The Fun of Airports

Okay, I'll start with the good news. I am in Athens, in my hotel room for the night. I got in at about 5pm Greece time. Here is where the other shoe drops. I was suppose to be in at about 9:30 am Greece time.

Let's Tarintino this :)

Monday:
Left Muncie with Gabe a little after 9am. I think i slept about 4 hours the previous night and i haven't been able to sleep well for a while now.
Had a lovely day for the drive to Richmond to meet my parents at Ried Hospital so that Dad could drive the rest of the way to Dayton and then Gabe would have somebody to ride back with at least most of the way.
We leave Richmond at about 10:45ish? Get to Dayton i check my bags, my flight is on scheduale for 1:30pm. We all have a nice chat and coffee. Gabe and Dad embrass me by taking phone pictures as i'm about to go through security. Say goodbye and hugs all around i get into the terminal just fine and find my gate no problem.
Now, i'll admit that i had my reservations. I was going to a forgien city where i didn't speak the language, had no local currency at the time, I was (and am) missing Gabe and my parents and my cat and chinchilla. So i was freaked. I get on the flight to go to Phildephia where i had a one hour layover then directly on to Athens.
We got on the plane start to push off from the gate and we stop, and we wait, and we DEBOARD the plane because they are having trouble getting the second engine to start up. Now i'm glad that they figured that out before we were in the air but i had a short layover to begin with and i was worried. They said a half hour, then an hour, then finally at 3:30ish we were able to get on the plane to phildelphia. I was going to miss my connecting flight for sure (it left around 4ish) So the airplane people transfer my ticket so now i'm routed to go from phildelphia to Zurich, Switzerland, then on to Athens. I say whatever as long as i get to Athens and they said i would be there at about 12:30ish.
So i get to Phildelphia where they have a friggen huge airport. My plane landed on one side and my flight to Zurich was on the whole other friggen side of the airport. My flight to Zurich was already boarding by the time my plane from Dayton was landing. So i take a bus to get to the correct gate and walk in and they are doing the final phases of boarding passengers on the flight to Zurich. So i'm walking and i'm thinking i'm not going to make this flight i'm going to be stuck in philadelphia of all places. I should just say put me in a hotel i can go tomorrow with the rest of my group, but no i decide to run.
So i'm running like a crazy person, not like nice even jogging, like sprinting down through the terminal (because of course the one i need is the one at the very end), and i make it.
Now i'm on my way to Zurich, it is one of those huge planes. Like i think the measure basketball player's height to make sure they could all walk comfortably up and down the aisles. I get about 2 1/2 hours of sleep. I start to get a charlie horse in my leg because i sprinted about 1/4 of a mile in stupid sandles. My feet are swelling and I just feel like crap. Oh, didn't I mention? This plane also left one hour late.
Tuesday:
Zurich. I get in, i have to go through customs which was easy i just showed them my passport and they let me go on through. I ask a airline worker if they thought i could still make the flight to Athens and which direction i should be headed. They say maybe i can make it because the flight is suppose to leave at 9:45am and it is 9:33am. So i'm kinda sprinting down those walky runway thingys. I get to the gate and it's closed for business. So now i go to the transfer desk in Zurich's airport. Which by the way if you have a lot of cash Zurich's airport is friggen awesome. They had Burburry, Coach, Hermes, and a lot of perfume stores, chocolate shops, and i'm sure many other high end shops.
Anyway, I'm at the transfer desk i get them to redirect my flight i go over to make sure that my bags that i've checked are following me still and they say, "Well i can only print you the boarding pass for Munich, you will have to get the one for Munich to Athens when you get there." So i very kindly say, "Umm. What???"
I now go back over to the first women at the transfer desk and ask if there is anyway that i could be put on Standby for one of the flights directly to Athens (they were already overbooked) because i had been having some problems with getting to my connecting flights and i didn't want to be in Munich for the night. My other option (other than Standby, or Munich) was a flight that would go out at about 9:30pm and get me into Athens at about Midnight. Which is something that i really didn't want to do, but thought it would be better than spending the night in Munich's airport.
Now, it may be because at this point i was crying and trying not to blame the people at the counter because it really wasn't their fault and they are doing there jobs. But something must have worked because i got on the next direct flight to Athens (The one that previously was overbooked) that left at 1:00pm.
I then found a very nice cab driver.
It turns out that my cab driver lived in New York for a time and was a cabbie there before moving back to Greece to raise a family. He thinks that drivers in Greece are worse than New York drivers. After riding in a cab with him i agree. So he was really nice and pointed out a bunch of stuff on the way. We drove by some protestors that were outside the parliment building. Also the lawschool and a bunch of other stuff that i don't remember now.

I then got check into my hotel and I took a very nice shower and changed clothes before coming into the free internet lounge that is in the hotel to type this up.
The rest of my group gets in tomorrow, i'm not sure when, but i'll probably just hang around near the hotel intill they do, then i think we are going on a walking tour around Athens?? I forget I will have to look it up now.

and, I now have advice for future travelers on this trip, Just buy the ticket and go with the group because then at least they have to deal with 20 or so pissed off people that have been jerked around instead of one kinda weepy one.