After the Parthenon, the most exciting thing I saw in Athens was the "Harry Potter - July 21st" signs hanging in several bookshops. It was so tantalizing and cruel as we were flying back to Istanbul - where I had already scouted out several book stores but none of them mentioned Harry - at 7pm on July 20th, . I was half-hoping for something to happen where we'd have to stay an extra day and even considered bribing some of the bookshop owners. So we made our way to the airport on Friday afternoon.
Our flight was to board at 6:30, which came and went without any Olympic Airlines announcements about delays or anything else. Seven o'clock rolled around and there was still nothing. No sign of an airline rep, except at the other counter where another flight had been delayed. Jon's friend Matt went to question her and she assured him there would be an announcement in the next few minutes. But that announcement never came. Finally at 7:45, the board read "Late" for our flight as if we couldn't have figured it out at that point. The ominous part was that there was no estimated time. So again we waited, with no announcements, no reps and no flight.
There was a group of Canadian guys near us who were also trying to get updates. Matt had checked the board again and told us and them that our flight was no longer listed! Five minutes later and one of the Canadians came back from upstairs to tell us the flight had been cancelled! Again, no reps, no announcements and now no flight! Everything we found out was from the other passengers. We now had to make our way backwards through passport control and collect our baggage. They finally made an announcement about 15 minutes after we learned it was cancelled. And of course there must have been an Olympic rep to guide us through this, you ask. Who the hell knows how to go backwards through passport control? It turns out there was no rep and even the passport guys weren't really sure what to do. They basically scribbled over our stamps in blue ink to "cancel" them.
So we and our fellow disgruntled passengers - not mad at the cancelled flight as much as the complete lack of information about it and what to do. We waited on line at customer service for an hour, only to find out we should have been in another line, which we found out from another passenger who started screaming at the rep that he was going to kill someone. There was a rumor about a bus that would take us to a hotel, which we again found out from other passengers. They had heard we's leave the hotel at 6am and get on a "special" flight at 8am just for us.
They took us to what turned out to be a spectacular hotel, after our jokes of having to sleep in the Olympic warehouse on cots or in military barracks. So we got four hours of sleep - it was about 12 midnight when we arrived and were woken up at 5 for our journey back.
And sadly, this is only half of the Olympic ordeal. I will leave you in suspense to find out what happened next in another blog. Did the bus leave on time? Did we make our 8am flight? Am I still in Athens as I write this???
The long-awaited PART 2....
We thought we were early for the bus. It was 5 minutes before it was supposed to leave. Unfortunately the rest of the passengers were a bit faster than us so we couldn't get on the first bus and had to wait for the second. We not only had to wait for the second bus but for all the slow lazy passengers who couldn't be on time. The second bus left a good half hour after the first, mostly because of some Mexican travelers (terrible stereotype but it was unfortunately true for these people!). Fellow travelers were yelling at them that we were on European time, not Mexican. So we arrived at the airport much later than anticipated. But it shouldn't be a problem since we apparently had a special Olympic flight waiting for us, ha ha.
Upon arrival once again there was no Olympic representative showing us where to go or leading us to a special line. We saw some fellow passengers in a special line, although we were told that we had to wait in the regular check in line! So we divided our forces. Matt and I waited in the regular check in line, only to be told to wait in the other line. Meanwhile Jon is told that he is also in the wrong line. After several minutes of digruntled chatter among our fellow travelers, a woman appears like a beacon of light and tells us to follow her if we ever hope to get back to Istanbul.
We follow her to yet another counter where she then disappears. At this point, I am starving, dehydrated and also dying to see if the book stores are open. So I leave Jon my passport and boarding card on the pretense of going to buy some water. I walked by the news agent and see my beloved Harry Potter books piled up by the entrance. Without even thinking, I get in line with the book and pay with a credit card. The cashier asked me for my passport, which I had left with Jon! Thank god he was happy with my CT drivers license and I returned happily to the Olympic counter, with no water or food but the only sustenence I need to get me through the day.
So while I was away, Matt, Jon and two British guys are told we are going to be put on a direct flight to Istanbul, or a flight through Bucharest, or a flight through Kazakhstan or somewhere else. Finally she hands us a scribbled piece of paper with no info on it that we can discern. We ask her politely what flight we are on and she, unsurprisingly, has no clue.
So the five of us, who are now travelling together, think we may be on the Bucharest flight that is leaving in a half hour. We run to try to find the gate but since we aren't sure if we are even on this flight, we miraculously manage to find an airport rep and hand her our very "official" scrap of paper. She translates it for us and we discover that we are on the 11am Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. We go to the Turkish Airlines counter and they confirm us for the flight and tell us when we can check in. The fact that we have been given actual useful information is just too much to handle so we go and have a nice, if rather expensive breakfast and wait for our flight.
I waited complacently with my book, oblivious to the outside world and all the bureaucratic nonsense that we had just experienced. Such is the magic of Harry Potter. And in the end, I found the book in Istanbul anyways, but that wouldn't have made as good a story.
