changing at Hatton Cross for the tube. I spent the whole journey listening to wrestling podcasts (Steve Austin seems to think a JD and coke is a cocktail - really, Steve) and Freakonomics talk lots about fraud in the pet cremation business, which was an odd topic. I also wrote down fucking loads of puns involving the word “Greek” and have come up with what I consider to be the perfect one, which I will unleash on a later post.
At Feltham a lorry went past which had the words LINFORD CHRISTIE emblazoned across the top of the windscreen, as if the driver was called Linford and the passenger Christie. Really?
As usual I was totally well prepared for going through security like a boss. There were virtually no queues but I was hindered by a girl who seemed to have hand luggage WAY too heavy for her to carry or even drag on wheels. Went in a different queue, brief chat with the friendly security guy, through the x-ray, waited for my bag and coat and etc to come out the other side.
Why isn’t it coming out the other side? Why is the woman asking whose iPad that is? Why is my bag going down the secondary “this set off alarms” route?
Turns out my bag set off alarms. Oh. I was asked to unzip it and then she delved through the contents, taking stuff out and swabbing it with that magic stick thing and pointing out to me on the monitor that my little carrier bag full of electronics (USB batteries, cables, plugs, etc) was densely packed and looked shifty. But she was fine with it, just had to check the swab and put the bag back through.
BING BING BING BING BING loud noise everyone stares. Me and someone on the next lane simultaneously set off the second stage alarms with the results of that test. Oh. So she pisses off to find a supervisor. He comes along, asks what the deal is, looks happy and genial with a clipboard and then looks at something on the screen and then at me and comes to have a word. The geniality drops from his face a bit. My bag has indeed tested positive for explosives.
This is quite a surprise. I tell them that everything in the bag is mine, tempting as it was to just blame someone else. I tell them I’m flying direct, that I don’t work with chemicals, and that I’m travelling for pleasure. And he writes these things down on the form on his clipboard and then says that they’ll have to do something else, and away he goes. There is some conflab, after which the first woman comes back with my stuff and says, OK, you’re fine to go now. I am somewhat bemused, largely relieved I haven’t accidentally brought semtex with me but ever so slightly disappointed I didn’t get to experience the full-on “take the guy with the big beard into an interrogation room” experience.
In the Greek mid-winter
Anyone who doesn’t think that’s the fucking jackpot of champagne-swigging first class blog post titles can stop reading right now.
I stayed in the lounge until about 1130, with a flight time of 1220. I don’t really know why I haven’t learnt my lesson yet but I still give myself way too much time at the gate - big bird to Joburg notwithstanding - when flying cattle class and/or from airports where boarding announcements aren’t made from the lounge.
Flight BA632 LHR-ATH was leaving from gate A12, slap bang in the middle of the main T5 terminal. Right now it’s hidden behind a load of building works which means all the passengers are cramped in to an area not really big enough for them. I walked to and straight through it since I was way too early, but I did spot that fast track boarding would be in effect. Trying to be sensible, I rearranged all my explosives and other stuff such that everything I wanted for the flight was in my coat pockets or hands.
Fast track boarding was a fucking joke. They announced it very clearly, slowly, obviously, and then various members of staff got angry, shouting at the hordes of people trying to get on board when they weren’t yet allowed. And then some passengers got angry too. For fucks sake. I eventually bowled through and took my seat 19A, window, over the wing.
I forgot how little room you get for stuff in an economy seat. I shouldn’t have forgotten - for fucks sake, I’ve almost flown as many economy miles as fat cat this year, and over 25000 since the last time I was up front. But still I got it wrong. It was tricky to stow my pad, phone, USB brick, iPad and headphones as well as the coat and I was all kinds of clumsy and uncomfortable. Then I felt better when the clumsy git with the giant laptop and tablet sat next to me and proceeded to have a loud conversation with the row behind - which mostly involved him turning his head half way and shouting in my fucking ear.
Kept dozing off. Don’t really know why. At one point I woke up and my headphones were nowhere to be seen, and I still don’t have them now. It’s a mystery to me how I can have lost them, but I did, so I opened the provided ones which were fucking awful and broken. No podcasts for me. The plane was heaving full and I was actually, finally, a little bit excited to be going to Athens.
