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By day, Ia (Santorini, Greece) is three shades of blue and one shade of white. Here are two of the blues in a characteristic Greek-islands photo, the blue-domed church. This is a landmark in the center of town, and it marked our way home; the staircase descending from here led straight to our apartment.

(Well, “straight” is not literally true; to find our apartment you’d have to know which of the numerous forks to follow. I went the wrong way somewhere 80% of the time, whether because I was unsure of my direction or distracted by the awesome sight of the caldera. I got much better at recognizing being off the path by the second day.

We only got really lost the first night, and even then we’d located the Blue Sky within a minute of realizing “we should have been there by now.” The town is not very big, and the long staircases are bookended by the shopping district at the top and the Aegean at the bottom. In between, there are only so many choices.)

The flags around the church were tied off on a building across the street, and remember that by “street” I mean “sidewalk”, not that the Greeks tend to distinguish — cars, scooters, donkeys, and people use all paths constantly and concurrently, the only apparent rules being that cars don’t fit down the narrow streets, and scooters don’t handle steps gracefully.

The picture illustrates what I found so appealing about the architecture: simple lines, clean shapes, solid colors, set against a flawless blue sky.

The third shade of blue is the sea, as shown in this somewhat random snapshot from one of the stairways in town, or this shot of yet-another blue-domed church. (They’re everywhere.)

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

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