The Longest Journey

In order to dispense with introductions, since you who read this probably already know me, allow myself to introduce...myself. I'm Zachary Chitwood, a graduate student in the History Department at Princeton University about to begin my second year of coursework. I am spending this summer in Greece and Turkey. My time in the former is devoted to a summer course in Byzantine Greek which includes many trips to classical and medieval sites, and the latter to the archaeological survey of modern Avkat (classical/medieval Eukaita), a town which has been continuously inhabited since the Hittite period. I am currently about halfway though my summer course in Byzantine Greek, which has been a lot of fun so far (more on that later). As I promised to write friends and family about my experiences in Greece, Turkey, and maybe other places in the Eastern Mediterranean, a blog seemed to be the best medium to keep everyone informed.

Now about the trip over here. I completed my spring coursework in May, although I didn't finish one of my papers until the middle of June. In the meantime I went to my ancestral homeland of Fallon, Nevada. A friend of mine who grew up in Greece described Sparta as "the town that always sleeps," and this phrase fits Fallon perfectly, although I'm rather found of that somniferous spot. Now after spending a month in Nevada hiking and visiting my folks and ol' friends, I left Reno, Nevada, which has an international airport, for Athens, Greece. Now as someone who flies frequently and firmly believes that any travel by air these days is by nature unpleasant and sometimes terrible, I wouldn't normally belabor the details of my long trip from point A to point B, but since this trip was unusually terrible, I think it deserves recounting (if you haven't noticed already, I would probably describe it anyway because I'm verbose and long-winded).

So on Friday, June 22, after a pleasant meal at Great Basin Brewery (the food and beer there are as great as...err, the Great Basin) my younger brother, Cheb (le Boi) dropped me off at Reno/Tahoe International Airport. Upon arriving at the ticket counter, the young lad working there informed me that the tickets I had booked on US Airways.com had not factored in connection times properly, and that my flight from Reno to Las Vegas arrived into Vegas too late to catch my connecting flight from Las Vegas to Newark. So he put me on the flight to Vegas anyway but also booked me on a red-eye which left Vegas at midnight for Newark. Okay, no big deal. The young lad at the counter also puts me in First-class. This is fantastic because this is the first time in my life I've been anywhere besides coach. But for counting purposes please note that this is one red-eye flight. But the moral of the story is that computers make mistakes too and you shouldn't put too much trust in airlines' online booking.

So I get to Newark. First-class is pretty good, although having now experienced it I wouldn't pay a couple of hundred extra dollars for it. Now for reasons of summer funding I had to book a separate flight from Newark to Athens, Greece. I go to check in once again on Saturday morning, June 23. Now in contrast to my last experience everything looks okay; my flight is set from Newark to Charlottesville, North Carolina and then to London (no, I have also have no idea why I had to go to Charlottesville; the inexorable logic of connecting flights, I suppose) on various US Airways flights. Since my flight from London to Athens is on Olympic Airlines, I have to get my baggage in London. So I grab my tickets and go through security.

A word about TSA security. Now I have my suspicions about this phenomenon, but I am always, all kidding aside, "randomly" selected to be searched when I go through security. Part of this may have to do with my shifty looks, but I am more inclined to think that I am always searched because I took an Intensive Arabic Program two summers ago, and as such am probably on several national security lists. As usual, I am randomly selected to be searched, but it's happened to me so many times that I go through it very quickly, and the TSA guards remark that I have obviously done this before.

