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The NYC staff of Olympic Airways is eager to help but ultimately ineffective. I’ve taken to tracking down my luggage myself.

This morning I called OA’s baggage tracking office in Frankfurt, Germany. The man there was immediately helpful; he dispatched a colleague to search the “baggage bond” warehouse at Frankfurt airport. Unfortunately there was no sign of our suitcases. He promised to continue the search.

(These actions should have happened four days ago, had OA/NYC taken any action other than blame Lufthansa. The man in Frankfurt said of my file, “Hmm, this file was closed on the 22nd.” His office had no idea the bags were missing.)

Then this afternoon, a sympathetic woman from Lufthansa’s baggage tracking group called to say one of the suitcases had arrived at SFO. (She’s sympathetic because she’s endured about six increasingly anxious voice-mail messages from me.) We should receive the suitcase Sunday afternoon, seven days after surrendering it to the staff at the Naxos airport.

One down, one to go…

In the meantime, I’ve replaced the $85 power supply for my laptop. Assuming I ever get the other one back, I’m going to send an invoice to Olympic Airways.

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posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

Here’s the dark secret of airline baggage tracing: all those barcodes and tag numbers don’t mean a damn thing. If you leave the airport without your luggage, the possibility that you’ll see it again depends on luck and good will and not much else.

Olympic Airways left our luggage behind, and therefore is responsible for returning it to me. However, Olympic doesn’t fly any closer to me than New York City. So they handed off the bags to Lufthansa in Frankfurt, so that Lufthansa could fly them to San Francisco.

Any time bags get handed off like this, the risk of total loss increases from “unlikely” to “likely.” A Lufthansa rep admitted to me that most airlines, including Lufthansa and United, don’t track luggage that is being carried for a different airline. So if the bags show up at the far end, great; if they don’t, there’s not much that can be done. There aren’t any records.

Or as one Lufthansa phone rep stated, “Don’t worry — you’ll get your luggage. It will be fine. 90% of the time, there’s no problem.” 90% of the time?!

Airlines share a baggage tracing system colled WorldTracer. The promise, as I understand it, is that any airline can open a ticket, and all other airlines can read the ticket to learn the histary of a claim and effectively track the luggage.

In my experience, this system fails. For example, Lufthansa has a policy that they won’t assist customers if the ticket is opened by another airline. So, officially, I’m supposed to go through Olympic as I track down my luggage. But I’ve learned that the Olympic Airways staff is largely unable to decipher the reports in the WorldTracer system.

Also, because Olympic created the initial record, Lufthansa is unable to update it — even though Lufthansa has my luggage. Essentially this means that the information trail ends at the point where Olympic delivered my bags to Lufthansa, even though that point is two days and 5700 miles from here.

The bottom line: I last saw my luggage on Sunday afternoon. At the moment, neither Olympic nor Lufthansa knows where it is. The most recent definitive report is from Frankfurt on Tuesday afternoon. What happened after that is a matter of conjecture.

Just to recap the pain and frustration (a recent theme here on debris.com, I realize)…

I returned home on Monday afternoon, minus two suitcases and most of my clothes.

Tuesday, Olympic told me my luggage would arrive at SFO at noon, and that Lufthansa would arrange delivery. Later that day, Lufthansa told me that they did not know whether the bags had arrived, but that Lufthansa wouldn’t arrange delivery in any case because Olympic needed to pay for it.

Olympic reacted with shock and surprise, claiming that of course they’d pay for shipping if only Lufthansa would call to get Olympic’s FedEx account number. I felt like I was mediating an disagreement in a schoolyard. In the meantime I pictured my luggage spinning around the carousel at SFO just waiting for someone to steal it. The only protection I have: both suitcases are far too heavy to lift.

Wednesday, Lufthansa found the WorldTracer messages from Olypmic’s Frankfurt office, written on Tuesday afternoon, admitting that Olympic had failed to get my luggage to Lufthansa in time for Tuesday’s flight. Therefore my bags would not arrive until Wednesday at noon. I tried, again, to contact the Lufthansa baggage office at SFO, but those people only work 4 hours per day and as far as I’ve experienced they never answer their phone. But I’ve only tried to call them 30 times, so I guess I can’t honestly say “never.”

Late Thursday, I finally got some new information. Lufthansa called to say the luggage had been delivered to FedEx. I was given a tracking number. The woman could not verify that the luggage had actually arrived, but assumed as much because, basically, there was no evidence that it hadn’t. And besides she’d found a scrap of paper with my file number and a tracking number, and doesn’t that suggest the bags had been shipped?

She also could not verify when the luggage had been delivered to FedEx. Nor could she say whether it had been shipped overnight or 2-day.

The FedEx website rejected the tracking number. I called FedEx; they show 0 packages being shipped from SFO to my ZIP code. The number I’d been given by Lufthansa turns out to be Olympic’s account number.

