allez!

We left yesterday morning at 9:30, and after returning to grenoble to pick up amy and Marks forgotten plane tickets and passports we made it to the geneva airport, parked in p51 (there is a special deal if you live in certain areas of france), were shuttled between desks, sampling the famous swiss hospitality and helpfulness, finally got our new tickets (Olympic Airlines had inexplicable cancelled one leg of our flight which required new tickets to be issued), got some delicious airport food and got on the plane. There were some nice views of the Ecrins from the plane, and I think I saw Pelvoux. Using Genoa as a reference, I saw portofino, and the cinqueterre from the air as well.

We had originally been scheduled to fly to Athens and then on to Kos on the same day, but as I mentioned, Olympic cancelled our flight to kos, and rescheduled us on the next flight (5:00 AM the next morning). I guess they aren't as good about insulating the consumer from theirfinancial incompetance like the US air carriers are! In any event, it gave us the chance to take the impressive new rail system into Athens for a few hours of sightseeing and eating. On our last trip, the bus from Syntagma was still the best way in and out of the city, and the metro/suburban rail extension to the airport really is a giant step forward. We walked up to the flanks of the Acropolis
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wandered around the Plaka, where preparations were being made for easter celebrations, with many candle sellers, bodygaurds in black audis and a throng of cops. After chicken souvlaki and some incredibly foul wine, we took the train back to the airport to try to get a little sleep before our flight the next morning. This turned out to be much easier said than done. The lights are bright, and most benches have a thin and unforgiving layer of foam with non retractable armrests. However, we managed to find a corner of the airport where there were no armrests, but the climate control had been set several degrees C lower than the other zones. I put my jacket over my face, put our toiletry kit under my head as a pillow and drifted in and out of sleep for an hour or so. During this time I would awaken to crushed skin on my waist from the metal chairs, light coming in through folds in my jacket, or the once-every-five-minute reminders at rock concert volume that you are not allowed to park permanently in the loading zone or to take trollies onto escalators. This latter announcement was particulalry irksome: are there really so many people that are trying to do this? There are guard columns in front of every escalator, so not only would you have to be deaf and blind to miss the warnings, but you would then have to lift the trolly over the barrier, and stuff it onto the escalator.
Needless to say, I wasn't able to sleep very much, so I went exploring with Amy and we discovered that McDonalds has big cushy yellow bench seats! And if you buy something, they dont really care if you go to sleep on them. We woke Chloe and Mark up, decamped for McDs and bought tea and rolls. Shortly thereafter, I stuffed my Etymotic headphones into my ears, and went to sleep. I woke up drooling on my jacket at 4 in the morning which coincidentally was when they started serving breakfast.
The rest of the trip was a bit of a blur, but we got into Kos very early, took the Olympic bus to Mastixari, and waited for the ferry to arrive. It being Greek Orthodox Easter, the ferrymen thought it would be very entertaining to throw firecrackers every few minutes. At one point they threw several into the ticket booth, which was a prefab plastic box about the size of a closet containing their unfortunate friend in front of the ticketing computer. The muffled sound of the explosions brought back memories of thunderbombs, china reds and M80s thrown into confined spaces during my teen years.. sigh! We took the first ferry into Pothia, were met by Nick Trikilis (he runs the place we have stayed at for three years now) at the port and took a taxi to the Studios. Along the way, the cabbie informed us that the real fireworks would happen tomorrow around 5 pm. Basically, it involves throwing sticks and balls of dynamite (he pronounced it dinameet!) off of high places. He went on to say that Kalymnians are a little crazy with the dinameet, and that if someone dies young, they throw his/her age in dynamite sticks. Marriages are also an occasion for dinameet, "and mayeb, if donkey has babies? sometimes dinameet". After getting settled in the studio, we went to the Glaros snack bar to say hi to Steve and Sue and hear more about this strange dinameet throwing tradition. It turned out that this year they had 3000 sticks of dinammet, of both commercial and "home made" varieties! Old grandmothers apparently make it out of ammonium nitrat and some carrier. You can see and hear the difference because the commercial dinameet is much louder and leaves a white smoke cloud. The grandma dinemeet leaves a brown or black cloud. People occasionally get killed and dismembered during the throwing festivites. This was sounding better and better.
steve gave us an update to the guide for all the new routes that had been put up since last year, we bought water, yogurt and Kalymnian thyme honey, went to the studio for pasta etc and went to sleep.