Travel Notes: We all have stories. This is from Athens 2004.

I arrived at the airport in Athens jet lagged and dazed after the long flights from Victoria, Toronto and Montreal. My luggage was predictably lost in the exchange from Toronto’s Terminal 1 to 3, after a delay from Victoria and a switch to the Greek Olympic Airways. After the usual rigmarole to report lost baggage, made slightly more difficult with the language barrier (my rudimentary knowledge of French and German was to be of little use deciphering Greek), I left the arrival hall empty handed and joined Lance in the airport. I was officially in Athens, on holiday, reunited with my husband and a spectator at the Olympic Games. Jet lag and lost luggage were not a problem. The sun was hot, the sky was blue, and I was on vacation for the next eight days. I was not racing, which was poignantly clear in my complete freedom from anxiety about my luggage, my accommodation, my hydration or my feelings of fatigue. I was dazed and happy.

My first impressions were not all what I expected. I saw evidence of the Olympics as we drove towards Vouliagmeni, the triathlon venue and place we were staying. The roads were all freshly paved and black and there was a fast Olympic lane to drive in, the surrounding environment was dry, dusty and sparsely vegetated with shrubby silvery green leaved trees (olives). Everywhere was evidence of rubble, the whitish rock that is the foundation of Greece. The road led between storefronts and empty buildings, car dealerships and firewood stores, and everywhere lay the empty shells of half built abandoned structures. Almost every second building was unfinished, as if ambition to build, to start, was all that mattered. Concrete shells of two and three story buildings were littered everywhere, like a bombed out landscape, although these were merely abandoned starts, not fallen down rubble. It was hard to fathom the feeling of looking at all these ugly skeletons of houses, why they are allowed to exist and why people are allowed to abandon such projects, leaving eyesores littered along the streets and over the arid but beautiful Mediterranean hills. As the week progressed and this empty building phenomena became a discussion point, the theory emerged that there was some tax break in starting new house projects, so developers started buildings that they never had any intention of finishing, and also that the huge rush to complete Olympic venues created a massive shortage of builders and tradesman for regular projects. Whatever the reason, the appearance that these buildings gave the area surrounding Athens was a constant source of bewilderment to Canadians I was traveling with.

Lucy

From time to time, I will post excerpts from my extensive travelling journals.