Add to the things that I really miss about home: the Metro or SEPTA (depending which home I happen to be at at the given moment) trip planners. I freely admit that Athens has a great public transportation system, which is really easy to use within the city core. However, planning a trip outside of the city core requires a perfect mental map of the city, as the bus routes are listed by stops, the names of which bear no relationship to the streets they are on, and the public transit maps include everything you could ever want to know about the routes except what the names of the streets are. All of this makes it nearly impossible to make your way to a place that you don't know exactly where it is before you set out.
Why this came up: my mother had to send me some documents that needed my signature, and my absentee ballot while she was at it. She did this by FedExing the packet to me with a prepaid return waybill. The idea was that I would fill out the documents, put them into a new mailer, and drop it off at the nearest FedEx location. Sounds fine in theory, until you realize that there are exactly two FedEx locations in the whole of Greece: one in Thessaloniki, and the other in the Koropi suburb of Athens. This meant that this morning, I had to figure out a way to get to Koropi, , which just happens to be one of the furthest-out suburbs, almost at the airport. It took me about an hour and a half last night, when I really should have been writing my Art and Archeology midterm, to figure out a possible way to get to the address I needed to get to. There is a Metro station at Koropi, but the FedEx office is about 8 km away from it. This led to plan 1.0: take Metro to Koropi (last stop on the blue line before the airport), and walk to FedEx office. Granted, when I tried to get walking directions off of Google it warned me that it was likely to take me 1.75 hours to do this each way, but I was perfectly (un)willing to do that, because I'm kind of crazy like that. I mean, 8 km is about 5 miles, which is about two and a third times around the Nature Trail, so doable, right? Especially given my track record of hiking to Villanova or the Haverford Township library when I needed something from them?
On my walk home last night, while waiting for the light to change so that I could cross Vas. Sophia, and watching all of the cars and taxis going by, it struck me -- taxis in Athens are actually priced within the reach of mere mortals. It hadn't even occured to me that taking a taxi was an option, since they're so ridiculously expensive in the States. This led to plan version 1.1, which was to take the Metro to Koropi, and then take a taxi to the FedEx office. It would cost more than walking, but it would also be much faster and less fatiguing. This remained my plan until I actually set out on this adventure.
This morning, after I ran some other errands in the morning, I set out on the Metro blue line towards the airport, in accordance with my plan. However, I soon discovered that even though there is supposedly a Metro stop at Koropi that's on the Metro, you can't actually get to it. Apparently, it's too close to the airport, and you need a special ticket to be allowed to ride that far, so I was forced off of the Metro at Doukissis Plakendias. This necessitated a rapid reformulation of plans, because Doukissis Plakendias is nowhere near being near enough to walk to Koropi, and buying a special Metro ticket or transferring to the Suburban Railway would cost 6 euro each way, on top of whatever taxi fare I would end up paying from Koropi to the FedEx office, plus I wasn't sure of the schedule for either of these trains. All of this led to the formulation of plan 2.0, which was to take a taxi from Doukissis Plakendias to the FedEx office. I did get there, and post my package, and get back, and I even did it all in time to go to Ancient Greek (though not in enough time to actually prepare for Ancient Greek, so I was at sight today, which is always so much fun...), but it was a lot of time and aggravation, and I'm sure that there has got to be a better way to get there from here.
Two metro tickets: 0.80 euro each
Taxi fare: 21.00 euro
Postage on packet: 31.27 euro
Estimated time spent planning expedition: 1.5 hours
Estimated time spent actually on expedition: 2.5 hours
Participating in the democratic process: priceless
In slightly less aggravated news, I'm off to Istanbul for fall break starting tomorrow and coming back on Sunday next. I'm taking the train through Thessaloniki there, which is going to be a really long ride, but at least I get to see where I'm going through, as opposed to going on an airplane, where it's like, "we will put you on magic teleportation tube, subject you to varying amounts of acceleration and forces for a few hours while we play a movie outside of the portholes, let you off, and hey presto! you're someplace else." Hey, any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic -- Arthur C. Clarke. Seriously, though, it should be fun and exciting, and I'm really looking forward to it.
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