Stranded
Alone and 2000 miles from home
Finding yourself on the receiving end of a nasty incident is never pleasant, but there’s an added level of insecurity when it happens thousands of miles from home.
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz wrote an article about journeying across Europe with his wife, in which he describes some disturbing events that jeopardized the tranquility of their travels. His account brought back to me an episode that threatened to strand me on my own in Athens, a city where I knew no one and couldn’t speak the language.
It was in the 1990s when few people carried phones, ‘internet’ was still a proper noun, and most people’s credit cards were basic and inflexible. I was an invited speaker at a conference in Thessaloniki. I would be there for only a few days, all expenses covered. My journey out was long but uneventful. I flew first to Amsterdam, then on to Athens where a bus took me to another airport for an internal flight to Thessaloniki.
My return journey was on a Sunday. So back I went to Athens from Thessaloniki on the biggest plane I’ve ever been in — I’ll swear it was some kind of cut-and-shut of two jumbo jets welded together, safety regulations for internal flights not being what they are today. My most vivid memory of that packed flight is the look of sheer terror on the face of the flight attendant sitting near me as we made the final approach into Athens. I don’t recall feeling apprehensive, though. I guess I was saving myself for what was to come.
The taxi ride across Athens became an unexpected feature of the trip, as well as the only way to get to where my plane to Amsterdam was due to leave. The bus (fare covered by my air ticket) didn’t run on a Sunday.
The taxi driver was horrified to learn I had only this short journey to see the sights. He insisted he should take me on a mini-tour and promised not to charge much more. And to be fair, he didn’t — indeed he couldn’t have, I had very little cash on me.
It took maybe half a block for his focus to shift from the sights of Athens to indignation against his American soon-to-be-ex-wife, with whom an acrimonious divorce was in full swing. This led to a tirade against Aristotle Onassis for having the effrontery to marry Jackie Kennedy — the two issues linked by being Greek-American marriages; the animosity coming from some people owning taxis and some owning yachts. It generated an unusual commentary for my sightseeing tour:
… I couldn’t believe what she told her lawyer … totally unreasonable … there’s the Coliseum … she wants all my money … who does Onassis think he is … the Acropolis … some women don’t know how to … Parthenon … some men, just because they have a yacht … you should stay another day … Temple of Zeus … so much to see …
When I arrived at the airport, it was a long time since breakfast.
Having thanked my impromptu guide and wished him well, I audited my life goals. They were a short-term trio:
- check-in (no online option in those days),
- visit the loo,
- find a coffee shop.
The place was busy, but the queues were short and I was soon at the desk, had dumped my suitcase on the conveyor belt, handed over my paperwork, and was waiting confidently for my boarding pass.
“You have a stand-by ticket.”
I nodded vaguely, not getting the point until she clarified:
“The flight’s full.”
Wait! What? My coffee… I need to go to the loo. Help!
She gave me back the ticket.
“Where does it say stand-by?”
“It doesn’t, but it is. And the flight’s full.”
The conference organizers, having invited me to come and speak, had cut costs by buying me a stand-by ticket at the height of the holiday season. I seethed briefly, but it wasn’t the right time to get annoyed. Deep breath. Time to figure out just how late I was likely to be and whether I was going to miss my flight from Amsterdam.
“What time’s the next flight?”
The response wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! But you have more than one flight a day to Amsterdam.”
“Not on a Sunday. Another airline might get you there.”
I pondered this. Buying an airline ticket was one of the few things I could do with my credit card. I couldn’t even get cash from a Greek ATM back then.
“They might be full too.”
She was right, they might. I decided I would return to the conference hotel and make them put me up for another night. It was their fault I was stranded, after all. Then I remembered that I was in Athens and they were in Thessaloniki, and I had no means of getting back there. I couldn’t even contact them on a Sunday.
If I could only access the safe side of the airport, I could sleep on my suitcase in an area with shops that would take my credit card. If I couldn’t — and without a boarding pass, I couldn’t — I was in a bleak industrial area of Athens that didn’t look overly safe as a place to wander about all night.
I asked about the next flight, wondering if this part of the airport stayed open overnight providing the relative safety of people and lights. It looked as though it probably didn’t. This was the old airport — opened in 1938, closed in 2001. Athens now has a modern 24-hour international airport.
“Is the flight the same time tomorrow?”
