kyburg | Why it matters

I am relieved beyond relief that it would appear (so far) the issue with

yuki_onna's travel may be resolved - I am staying tuned, however.

I know I've mentioned this - perhaps it was only in passing - but it really does deserve some better documentation.

See, I've been at the mercy of forces out of my control, stuck in a hotel in a place where I didn't speak the language and desperate to get where I had intended to go.

It was in Greece, Athens to be precise - and it was in September, 1990.

And I was not surprised in the least. (This is the week of September 18th, 1990.)

Back in the day, Cliff worked for a company that designed and built digital switches for telecommunication systems. BAD ones. Ones that did not work most of the time - so he ended up travelling a lot to installation sites, working very closely with the original designers and so forth. To be blunt, it got sold...and then went out of business. But - that was some time away.

One of them was Romanian. And once the wall came down in 1989, stuff began to happen. Family reconnected, wanted to see family...and knowing Cliff's interest in travel, they began to talk.

It became *gasp* possible to travel to Eastern Europe. Cliff wanted to go in the worst way.

I have my passport from those years. In it are two visas, one for Bulgaria and one for Romania - two places we never got to.

Because we got as far as our week in Greece, and when it came time to leave - we literally had the ticket window shut in our faces. "STRIKE." SLAM. No warning.

Gobsmacked, we went to tourist assistance, who said we needed to find a travel agent to help us.

Neither of us spoke Greek. Neither of us had been to Athens before. And all of our travel arrangements had been done before we left. There is no such thing as laptops, cell phones, email - none of that.

I think we may have been using the SABRE service through Prodigy at that point. I do know we lost the tickets from Romania to Switzerland we bought. No refund, no hope of ever being able to use them.

We never got there.

I remember getting on a bus - any bus going anywhere - from that train station in Athens (we had been out in the countryside to visit the three thousand year old concrete at Mycenae, and had just returned to change trains to go north to Yugoslavia that night) and telling Cliff - "We have to been smart right now. We can't afford to lose it. Think smart."

Then getting off in Omonia Square.

Gods, it hasn't changed a bit. I can show you where the hotel was, the bank across the square, the alleyway where Pavlo worked as a travel agent...there's a station under that square, BTW.

Pavlo.

We literally stumbled into this travel agency by sheer chance. Sitting behind the desk is a very non-descript fellow a few years old than we were, doing paperwork, wearing a striped polo shirt.

"Hello?" (Oh please speak English?)

"Hello."

"We are in so much trouble."

He puts down the pen. "You and everyone else. You Americans? I don't like Americans."

Uh oh.

Cliff is happy to chirp up "That's okay. We're Swiss!"

He continues to give us the once over. "That is good. Because I don't like America - they gave my country to the Turks!"

Pavlo is Cyprian. Thank God for my 9th grade World Cultures teacher Mr. Gould. I knew what he was talking about.

Pavlo had five brothers just disappear in that invasion - one, they never knew what happened to him. The rest, they had his mother identify the bodies for them.

We had interesting things to say about Kissinger. Because we had time to.

We would be stuck at Omonia Square, in a hotel Pavlo found - and initially lent us the money to stay in - for four days.

With no banks open, no way to leave. Everything transportation-wise was on strike, including the airlines. We could neither take a train, a bus, a plane...anywhere.

And I had a type I diabetic to feed, or we would be facing worse things shortly.

I remember living on sodas. I had carried extra food in my pack because that's what you do with diabetics. You have to. We put that aside just in case.

We ate the hotel breakfast, which was orange tang, some bread with butter and coffee. My camera was stolen. We bought another one. We visited the American Express office and got money against my card (only means to get money available, and it had a limit) and repaid Pavlo. We would later find out he had lent us money forwarded by the agency's owner. "I am a slave," Pavlo said, when we asked what his job title was. "I will always be here."

He had gone to bat for us. Because of him, we had money to eat and a place to sleep. We ran into a number of people who had not been so lucky...and we sent them to Pavlo's shop too.

And he fed me the best Greek coffee ever, every afternoon. Cliff didn't like it, but my appreciation of it made me a very good friend. Only drink the top half - the rest is mud. Trust me on that.

Every day we would go and ask when - and where - we could possibly go to.

Very shortly it became clear the only place to go was to family in Switzerland and have a 'nice relaxing time.'

Cliff - was livid. Then a day passed. Then another one.

We visited musuems we had never planned to go to. Ones we never heard of.

I read my copy of the Joy Luck Club that I had bought at LAX 12 times.

We watched demonstrations happen from our hotel window.

Tried to remain smart, clever and not think of how terrifying far away from home I was and how impossible it was to get there.

Pavlo got us on the first Olympic flight out of Athens for Zurich - only Olympic was flying and only a few flights. Somewhere, perhaps - the picture I took of Cliff and Pavlo still exists somewhere, that I took the last day.

But I swore that I was going to name my first son after him.

Olympic was an interesting airline to fly on, all its own. To this day, it had the BEST airline food I've ever tasted. Seriously. But we were also on the strangest aircraft I'd ever been on - one (or was it two), three and two seats across, and it had wings that curved down, and hung parallel to the fuselage. Prop engines. Yes, if the blades had come off, they could have easiy come through the cabin, slicing it like a loaf of bread.

And flying into Zurich was a wild ride - think landing at Ontario in California, flying over the Cajon pass during the Santa Anas...on steroids.

Yes, we applauded when we landed. Leaving the terminal to go to the trains, I turned to Cliff and asked "Is it okay to kiss the ground yet?"

Family put us up in the vacation house, we ate and slept our way through the rest of our days off and I left the copy of the Joy Luck Club there.

And we never got back to see Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania...any of that.

So close.

That sort of thing kinda stays with you.

Pavlo introduced himself as 'Pavlo - Paul - like the best one of the Beatles!'

So that's why Xander is Alexander-Paul. That's why.

And now you know why it was so important to me that Cat get her trip. Because when you're SO close - it's almost criminal to accept anything less.

If it's only money - hell, we can fix that.