First off, the airport in Heraklion is one of the most frustrating places I have ever experienced, run by complete idiots. Amy and I were extremely early for our 3:40am flight because the buses to the airport stopped running at 10:30pm. And seeing as buses are the cheapest way to get around town, we arrived almost 5 hours early for our flight on Thomas Cook, hereafter known as the worst airline ever.
When the airline finally called our flight for check in, we waited in line only to be told they couldn’t check us in with our confirmation number and passports. What? The conversation between the idiot at the desk and I went something like this:
Him: Um, yeah, ya see, this won’t work, I need the ticket.
Me: Well, where do I get the ticket if not from you, the ticketing agent?
Him: Ummm, well it’s an e-ticket that is printed out from a machine.
Me: Yeah, I figure, but where are the machines, then?
Him: Ummmmmmm, I don’t know… maybe go ask that desk over there and they will print you out a ticket from your email?
Me: You mean to tell me that you have no record of my reservation in the computer system using my confirmation code and passport?
Him: Computer? We don’t keep that information in the computer!
It went on and on like this until we went to a second desk where two extremely bored looking women attempted to log on to the internet to print out a ticket from the website. Apparently, if you don’t come to the airport with a ticket from your email printed out from Thomas Cook, that very same company doesn’t possess the means to check a customer in. Absurd. Seeing as we haven’t made contact with a printer in 2 months and the ticket was emailed only days before, this was just a little unrealistic. Anyways, the aforementioned desk jockeys “didn’t have access” to the site, so they sent us OUTSIDE the airport to weird little kiosks with a different type of airline representative. She was equally brain dead. That conversation went a lot like this (really, I couldn’t make this stuff up):
Me: I have a confirmation code and a passport to check in to my flight, but they’re telling me I need a ticket, which I don’t have.
Her: Well let me see what you do have. (I hand her a slip of paper with my confirmation number written on it)
Her: This isn’t a ticket!
Me: No, it’s a slip of paper with my confirmation code written on it. If I had a ticket to hand you, I wouldn’t be asking you for a ticket…
Her: Well where am I supposed to get a ticket?
Me: From the computer of something?
Her: (looks at and motions to her badly uniformed body incredulously) Well, where, where is a computer on me? Do you see a computer on me? (Patting herself down, like it’s hidden in a fold…)
Me: No, of course not on you, but within the records or something? Every other airline we’ve flown has been able to use our confirmation code to check us in…
Her: Well unless you have something else from us, we don’t have anything that we can provide. (Aside: Do you see the logic in this? They want us to provide them with information they would have had to have given us in order for us to provide it?)
In the end, I have an old flight confirmation from before we left and she essentially transfers all of that information on to another piece of paper by hand and tells us it’s a ticket. So ridiculous. But it’s a green light to get on the plane so who cares if they’re a bunch of idiots as long as it gets me to Manchester?
We manage to sleep through the majority of the red-eye flight and wake up in England where things make sense again. As we’re hauling our 30-pound backpacks off the belt, Amy winces and says that she thinks something has just cut her leg. Sure enough, she looks down at her thigh and she’s spewing blood. Without many other options, I give her some pathetic looking band-aids from my bag and she limps off to the bathroom, neither of us knowing what’s cut her.
Meanwhile, I’m left guarding the load of possessions and start looking at Amy’s bag to see what on earth could have cut her – we’re both thinking it’s some piece that’s broken on her bag in transit and become jagged, something small and fluke-y. Low and behold, sticking out of a side pocket, piercing the fabric of her bag is the blade of a knife. Her knife, the same one we fought off the naked guy with in Spain!
Somehow in transit on that shitty airline, it’s come undone from its safe, folded position, has cut through her bag and is now sticking out of the side. Now realizing that she’s been cut by a knife, not just something small and superficial, I leave the bags where I can see them and poke my head in the ladies room door of baggage claim – far enough to shout to Amy that it was a knife that she’s been cut with. She’s shocked, but by this point, not enough to disbelieve it since the cut won’t stop bleeding and has soaked through the band-aids and the tissue that she’s wrapped around her leg. This continues for a bit and after grabbing shorts for her to change into, I go to call an airport paramedic while she guards the bag and sops up the blood – all very brave and calm though, you’d never know she had a knife wound by looking at her from the waist up…
The paramedic shows up (finally, you would think they weren’t supposed to act with urgency) takes one look at the cut and says he’s sending us to the hospital – she’ll need stitches.
Okay. We can handle that. No big deal, the emergency room, but how should be get there? An ambulance, he says, like we’re crazy to hint at anything else.
That’s when this really becomes an emergency, because the last thing either of us can afford is an ambulance ride. A few thousand dollars for an ambulance ride is definitely something that would go in the “unexpected expenses” category and would wipe us clean. I ask him about procedure for Americans and we’re both about to say that we’d rather walk to the hospital than pay for an ambulance, when he says with amusement “It’s Britain, love. It’s free!”
Thank God. Sign us up then.
Amy’s wheeled (yes, wheeled) out to the ambulance while the paramedic and another guy help me with bags, all the while complaining about how heavy they are, and load us up into the back of the ambulance. Upon arrival, Amy is sent to triage where she’s called “Lovey” in nearly every sentence and I read tabloid magazines. After 30 minutes, we’re released with a proper bandage and the British equivalent of Steri-Strips in lieu of stitches (thank goodness, easier logistically) and we hitch a taxi to the train station for our 10:15 train.
Oddly enough, it’s our easiest travel day yet. Which really says something about our travel days, but also says a lot about how well we’ve learned to roll with the punches, or stab wounds, in this case. We made our train, Amy was a trooper, and we spoke the native tongue – it’s enough to make us pledge ourselves to the motherland for eternity. After 7 days of wrapping her leg in plastic wrap to shower, she’s allowed to take off the bandage and hopefully the 2-inch gash will only scar slightly since the blade was so nice and sharp. It didn’t slow her down though, really a credit to her. And I did promise to buy her a lollie if she was good and brave.
Stab wound
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