I sleep in fits and starts and await my flight that Saturday evening. Newark is a nice airport. For the first time in a long time, over the course of several days I read several books for leisure. I buy and read Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, Stephen King's Lisey's Story, Pauolo Coelho's The Devil and Miss Pyrm, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Surprising, all of these books are decent reads, with the possible exception of the Stephen King novel. After reading for hours, I notice that the masses are a stirrin' near the departure gate for the Newark-Charlottesville flight. People look really angry, and I have obviously missed an important announcement. Fifteen minutes prior to departure time there is no plane at our gate. This is doubly strange because it is a beautiful and cloudless day with almost no bad weather in the rest of the nation, no planes sitting on the runway at the usual weak links in the metaphorical chain of flightplans like O'Hare in Chicago. Eventually the announcement is made for people to come up to the ticket agents and rebook their flights. I am one of the first in line, but since my itinerary is so bizarre everyone else finishes rebooking by the time I get through. Now another word to the wise. I booked this particular flight through Travelocity.com, and since my flights were on separate airlines this presented a colossal problem in rebooking. So no matter how great the price, don't book international flights on sites like Orbitz and Travelocity. Then how do you get to international destinations from the States if the airline sites as well the aforementioned are useless? Steerage on a fishing boat, because it's less work and it'll probably take the same amount of time. This agent kept trying to put me on a flight to London, even though I insisted repeatedly that it was now utterly pointless for me to go to London, since my connecting flight from London to Athens would now certainly be missed. Oh well. He booked me on a Continental flight, another red-eye to London directly from Newark. For those of you keeping count, this is now two-red eyes. Before I left I asked why the flight to Charlottesville and been cancelled, and the ticket agent had absolutely no idea; the plane just never showed up. Maybe the pilot got drunk or the crew was on strike, or maybe the pilot and striking crew got drunk, who knows.

All things considered, the flight to London was very pleasant. I sat next to guy who works in Princeton and a young woman about to study in Sussex, and I really enjoyed the flight, although I didn't sleep very much. Now we landed at Gatwick airport in London, and after going through customs I discovered that my checked bag was to be found neither at the Continental nor US Airways carousel. This, needless to say, is not a good thing. I spend several hours talking with various ticket agents and I finally find my bag. That's great, but now I'm stuck in London because I missed my connection to Athens. Since Gatwick doesn't have a ticket counter for Olympic Airlines, I finally am pointed in the direction of a travel agency that for some reason serves as a ticket counter for Olympic Airlines. Luckily, my flight from London to Athens had also somehow been cancelled (this is a pretty amazing string of coincidences, but true nonetheless). So I am rebooked for a red-eye flight from Heathrow-London to Athens. This is to be red-eye number three. Alright. This means I catch a bus from Gatwick to Heathrow. I get to see some of the English countryside, which is breathtakingly beautiful. The airports at least are spotless. I get to Heathrow and check in. Everything looks good. I go through security at Heathrow, which is astonishingly efficient. The British security folks check everything, and they make the TSA look very amateurish by comparison.

So now I'm in Heathrow. I'm pretty tired because it's Sunday afternoon and I haven't slept since Thursday night. The flight to Athens is delayed because of power outages in the city, but I get on a later flight and finally arrive at Athens airport sometime after midnight local time. Unfortunately, I am supposed to take the metro to meet a program coordinator so I can get to apartment, and the metro is now officially closed. This means that I must use my very limited Modern Greek language skills to take a taxi to get to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

A word about Modern Greek. I don't speak it. But I have studied Classical and Byzantine Greek for about five years, so I am in the peculiar position of being able to read the language fairly well and understand the spoken language to a limited degree. But I can say only a few words and phrases. It's analogous to Chaucer's grasp of modern English if he were to be magically transported from merry olde England and step off a plane today in Los Angeles and try to get a taxi and hotel.

In any case, I call the program coordinator's cell phone at this ungodly hour, and thankfully he responds. After apologizing profusely for calling so late, I speak with him for about five minutes and we agree to meet in front of the Gennadius Library. I find my way outside the airport where military policemen are directing incoming taxis. After waiting for my turn I jump into the next available taxi. After exchanging pleasantries in Greek with the driver he begins speaking very good English, which I would later find to be commonplace in almost all parts of Athens. I try to explain where the American School is, but he isn't familiar with it. He looks it up on his Palm Pilot with some very fancy navigation software by some German company, a marvellous device that I've never seen on taxis in the United States. He finds what he thinks is the Gennadius and thus I spend about half an hour in the taxi until we get there. Very much looking forward to the prospect of sleep in a bed after so many days without it, I tip him even though it's not customary to do so, and meet the program coordinator. He takes me to my apartment and shows me my room, which is thankfully air-conditioned. I am now completely exhausted. Three red-eye flights have taken their toll, and I fall to sleep almost instantly.
It will take a few posts for me to catch up to the present. The next posts are full of the Acropolis, translating Byzantine Greek, carousing with fellow academics in Mystra, Sparta, and Corinth, and run-ins with thieves. Stay tuned!