It's All Greek to Me

I attempted to rouse myself at 3am in London to get ready and checked in for my 7am flight to Thessaloniki, Greece. Talk about an early morning. Or was it a late night? I'm not sure which timezone I'm in right now. I made it to the departures counter on time to get my boarding pass, traverse through security and then wait for 1.5 hours until the gate number was listed on the monitors. At the London Gatwick Airport, gate numbers aren't assigned until 1/2 hour before the flight leaves. This only served to make me nervous that I might not be able to get to the gate in time if say it happened to be 95 and at the far end of the terminal. Easyjet doesn't wait for you to show up if you are late. All part of the no frills, inexpensive policy. Lest the suspense stress you out, I did make it to the gate on time though only half awake.

I slept most of the way through the flight though some guy a row back talked non-stop all the way there. Customs went well and I managed to find the bus ticket booth. The one slip in the plan was I took the wrong bus into town. On the bright side, I discovered there is an IKEA in Thessaloniki. Yea for international symbols! Didn't think I'd see one of those here. Once the bus circled back to the airport, I got on the right bus and headed toward town. The only trouble was that the stops called out on the bus didn't match anything in the map in my book. I kept looking for landmarks, but nothing looked familiar. Eventually I got off and wandered into a motorbike shop. One of the guys spoke enough english to help me figure out that I was about 10 minutes from where I wanted to be. All in all, not too bad for not being able to read what the signs said fast enough. One moment in life when I can say "Thankgoodness for Greek class." I can't speak much, but at least I can read it. I wandered around the area where the hostel was supposed to be, but no luck in finding it. There were about 10-12 other hotels along the street, just not the one I wanted. I did manage to find one that was close to my price range. The lady who checked me in was very helpful. She gave me a more detailed local map and told me about a nearby internet spot.

Since breakfast at 3am, I hadn't eaten and was a bit low on blood sugar and water. Once I got up to my room (no elevator and two flights of about 10 stairs each) I downed some water from the sink and remembered I had some chocolate covered cookies in my bag. Now that my brain had some energy to work off of, I decided to walk to the train station to find out which train would be my ticket out of town. I ate some mousaka, beans in a red sauce and salad at Sofi's House restaurant. I'm not sure exactly where the internet place was the hotel lady was trying to direct me to, but there's a Starbucks across the street with 2 hours of internet with a purchase.

And so the adventure goes on to explore the other sights of Thessaloniki and beyond.

One Night in London

Yesterday's travel plans were certainly up for interpretation. I left PA at 6:30am to arrive an hour later in Detroit, MI. Unbeknownst to me Atlanta was being stormed upon. All flights in and out were apparently delayed 3 hours. I shifted to standby for an earlier flight into Atlanta which fortunately got me in on time to catch my still on time flight to London. Atlanta? Yeah, it was sunny when I got there. What storm!?!

So now I'm relaxing in my 8x8 train cabin style hotel room at the airport. It's actually quite cozy. Hats off to the Europeans for combining functionality in a tiny space. Hopefully I'll get enough rest to carry me through an early morning (4am check out) and a busy day settling into Greece.

Four Legs With Horns In The Airport

Greetings from Taipei!

I arrived here at about 5:30am (4:30pm CST). Good flight, but a bit turbulent towards the end. Managed to get about 6 hours of sleep and then a nap after breakfast. The entire airport was quiet and no one was around except other waiting passengers. Went through a random security checkpoint hoping it would be near where my flight is leaving. Seems like all the terminals are connected. There are about 4 girls singing choir music behind me. Quite nice.

Found this free internet kiosk--Awesome! Not sure where my final flight leaves from, but now that it's 6am there's more people, shops are open, food is available (though I'm not hungry--had beef and potatoes and eggs and hashbrowns on the flight over here) and it seems like the information desks are staffed.

If all goes well I should be in Yangon by 11:30am.

I have been entertained by the green space (try posting the video I took at some point) and the large cow/yak looking animals painted with various Taiwan scenes. Much like the frog and fish displays in Erie. Seems a popular thing to do.

The City By The Bay

I arrived in San Francisco around 5pm. The next portion of my journey (12 hours to Taipei) continued at 1:30am. The ticketing desks for China Airlines opened again at 9:30pm. Knowing that I would have about 9 hours to spend in San Francisco, I planned to take the BART train into downtown for a break from airports. Though the price for BART was a bit expensive, it was worth the trip to see a little bit of the city. Most places were closed from the holiday weekend and being a Sunday.

I did enjoy figuring out the travel plans and a place to walk on my own, a new challenge. Would have been more fun with someone to wander the city with or show me the interesting sights...like Alcatraz or the Golden Gate Bridge. For better or worse I had the song We Built This City by Jefferson Starship stuck in my head the entire time I was walking around. It was nice to soak up some English before heading to a country where I don't know any of the language. At least in Spanish speaking countries I could catch bits and pieces if not whole conversations (depending on how fast they spoke).

Have Adventure, Will Travel: Part II

The focus for my time in Myanmar will be thinking about and hopefully practicing interfaith dialogue. I am looking forward to seeing Dr. Ling again and meeting the rest of the participants for the summer program. There will be 3-4 more from the US, a couple from Sweden (I think), one from Switzerland and one from Denmark. The other countries I can't remember.

I am excited (though a bit anxious) to have the intentional opportunity to swap stories of faith with other Christians as well as those of other religions. I do not know what the daily schedule will be like. For my trip to Yangon I will have a 9.5 hour lay over in San Francisco. Hopefully the BART will be running as scheduled so I can take a trip into downtown to wander around and not spend the entire time in the airport. One more good reason to check my second bag :) I'm sure there will not be as much to do since I am traveling on a Sunday.