The woman nodded in answer to my query, checking through some paperwork, then gave me a look as though calculating whether I was ready for more bad news.
“That flight’s full too.”
Well, of course, it would be. It was the height of the holiday season. Time to brace myself for the full picture.
“So when can you get me a flight?”
“Earliest is two weeks.”
Ulp!
Things had morphed from staying safe overnight to finding a way not to starve!
The flight I thought I’d be on was due to depart in two hours. It was a very busy two hours. No time for that overdue visit to the loo, let alone coffee. I found a phone prepared to bankrupt me via my credit card and I called home, hoping we weren’t close to the point where I had to ask them to mobilize a rescue from afar. Then I carted my suitcase around every airline desk in search of an alternative flight.
“Amsterdam? Nothing today, nothing for a fortnight. It’s the holiday season.”
“Anywhere in the UK?”
At least my credit card would work in the UK even if I wasn’t near home.
“Nothing for two weeks.”
I made a mental list of countries in Western Europe where my credit card would work and tried again.
“Nothing for two weeks.”
I came to realize they could only accommodate me as early as “in two weeks” because I only wanted one seat. Most people don’t holiday alone. And it was — as I was told again and again — the height of the holiday season.
One rep was keen to sell me a flight from London to Humberside (my local airport).
“Get me a flight to London and you’ve got a deal.”
“Nothing to London for two weeks.”
She was still pressing me to buy the London-Humberside ticket as the flight I should have been on clicked to the top of the departure board — take-off imminent. I was too focused on the clock to challenge her on the existence of the flight she wanted to sell me. I’ve never heard of internal flights between London and Humberside, but maybe there were at that time, though I don’t imagine she did a brisk trade from her desk in Athens Airport.
The point of my clock watching was that once the flight took off, it snuffed out the last glimmer of hope of getting home that day. It wasn’t going to make my predicament any easier but I could then pause and take a breath, and make that long-overdue trip to the damned restroom.
Take-off time passed, and the flight disappeared from the board.
I dragged my case out of the ticket hall and entered the tiled outer lobby of the ladies' restroom. At that moment, the crackly voice on the tannoy started to say something that sounded familiar. It wasn’t my name, but …
The people who’d booked my tickets had, with less than mind-blowing efficiency, spelled my name wrong, which had caused a few tense moments through customs. But what it meant was that the crackly voice imploring:
Dr Crubb … Dr Crubb … to the ticket hall …
… was for me!
I spun around and sprinted back, restroom goal thwarted again. The woman at the desk was looking desperate as I arrived panting.
“Ah, there you are! Follow me!”
With that, she set off at speed through the throng. She knew her way and didn’t have a suitcase weighing her down, but I wasn’t going to lose her. We barged through crowds, dodged around queues, and went up and downstairs until finally, we burst out into the blazing Greek sunshine.
No one had said what was happening but I managed to gasp a “Thank you,” as she threw me at another woman in a similar uniform, who hurried me across the tarmac and up the stairs into a packed plane. She relieved me of my suitcase which spent the flight in the galley and led me to what was clearly the only vacant seat.
I barely had time to sit down and fasten my seatbelt before the aircraft backed out from the gate.
I was on my way to Amsterdam.
It was four hours before I could find another phone — in Schiphol Airport — to contact home and let them know that I was in Amsterdam and would be landing in Humberside to schedule.
It would have been a different story if I’d not made it onto that plane, and I still don’t know how I would have managed. I can only be thankful I didn’t have to try. The experience didn’t put me off Greece, air travel, or even international conferences. It taught me that what’s written on the ticket isn’t always the full story and conference organizers put cost savings ahead of everything.
The plane I was bundled onto was the one I had been expecting to catch. I never had the chance to ask anyone what happened. I picture an unruly passenger causing mayhem and being thrown off the flight at the last minute. That would explain the late take-off and the empty seat. Belated thanks to whoever that was and I hope they didn’t have too uncomfortable a night in Athens.
This is the story from Dr. Mehmet Yildiz that sparked my memories of being almost stranded in Greece:
This is not the only gripping account I’ve read recently of strange, delightful, dangerous, awesome travel experiences. The ones currently standing out in my mind are Barb Dalton 🇺🇦, Karen Schwartz, Maria Rattray, and Adrienne Beaumont. I recommend you check them out.
