My Trip to Milan / Israel / Athens Travelogue November 1998 Chapter One History and Background November 1998 was the second time a trip to Israel appeared on my schedule. A few months previously, an e-mail went around about a very specialized class to be taught over there. Since I was the backup instructor for that particular course, and the primary instructor was Jewish, I was doubly confused by the note in my schedule. I forwarded the e-mail to him, asking if he missed it, only to find that he had already been contacted and had flatly refused the invitation. "International travel isn't worth the hassle", was his explanation when we talked about it later. So I had accepted that original August 1998 teach, even though it was to occur within two weeks of my "England teach". Sadly, that first class disappeared just as quickly as it appeared. I presume an instructor from Europe or a consultant from Israel was pressed into service to deliver it or that the client simply changed their mind and cancelled the class. An e-mail then appeared in October 1998 asking if I was available and interested in a class in Israel in November (I said, of course, Yes!) and a new class immediately appeared on my schedule for the week after Thanksgiving. As the weeks elapsed, I received no details about the client, the agenda, the arrangements etc, and this is always a sign that the class is going to be cancelled. When the local contact is unwilling or unable to provide such logistical information, it means that the class was either a "trial balloon" (with a local, preferred, resource being readied to deliver it) or the client is only "going fishing" or blocking my time "just in case". I allowed two weeks to elapse but it eventually became time to book the international plane tickets. The Israeli coordinator was to make my local hotel and transportation arrangements, but I was to book the plane ticket from the states. The first question was which day to start, since I learned that the five day work-week in Israel is from Sunday thru Thursday. The class would be 4 days long and starting on Sunday (ending on Wednesday) would give me an extra day to rest at home after the flight, but would cut into my already short Thanksgiving holiday. Lyn and I talked about it and I wrote requesting Monday thru Thursday, then started looking into European layover cities and flight departure times. I am a Platinum medallion member of Delta Air Lines, and that program is very addictive. Beyond "Gold Medallion", which is very generous with free upgrade coupons, "Platinum medallion" provides automatic upgrade to First Class on any domestic ticket (immediately upon ticket issue) and dozens of "Trans-oceanic upgrade" coupons. Delta's international desk offered a couple of sweet connections, outbound thru Milan, Italy and returning through Brussels on their partner Sabena. I tried to arrange an extended layover (a proverbial 23 hr layover), but could find no such convenient flights. I sat down and talked with Lyn, would she miss me, would this upset Thanksgiving plans, what should we do, what would make sense? We decided that we should make the trip a learning experience for us and finalized the plane tickets to maximize my exposure to Europe (rather than to Israel). We would keep the class scheduled for Monday-Thursday. I would arrive in Israel on Sunday night, but depart from Florida a day earlier. Also, instead of flying directly home on Friday, I would extend the return an extra day after class was over. The obvious plan that most would follow would be to stay extra days in Israel and visit Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, or any of the zillions of famous sights in Israel. But we really wanted to learn about the most number of DIFFERENT places, countries and cities. Our final plan, the one that made the most sense for us, was to alter the ticket to extend an extra day in both of my European layover cities. The final ticket went outbound Delta from Florida to JFK to Milan, switching to Alitalia for Milan to Tel Aviv. I would fly Olympic Airways from Tel Aviv to Athens, then Delta home from there. Delta would upgrade my 4 legs with them to "business class" but I would get neither points nor upgrades from Alitalia or Olympic. I would leave home at 1:30 in the afternoon, connect and leave JFK at 6pm, fly 9 hours and land in Milan at 8am the next day (with the horrible jet lag you get flying east). Alitalia would then depart at 10am, arriving in Tel Aviv at 3pm local time (again, more time zones and jet lag). After teaching Monday thru Thursday, I would leave Tel Aviv (Friday morning) at 8:30 am, arrive in Athens at 10am, depart on Delta at noon and fly 11 hours (head winds) and arrive at JFK at 2pm (the sun travels "with you" heading west). After a small layover in NYC, I would continue on to Florida arriving around 10pm. Our final strategy was to split the two Delta flights by one day, extending both of my two "2 hour" European layovers into "26 hour" ones instead. This would give me one full day each way to visit briefly in Milan and Athens. Of course, I would also visit a little bit of Israel, to "get a taste for it", after hours between teaching my class. We went out and bought a new small pocket camera for the trip, since my current one was having intermittent problems with its flash. I also made my flight arrangements for the business trip for the week following Israel (to Detroit) and delayed that flight as late as possible to give me 24 hours at home for laundry and general organizing. We formalized our plan to keep Thanksgiving "simple", and decided what we would get done on my "down week" Monday thru Wednesday. Finally, we exchanged several E-mails, finally telephone calls, with the Israeli contacts