Adventure #13: The Journey from Aegina to Brooklyn
The last ferry from Aegina to Athens leaves at 9pm. It's called a “flying dolphin.” It looks nothing like a dolphin, but does sort of fly on these little pontoons. It's not a very luxurious ride. The interior looks more like an airplane than a ferry, but it's fast. So that's good. Or at least it would be if you had anywhere to be at a specific time. Our flight didn't leave for 10 hours. This is Pen Pen gazing out the porthole at Aegina one last time.
We got back to Athens with 2 hours left before the trains stopped running, and 9 hours before our flight. We didn't see any point in getting a hotel to sleep for 3 hours, and our experience with the Athens cab drivers 3 nights before had left us soured on the idea of taking a cab. So we found a small cafe at Monostraki looking out over the square. They were out of Tsipouro, so we decided maybe indigenous ouzo isn't as bad as it is in the States, and got a bottle. It's not as bad as it is in the States. It's not good. But it's not as bad as I remember it. This is Pen Pen surprised at how palatable ouzo can be.
We left right in time to catch the last train to the airport. Which was a total wasteland. The few people that were there were sleeping in clumps with their bags as pillows as if it were Eugene, Oregon. This is Pen Pen being a hobo.
Despite arriving 7 hours early and camping out at the check-in counter, we still managed to make it to the plane just in time to board. Turkish Airways: We Are Massively Understaffed. The guy who took our ticket drove the shuttle from the gate to the plane. The flight to Istanbul was short and painless. Unlike our layover. This is Pen Pen at an empty information booth.
On the way over, Rosy and I were talking about how much fun it would be to stop in Istanbul and just wander around even if only for a few minutes. We had a little more than a 2 hour layover. It's the EU so customs wouldn't be a big deal. The Istanbul Airport had a better idea, however. We started off in the customs line, which moved one person every 5 minutes or so. We got to the customs line and were told we couldn't enter without a visa. There goes that idea. Still time to wander around the airport though. He said we needed to go to the transfers line up and to the right. We got there and were told our passports needed to be checked, so we needed to go to that line. The guy said it would take 5 minutes. We've been in Istanbul for barely an hour now and have moved about 100 feet from the gate. The passport checking line for transfering flights was short. And slow moving. We made it to the first check point, where they looked at our passports, asked a few questions and put a sticker on the back. Then we were told to wait in another line to have our travel info entered into the computer. At this point our plane had started boarding. After another 45 minutes, our plane was at its final boarding call. There were still 6 people ahead of us. We finally made it through, ran through the terminal to our gate, and waited in another security line. Then another to x-ray our bags, then one final line to verify our boarding passes. I'm not making any of this up. We got on the plane, and promptly sat next to a couple with a screaming baby. This is Pen Pen listening to Minor Threat to drown out the noise.
Eventually the baby stopped crying. They brought out the first meal, which was actually half decent. And we were sitting in the front row of a section so we had tons of leg room. They had a good selection of movies, and the little screen console thing pulled out like the nav console in Next Gen. Bonus points for that. As far as flights go, it wasn't so bad. That's a lot like saying the root canal wasn't nearly as painful as I was expecting, but it could have been worse. Certainly Turkish Airline's handling of security set us up to expect the worst. This is Pen Pen enjoying some serious leg room.
11 hours later and we were back in New York. Despite having to perform 2 more emergency operations on Aegina, my bag had survived. It was one of the first to come out. Rosys was not. We waited. And waited. Luckily our experience in Istanbul had prepared us for waiting. We were now Olympic class waiters. We could even hold our own against Eastern European Communists waiting for bread. We were that good. The thing stopped moving. No more bags came out. Waiting turned into annoyance turned into filling out some missing luggage paperwork. They said we'd have it tomorrow. It was around 3pm New York time. 10pm Greek time. We'd been travelling for 25 hours. And barely slept. We begrudgingly accepted the situation with a handful of mumbles and blank stares, and made our way to the subway. This is Pen Pen waiting for an A train to go home to Brooklyn.
Epilogue.
The first thing that happened when I got off the train was this:
A man who looked and sounded like today was the first day of his life not spent on Staten Island came up to me. He said “hey.” I looked at him blankly, having gotten 3 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, and said something to the effect of “uh. Yeah. Hi?” And kept walking.
He said “don't worry. I'm not asking for money. I've got some.” With all the wit of Oscar Wilde and the insight of Gore Vidal I replied “uh. ok.” And kept walking.
He said “Do you know what's going on tonight? Any parties? I got a pocket full of cash, and I'm down for whatever.” I pretended not to understand English and kept going. Oh Brooklyn. You never cease to amaze me. Just when I was wondering how I could possibly keep this blog going in the States...
Next week I journey to the wild wasteland of Connecticut. Stay tuned.
This is Pen Pen with his new friend the statue.
This is a song I wrote this one time. You should download it and share it with your friends.
