Welcome Home...

Those were the words of the Canada Customs agent that greeted us and never have I heard sweeter words. Yes we are home and I for one am glad. Not that I didn't have a good time with some wonderful people and relatives both in Germany and Greece, but there really is no place like home.

I don't know if the airline gods just hate me or if I just have bad travel karma but geesh, I really do have the worst luck. The new Olympic Air brought us safely to Paris as promised but the wheelchair that was to be waiting for me never did materialize. I gritted my teeth and told me sweetie we would walk. Biggest mistake ever...

Paris has three terminals of of course we needed to get to the farthest one. There is a labyrinth of moving sidewalks, escalators that criss cross each other and an electric train. It took us an hour to reach the correct terminal. Good thing we had plenty of time.

The Air France flight was overall pretty good. The service on board was better than with the old Olympic Airlines and the food was quite tasty. What was bad for me was the non existent leg room. The Airbus 340 was so tightly configured my knees touched the seat in front of me before it was even reclined. We unlucky had two young women travellers sitting in those seats and they immediately reclined them and then proceeded to bounce around in excitement for the duration of the trip. At one point Steve asked one of them if she wanted to sit on his lap, she was practically there anyway. They didn't get it.

Now we just need to get over the jet lag and I need to heal my foot. By the time we got home my ankle had swollen to twice it's size. Of course there are four suitcases that have to be unpacked...someday soon.

Shit!!!

I wasn’t going to post again before leaving since there are so many things I need to get accomplished. Best laid plans and all that…the trip to the centre of Athens isn’t happening. Instead I’m hobbling around on the foot below. Bad thing is that it hurts like the dickens, good thing is that I didn’t hurt my hip and it wasn’t the operated foot. Although I now have two feet that don’t work well for the long trip home…sigh.

In my defense, I had things on my mind and that curbs that just jumped up out of nowhere to trip me up…

Our Going Away Party

I suspect this will not be the last party...

Yours truly...

The younger Sophia...

The elder Sophia...

Steve having a ball...

This will be my last post from Greece. There are more pictures to be found on my Flickr page on the sidebar...

We're Going Home

Yes, Olympic has come through with tickets for our return. It will not be an easy trip for me but at least it will happen without any additional cost to us. We will have to fly the new Olympic Air to Paris, wait for a few hours for a connecting Air France flight to Toronto via Montreal. Total time is roughly 20 hours start to finish if there are no unexpected delays along the way. Air France would not have been my first choice since they’ve had a couple of crashes recently but we had no real option.

Life here in Athens/Glyfada has been quiet this time around with not a lot of traveling. We may go to Pylos this weekend but that’s dependent on whether legal stuff gets sorted out in time. The weather hasn’t been as good as in the past and there have been fewer beach days. Steve has also been super busy clearing out his mom’s apartment and the bureaucracy of settling an estate and buying property is unbelievable by North American standard.

The apartment has a little furniture most of it from my MIL’s house. It’s not my choice or style but I have very little input here. I think Steve keeps most of it for sentimental reasons and I get that, so I have a dining room suite that doesn’t really suit me but it works and various mismatched dishes. I did draw the line at the sofa and bedroom furniture. I won that battle but as a result we still don’t have a sofa or a bed. At this stage I think it will wait until next year. The airbed is still hanging in despite a slight mishap that found us flat on the floor at 5:30 one morning. It wasn’t funny at the time but now we joke about it.

I haven’t gone far from home on my own because truthfully, my foot is not working very well. I brought four pairs of reasonably comfortable shoes yet all of them hurt after a short while. It’s been almost four months since the operation and even though I was told full recovery would take 6 months I had hoped to be further ahead than I am. Maybe I’m just too impatient. I have wanted to make a trip into the centre of Athens to do some shopping but either I’m having a bad foot day or the shops are closed. Oh yes, the store hours! Shops close at 2:30 pm every afternoon and reopen at 5:30 pm for a few more hours, except Mondays and Wednesdays of course, and then they stay closed after 2:30. I guess coming from a country of 24/7 shopping I am spoiled if you call finding an open pharmacy after 2:30pm spoiled?

