Finishing on a bad note.. D Flat Maybe

Warning: This is a long one and I'm not sure if I've recovered enough to curb the swearing ;)

After a long night of repacking and Cody crying, the day finally dawned where we'd be on our way to Canada. The three of us were utterly exhausted; Grunge had the patience of an anvil. Quick finish up, then down for our last bacon, eggs, tomato, cucumber and watermelon breakfast in Athens :)

My brother, my brother's gf and I had hopped into the lift to go back up to the 6th and 7th floors to our rooms. In the lift was also the hotel cleaner and that pretty much means the lift is *full*. We left the 2nd floor, where the breakfast is served and up we go. Up, up up .. then there's this almighty bang and for a second, it's hard to tell what's going on. A moment later, the door of the lift opens and we're ... on the ground floor of course. The hotel cleaner is wimpering at this stage and for a minute I thought she'd broken her leg.

We all spilled out of the lift, rather frightened and shocked. The cleaner seemed to be the least hurt. My brother and I were mostly just shocked and it turns out his gf developed some decent bruising around her ankles. Suffice to say, we weren't too keen to get back into the lift. Ever. The hotel receptionist wandered into the lift and had a look, kind of shrugged and went back to her desk. Um. I'm all happy to admit that it was probably only load that did it, but how's about SOME KIND OF FREAKING WARNING?! There was NO indication whatsoever that the lift was over the weight limit with 4 of us in it. I dunno. An alarm, a buzzer, the doors not closing, the lift not moving. SOMETHING would've been nice.

Action and drama out of the way, we packed everything up and managed to get on the 10am train to the airport. Perfect timing really, because whilst it seemed a little early for our 1:55pm flight, it was a bit too fine to aim for the 11am train.

We arrived at Athens Airport at .. ooh .. maybe 10:30am? 10:45am? Grunge had been asleep since getting on the train and that was an indication that the night of crying had caught up with her. We noticed on the way that she was also starting to get really hot with a fever, so we were keen to take our asleep kid through the airport and just relax at the gate before boarding. It seemed our wish would come true when we were 10th in line at the Lufthansa check-in desk, however it did also seem odd that there was one desk for first class, one for first class and business class, then one for economy. At five minutes a pop though, maybe ten minutes, we'd still be in and through with plenty of time to relax.

Yeah, not so much.

So, 10th in line. The first couple of people took about 20 minutes each, if not longer, to check in. That wasn't a good start. There was a guy a few back from us who was supposed to be on a plane to Monaco at 12:20 or so and he was starting to get antsy. He wandered up and pointed out to the manager guy and had a bit of a go about there only being one economy desk open. At midday, after the guy behind us had had several goes and the amusement of waiting so long had dissipated, the manager declared an emergency amongst his staff and two more desks opened. By this stage, we were only a few people back.

Within minutes, a line was forming to the side of the main line up and it seemed to consist of Monaco and Munich passengers - both flights were scheduled to take off within 15-20 minutes and the length of the line up indicated about half or more of each flight was still yet to check in. Once that line formed and the two other desks were open, we found ourselves at the front of the line. And we found the manager in front of us, declaring that no flights other than Monaco and Munich were being accepted.

At this point, I pretty much snapped. Cody had woken up by now and was expressing her desire not to be there. Beyond stuffing her with Panadol and Nurofen to keep her temperature down, there was nothing we could do to stem the crying. My dad had a go at the manager, however as soon as the guy found out we were on the 1:55pm Frankfurt flight, there was no arguing. We were going to wait for the other flights to be checked in.

I think it was about 1pm before we were checked in for our flight and were able to go through security. Not bad for being there plenty of time in advance, eh?

When we got to the gate, Cody was beyond repair. We couldn't put her down on the floor because as per a normal Greek "queue", there was a herd of stampeding people trying to be first in line to board the plane. There was no concept of "women and children", just every passenger for himself. So, Cody screamed. And screamed. And screamed. While she was screaming, the asshats from out in the check in desks were trying to board 5 old people in wheelchairs. It's easy, people. Put the freaking boarding pass in the freaking machine, let the freaking machine spit it out again, give the freaking pass to the freaking passenger, fuck the passenger off. Simple, yes? No.

We had barged our way to the front of the stampede to make sure we were gonna get on that plane quick bloody smart. Took 20 minutes of Cody screaming so loud that no one could think straight before the asshat manager pointed at the three of us and declared we were boarding.

For the love of god, did it have to be QUITE THAT HARD? :)