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posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

At the risk of making our trip sound like an extended international disaster, I’m going to tell the story of the ride home before I tell the stories of the nice times that preceded it. I have to do this because my photos are temporarily inaccessible for reasons that will soon become clear.

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At some point, you just have to give it up. Things go so wrong, so ridiculously bad and unfair and dumb, there’s no point even thinking about it any more. Look through the problem… visualize walking away on the other side. Wave at that person, who is a little bit older and a little bit wiser and a lot less bitter. (If he waves back with a little smirk like, “boy, are you in for a rough ride!”, shoot him.)

Our first leg on the trip home was a 30 minute flight from Naxos to Athens. The flight was delayed. We weren’t concerned, because we’d planned a short overnight in Athens to ensure that we would make the our connection. What could go wrong?

We had checked one suitcase full of dirty clothes, and another with all of our toiletries, fresh travel clothes for the next morning, assorted souvenirs, the backup CD of all our photos, the power supply for my laptop, the USB cable for the camera, and every pair of underwear I own that wasn’t in the first suitcase.

I used to be the paranoid type; I’d always bring a change of clothes in my carry-on so I’d have something to wear when my bags got lost. But then I flew a lot and my bags never got lost, so I stopped worrying about it, even after my bags really did get lost and I had to wear a pair of torn-up jeans and 10-year-old Chuck Taylors (travel clothes) to a dress-up family reunion, where all my in-laws were wearing ties and jackets. Oh, I was the inscrutable Ausländer that day, I can tell you.

Anyway, we were two of thirty passengers, flying a tiny plane from a tiny airport to a place not very far away. What could go wrong?

Well, for starters, the airline (Olympic Airways, I curse their name) could decide that the plane was overloaded and leave all the baggage behind. We stood around the carousel in Athens for forty minutes before anybody thought to tell us.

When would our bags catch up? They were to be put on a 10pm ferry, to arrive in Athens at 2am. We requested that Olympic hold our luggage at the Athens airport, where we’d pick them up on our way out of town.

This nixed our plans for a fast tour of Athens. By the time we’d waited for our suitcases, then done the baggage-tracing song and dance, and rode the cab downtown for 45 minutes, we had about two hours left to eat and get to bed if we seriously planned to become conscious at our 3am wake-up call. Then, too, we were dressed for the beach, which is where we’d just left. I’d uncharacteristically worn shorts and a T-shirt for the flight, anticipating another Ia-esque baggage drag through Athens. It was sure to be cooler in Athens, but all my warm clothes were still on Naxos.

The woman at the front desk of the hotel said, “You’ll be in room 215.” I asked, by way of confirmation, “That’s a nonsmoking room, right?” She said, “We don’t have any nonsmoking rooms.” I think I started feeling nauseous right there in the lobby, to save time upstairs.

We found a table at the restaurant nearest the hotel and ordered two of our standbys, which we’ve eaten in a dozen restaurants over the past 10 days: greek salad, stuffed tomatoes. The salad was very good. The tomatoes were stuffed with hamburger.

I took the news like a kick in the (empty) stomach. The menu hadn’t specified, and after ordering the dish so many times I had not even considered the possibility. But there they were on the plate, oozing orange grease, violated like so many pepperoni pizzas.

Credit goes to the waiter for graciously taking the them off the bill. We packed up and left, grateful that we’d ordered only a half bottle of wine. Who’d want to linger over wine when all the main courses were, for us, inedible?

I think that’s when I gave up. I counted out the hours: 25. In 25 hours I’d be getting off the plane in San Francisco, tired and underdressed but moving quickly thanks to Olympic Airways’ convenient baggage delivery service.

There was still the chance that Olympic would have our bags for us at the airport in the morning, but I didn’t expect it. I figured if I ever see them again, I’d feel fortunate. Maybe I’ve gone overboard in wondering whether my bags will ever find me, but after the Naxos debacle I have a hard time imagining that Olympic will steward my bags on its flight to NYC, and then (as they’ve promised) pay FedEx to deliver them to California. Any idea what it costs to overnight 115 kilos across the country? A whole lot more than the $100 we paid for the flight from Naxos to Athens, I’m sure.

We found a better cafe two doors down, ordered vegetarian stuffed tomatoes and the other half of our bottle of red wine. The waitress was cheerful and welcoming, unlike the oily mob-looking guys at the meat place, and we recovered our spirits while drinking same.

Needless to say, our bags were not at ATH this morning. The last I heard, just before boarding the plane, was that even though an Olympic agent had been dispatched to the port at 4:00 AM to meet the ferry, he wouldn’t manage to get the bags back to the airport for three more hours.

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posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

Several of the postcards I sent to friends began, “We’re eating our way through 17 days in Europe.” Our vacation days tend to be planned meal-to-meal. Some days I feel like all the hikes and sightseeing are just to kill time before the next feast.

