April 17 2010: It was dramatic and sometimes traumatic, but we have arrived in Greece...and only about 10 hours later than initially scheduled. Our flight out of Calgary was delayed by an hour and then re-routed south along latitude intended to skip flying near Iceland. This meant that a flight that normally takes around 9.5 hours was going to take about 12 hours! We didn’t find this out until just after take-off. A few hours before we were scheduled to land, the pilot announced that Frankfurt was closed and that we would be landing in Munich, instead. The only bad part for us was that they were not unloading any luggage. After de-planing, we were lucky to get seats on a 6:00 flight out of Munich to Athens. We should say that we were REALLY lucky, because it was one of the last flights out of Munich. If we hadn’t made that flight, we would be sitting – luggageless - in Munich, rather than luggageless in Athens. And according to other flyers, there wasn’t a hotel room to be had in Munich due to the stoppages in every flight going north, east and west bound. Anyways, our luggage has been identified in Munich and hopefully they start flying soon and get it to us. We don’t mind wearing the same clothes everyday, but people we meet might start to mind a bit, especially if they are downwind! We are certainly not the only ones suffering right now: we went into Marks and Spencer and it was full of Brits chatting on their mobiles, telling tales very similar to our own. This is a real boost for the local economy! We think this is all a conspiracy by Iceland to get back at the rest of the world for screwing up their economy. We weren’t the ones who made them buy junk bonds and gradeless asset backed paper!
For all the turmoil, we have had a really good first day in Athens. We spent time in the Acropolis area, including the Parthenon and theatres, and saw the Agora grounds. It is quite a challenge to gawk upwards and walk without tripping or slipping on old and worn pathways. We don’t know how anyone could look at the worn marble underfoot and not think about how many people have walked those same paths previously. Maybe because Canada is so young, but it is really hard to think about anything being even 200 years old, forget about 2000!
It is not all mourning lost luggage and wandering through classic sites: we forced ourselves to sit on a patio and share a bottle of white wine from Santorini on this warm and hazy day…it’s a tough life! The weather is fantastic, about 23 C as we enter the early evening here on Saturday April 17. Maybe it is just looking for a silver lining, but the sunset does seem extraordinarily beautiful…the upside of all that airborne volcanic particulate, perhaps?