about course content, especially since some misinformation was accidentally published on the company's public web pages. We cruised the Internet to find me a one-day hotel (moderately priced) in Milan and in Athens, and decided that the best way to "get the feel" for those cities was to rent a car in both cities and just drive around for a day. I made reservations with Hertz, researched the prices on international credit card calls (highway robbery) and bought a pre-paid telephone card (turned out to be nearly useless). We cruised the web to make sure there were no particular "travel alerts" for these 3 areas (of course, Israel had plenty of advisories), that I didn't need any shots or visas, and I telephoned a contact provided by the Travel department's "international desk" about the logistics (there were none) about entry and specifically all the personal electronics I travel with (like my laptop, camera, GPS!). Again, just worries, no problems. We started an immediate personal blackout on reading any middle eastern news reports once the UN advisors returned to Baghdad (since reading them only caused us unnecessary worry and strife). The US Navy was still on high alert, and ships were still steaming toward the Persian Gulf, but I would be going to Israel! I finished my "work" Wednesday morning, then we bought the new camera and lots of film and hit the money machine for both of us Wednesday night. We went out for a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night (and I tried out my new little camera), and we returned home and made the final hotel reservation for Athens. We wanted to pack me on Thursday, then go to bed late. I would try to wake up early, and be exhausted for the flight to Europe. This way, even though I "never sleep on airplanes", maybe this trip might be different (it wasn't). At midnight Thanksgiving night (13 hrs from departure), we still hadn't packed me and my clothes, books, money, were all laying out on the living room floor (our weekly "staging area" for my travel trips). We were both exhausted so we went to bed and set the alarm for 6am. That should have us good and tired (and grumpy and forgetful) on the day I depart for 3 cities in Europe (and the plan worked). At 6 am, we packed and I finished reinstalling software on the home computer. We had used the Thanksgiving week to install a new hard drive in our PC and, unexpectedly, it reformatted our original C-drive. I had backed up the data (most of it), but still had to reinstall all the individual software packages. I was finishing Friday morning, 3 hours before leaving for the airport. We double checked the list and we took off. For once I had enough time that I wasn't going to feel rushed. It is not unusual for me to leave for the airport, on any "normal" Sunday night, to arrive within 30-45 minutes of take-off. I know, I know, this is strongly discouraged, but I do it almost every week. So this Friday we left at 10 minutes before Noon (11:50 am!) for a 1:45 flight, and for once I would have time to sit and talk and buy lira and be sane. Three miles from home, we were talking about how cold Milan will be when I noticed that I left my jacket at home on the kitchen chair. We circled the car around and raced back to get it and, when we picked up the jacket we did not notice that my ziploc bag full of international electrical and telephone plug adapters was sitting right there on the table next to the forgotten jacket. Oh well, it was a total miracle that those plug adapters were the ONLY THING I forgot to pack for this trip. The airport went smoothly, and the flight to New York was boring. I fought off the urge to nap (saving sleep for the long leg) and bought 2 cartons of chocolate milk from a vendor at the airport (I would use these to take my medicine and to encourage drowsiness on board). For the trans-oceanic leg, I had a business class aisle seat and, after a fine dinner, my neighbor shut the window blind, put on his eye mask, and slept soundly for several hours (Grrr). I could not sleep, so I browsed "AutoMap-Europe" on my laptop, read the Internet pages we had printed out on Milan and Athens, and entered latitude/longitude points into the GPS. I put on my mask, too, but could only sleep for an hour or so. I was wide awake when the OJ and warm egg croissants were distributed in business class. It was my last cup of "American coffee" for six full days. When my neighbor awoke and opened the window shade, it was daylight outside, and bright sunshine and blue skies accented the snow speckled Alps slowly drifting by on our final approach to Milan (even though I had slept less than an hour). I learned that my neighbor did extensive international travel and, when I mentioned my fears of Saddam Hussein doing some shenanigans while I was in Israel, he told me several amusing and comforting stories of his various adventures in international business travel. He had a great attitude and told me about once landing in the Philippines on a day that 12 people were gunned down in a particular city square, and how the city and the airport and the taxis and the hotel were just like "any other trip". He told me about running into news camera crews scrambling to find something to broadcast in the generally peaceful town and how, "If they can't find any news, they will make it up for the hungry American audience". His story made intuitive sense to me, and was a odd comfort. So I was groggy and sleepy and full of excited anticipation when we finally landed in Milan. It may have felt like 2am, and I may have been up for 20 straight hours on 6 hours sleep, but the sun in the sky said it was 8am when we walked off that plane. Originally Written March 1999 Original Web Upload January 2000 Last Update: May 10, 2002