We didn’t leave. The first officer made an announcement - they’d found a drawing pin stuck into one of the tyres, so had sent for engineers to change it. This does not appear to be as efficient a manoeuvre as in Formula One and they said it would take 20 minutes. 25 minutes later I’d received a helpful alert from kayak telling me my flight was going to leave late, and the first officer said we’d take another 20 minutes. We eventually left an hour and a quarter late, with my seatmate being called out by the staff for still dicking around with his bag in the aisle as we were on the runway. Sigh.
The doziness wore off and I played a bit of pinball on the iPad, eventually scoring 2 of my highest ever 6 scores on the table I’ve played more than any other. Go me! And then service started. First, beer and a bag of bird seed. Some people tried to complain about the food, not realising - by which I mean, not listening to them having said - that the proper food was coming separately. I appreciated the announcement that if anyone wanted a drink, just hit call. For some reason my seatmate hit call just as they were serving 2 rows ahead of us. I was quite distressed by the lack of space and constant mouth and elbows all flight. Meh.
At some point there were some nice mountains outside, but the 767 has entertainment on the drop down screens rather than a moving map so I’m fucked if I know what and where they were. The main food was a full meal - pasta bake with bacon and mushrooms, bread roll, cheese and crackers, and a ginger sponge cake. And another beer. The cabin crew member asked me if he could borrow the milk from my tray since I wasn’t going to have coffee. Borrow?
I bought some headphones from Duty Free thus making myself the first person I’ve ever seen buying electronics from the inflight magazine.
Proper meal
Some European mountains
Landing was bumpy. Nigh on 80% of the cabin leaped to their feet and started fighting for their bags before the sign went off and consequently ended up standing up queueing to get out for a good 15 minutes. I just sat still. I know we were late, but, really, enough with the hurrying. I overtook half of them anyway on the way to the exit.
I navigated Athens airport like a champ. Stepped out landside - hello, country #50, box ticked - and went straight to the ATM for €120. Turned away and was already facing the signs to the trains - out the door, across the road, holy shit that is some serious rain. Along the pavement, up one floor in the lift, round the corner to two escalators, across a bridge and here’s the ticket office. As usual, most people seem to be ignoring the machines so I just waltzed up to the one labeled Metro (not Suburban Railway) and bought a return to the city, down the stairs and onto the almost deserted, freezing cold, wet station platform. This is proper horror movie opening scene torrential rain, really noisy and the station has a roof but is exposed still and everyone else - there are about 10 people around - looks fucking miserable. I am happier than a pig in shit and can tell I’m grinning.
The metro arrives after 15 minutes and a guy starts talking to me as we get on. He starts off in Greek which draws a blank look, so asks me if I’m English, which I am. I learn he’s staying just round the corner from Acropoli metro which, as far as I know, so am I. I spend the first 15 minutes of conversation totally failing to figure out if his accent is Welsh or not. He is German. I’m not doing very well here. We chat, and a couple of English lads ask me for tube advice/directions too. Clearly I look knowledgable.
The metro to Syntagma takes forever and gets really fucking mad crowded. Me and the German change onto the line to Acropoli at which he consults his phone for directions. Despite wearing glasses and having giant fonts, he still has to hold it about 1cm from his eyes. Wow. His hotel is nearer the station to me and because of cobbles and just general geniality I help him with his bags to his hotel and then set off to my own using Google maps as my guide. It takes me straight into a deserted unlit residential area but I am a slave to the blue dot on the blue line and trust it. At one point I go up a very steep road which ends with a much much steeper set of stairs, which makes me wonder why the fuck I chose a hotel with “Hill” in its name.
But, hey presto, there it is, the Acropolis Hill hotel. It seems very quiet. There was no-one in the streets and there is no-one in the bar (yet). I check in and have things explained to me, starting with how to find room 504. Turns out reception, at street level, is on floor 3. So I’m 2 floors above that, and breakfast, on the 1st floor, is two floors below reception. I mean what the fuck. Didn’t this lot invent numbers? How have they got this so wrong?
There’s a cracking view of the Acropolis and Athens in general from a roof terrace, and a shit view of a wall with graffiti on it from my room’s balcony. I believe they also invented democracy round here somewhere and today, with Russell Brand and Nigel Farage on Question Time back home, I mostly feel like apologising to everyone for what we’ve done. It was never meant to be this way.