There are a couple of things that really grate and unnerve me here. The first is the noise, the truly unrelenting noise. It’s either motorcycles that roar with machismo down the street at all hours of the day and night, jackhammers with all the building going on around here the junk man/men who drive their trucks through neighbourhoods every hour or so with a big bullhorn, the dogs barking and what I call the “banshees” running around the streets after school every day screeching at the top of their lungs. I don’t think kids have homework here! I miss the peace and quiet of home and miss waking up to birds singing instead of jackhammers. I told Steve that if I thought I had to live her the rest of my life I would go to the roof and hurl myself over the balcony. He thought I was joking.

To say that I counting the days before we leave would be an understatement. A little more than two weeks and I’ll be home again. I may do a Pope John Paul and kiss the ground when I get there.

I miss having an internet connection without having to go out to a café, I miss reading my favourite blogs, I’m totally out of the loop with news of the world, darn it all, I even miss CNN. I guess I’m not ever going to be a good transnational. I have heard some expats say that Greece speaks to their soul. Greece doesn’t speak to me, it yells out loud and I don’t like being yelled at.

Most of all I miss craft shops and wool shops. I have yet to find even one…

Just for a little fun, meet a Greek weather girl...

Every Neighbourhood Has One

And this is ours…

A stray dog that just hangs around looking for handouts.

He’s a rather cute puppy probably less than a year and he just appeared out of nowhere a few weeks ago. At first I thought he belonged to someone but now I’m certain he’s been let go. That’s pretty common here in Greece by the way. People start out wanting a puppy but when they grow a bit or the realization hits that these are living, breathing beings some find it too much work and just put the dog out to fend for itself.

He’s started to take possession of the street and barks at cars as they go by. Mostly though, he just snoozes against the side of a house or wall on one of the four corners of this street. Unfortunately for us though, he’s picked our sidewalk to do his business and we end up cleaning it up every day.

Still no news from Olympic Air regarding our return trip, who promised me a return call within 24 hours…

Olympic Airlines - The Final Screw

So we all know I hate Olympic right? Nothing new there except why do we always fly with them. I suppose it’s because it’s one of the only non stop flights from
Toronto to Athens and because they allow us somewhat more luggage than other carriers. I’ve come to realize that it’s a low cost carrier and made allowances. I always bring my own blanket and earphones just in case and lots of snacks for when I get hungry in the middle of the night. I know from experience that the flight attendants are nowhere to be found; they are usually snoozing in first class.

This time though I was more hesitant to book with them knowing that they had been sold to a private investment group called Mafin. The deal was closing September 30th and our return trip is October 29th. I asked the most important question of our travel agent when booking, will anything change. The answer was a definite no, all flights would remain the same. NOT…

It came as a shock to find out about three weeks ago that many overseas routes were being abandoned by Marfin including Montreal, Toronto and New York. For three weeks there was no news other than what I was able to get from Greek bloggers. I received a text message from a friend who heard that Olympic would code share with another airline and honor all tickets so I didn’t worry too much. Two emails to our travel agent have remained unanswered thus far but I have received one email directly from Olympic. It states the following;

Dear sir/madam,

we kindly inform you that due to Olympic Airlines closure and change of ownership, for any information, bookings, change of reservation or refund you should either refer to the closest Olympic Airlines office or call directly the Athens reservation department at +30 210 966 66 66. The latter will be active by september 30th.

I have phoned this number a few times to no avail. It is not possible to speak to a person and I can’t stay on hold forever. I have a pay as you use phone card for a cell phone that is incredibly expensive so I could run through a 20 euro card very quickly and never get to talk to anyone.

So today Steve made the long trip into Athens to see about the tickets. He came back with bad news. The Olympic Airlines office in Athens is closed with no information as to where the new Olympic Air office can be found. There is no easy way to get this information either. Steve is going to make the trip to the airport on Monday and hope to find an Olympic Air representative who will have a solution for us. There are no easy resolutions for anything here… It is estimated that there are between 3000 and 5000 stranded passengers and I suppose we are just collateral damage.