Most mornings we ate granola, brought from home in our single effort to be budget-conscious, but on one extravagant day we had a big fatty Greek breakfast: a chocolate croissant and some sort of traditional Greek twisted pastry. Not pictured, but already inhaled: a delectable apple tart. We decided for this dessert-at-breakfast after stumbling across this bakery near the Ia bus turnaround. They do good work. Note the surly baker ducking behind the counter to avoid being in the photo.

Our favorite restaurant in Ia is called Neptune. We ate there our first night on a recommendation from Rena, the innkeeper; then we returned on our last night because it had been the best place we’d eaten.

We ate tzaziki (yoghurt with cucumber and garlic) at least once a day. It may be the ideal appetizer for bread lovers.

I remain mystified that Greek restaurants do not serve pita bread, except within gyros. Table bread tends toward the Wonder end of the spectrum — squishy white stuff, although with a rustic-style crust, which sometimes is genuinely rustic but sometimes just stale. It’s edible but not great. It’s better with tzaziki.

(Yoghurt, insofar as it’s squeezed from the nipples of goats, is obviously not vegan. But I’d rather immerse myself in the culture (acidophilus in this case) than attempt to maintain my mostly-vegan diet while on vacation.)

More favorites from Neptune: Greek salad (yes, they really serve that in Greece, everywhere), stuffed tomatoes (the best on two islands — I speak with authority on this matter), spinach pie aka spanakopita.

We have found the food to be inexpensive on both Santorini and Naxos. A lunch of two or three salads and appetizers — plenty of food for two — costs about €10. Dinners, during which we’d attempt to ingest everything on the menu that we could pronounce, never cost more than €35, including drinks.

One night I made a mistake: I ordered a “mixed fish grill” plate. The fish was all fresh and perfectly cooked, but required too much fiddling for my taste. One of the fish was whole, head and fins and all. The prawns were the same. I disparagingly call this a “surgery plate” because extracting the edible bits from the discards takes more effort than I’m generally willing to do. Call me picky, but I like the chef to prepare the food for me. At the end of the meal my plate of bones and bodies was bigger than the initial plate of food. It was ghastly to look at, maybe because it was looking back.

Tags: santorini, naxos, neptunerestaurant, spanakopita, stuffed tomatoes
posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2007-02-25 20:07:34

Santorini is a volcanic island that suffered such a huge eruption in 1650 BC that the middle of the island blew away, leaving three-quarters of a ring, the inside edge of which is a steep cliff of volcanic rock. The main cities, Ia and Fira, are built into this cliffside.

(A civilization of people called the Minoans disappeared along with the middle of the island. This is most likely the source of the “lost continent of Atlantis” story, for when the volcano blew, it not only vaporised half the island but sent enormous tidal waves as far as Israel. I believe Disney has turned the Atlantis story into a cartoon. I have not seen it, so I’m not sure how they animated “annihilation by flaming molten rock and/or 750 million vertical gallons of sea water.” Maybe I’ll rent the video.)

Traditional Ian homes are drilled into the rock. From the outside, you might see one room and the patio. A simple facade, like our Blue Sky apartment, could hide an 800 sq. ft. home.

Here are pictures of our 800 sq. ft. home: living cave, bed cave (complete with dirty socks that the photographer’s assistant neglected to pick up), bathroom cave, kitchen cave.

Front to back, the Blue Sky measures 50 feet. This is a design that makes total sense considering the environment, where outside surface area is both minimal and steeply sloped. But it’s a design that is desperate for a cross-draft.

Putting the bathroom 50 feet inside a cave is especially dumb. We only turned on the hot water heater once in four days, but even so, a cool shower would leave the bathroom damp for hours. The builders had wired a small exhaust fan into the light circuit, so that the fan would run whenever the bathroom lights were on. The fan fed a ventilation pipe that exited on the terrace. But the fan was too small to be of much use. I think the CPU fans in my laptop push more air.

So although we coped, I was wishing for a $4 box fan from Home Depot. Or a window on a different wall. Maybe if they’d annexed another ten feet of rock, they could have built a bigger kitchen and opened a back door on the other side of the ridge.

Thinking of that, the construction crews must have had some comical moments. Could there be blueprints of the entire cliff? It seems unlikely. How many times did a builder accidentally poke through into someone else’s bedroom?

The cave life has distinct advantages. The entire neighborhood is quiet, possibly because most people spend their time deep inside their caves. And the views are stunning because there are few tall structures to interfere: here’s what we saw from our terrace. This was our view at breakfast for four days. Oh, and during our mid-afternoon bottle of wine too. Oh, and while we wrote postcards too. Oh, and just before heading into town for dinner.

I stopped to look nearly every time I walked by. It was astounding… the cave houses, the blue water, the islets, the 180-degree panoramic breathtakingness of it all. I had never seen anything like it. With the faint sound of the surf echoing up the hillside, the setting was incredibly peaceful. I didn’t want to leave.

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posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2004-08-29 21:46:13