The travel to our workplace and the stress getting there is sometimes overlooked by many thinking we have a glamourous job, here is a recent trip we took as our next contract was on a cruise ship on its way from Dubai to Barcelona. Leaving our house in Holland around 12:00 , myself, my pregnant wife and 4 year old son were getting on board the ship in Alexandria and getting off in Barcelona , but because of flight restrictions due to the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland , we did not fly there direct from home, instead the cruise company we work for flew us to Athens first, unfortunatlly with a 7 hour layover, which would be terrible in some places but Athens is not such a bad place , so instead of waiting at the airport , we took a bus into town and in an hour we were in the old town called the Plaka, full of souvenir shops selling plaster copies of Greek gods , and pornographic calenders with ancient Greeks in compromising positions, and lots of leather sandals for sale, soon we were hungry and went back to a place we knew from earlier trips for dinner, had the usual Tsatziki (so-so) , Calamari (old oil), Greek salad (OK) , stale bread , and to wash it all down , some liquid that they called wine and I call vinager , to top it all off, we were over charged , , but Athens was in the middle of civil unrest due to the recent economic downturn so maybe the cook had other things on his mind. Anyway, back to the airport and on the flight to Alexandria. Flight leaving at 01:00 in the morning, we arraived at 3 in the morning , pushing and shoving to get on the bus, nobody cares here if you are a woman , and being pregnant does not help. At last we made it to immigration and had to buy entry visas, that went well , but took awhile, and then on to the luggage belt with the same dreaded thought as always, did all of our 70 kg of equiptment make it there or not? Thankfully it did, and there was also somebody waiting for us to pick us up (call me Mohhamed) , as soon as the porter was tipped ( i made sure that I had a lot of small bills in money as its that kind of culture in Egypt, ) we boarded our bus with one headlight and were off into the dirty night streets of Alexandria arraiving at the hotel around 4 in the morning, the Hotel Windsor looked like an old Colonial style palace , as its name suggested , with a marble lobby and palms in large pots everywhere , only Mr. Poirot was missing but unfortunatly in his place there were more porters and security guards that needed tipping , at this stage `i was getting nervous as I was running out of small bills, but finally we made it up to our room with the help of 2 bell boys , it had vaulted ceilings , saggy beds , and moldy carpets, and a balcony that needed serious repairing , the lift was the best part, 2 could fit in and it was all wrought iron and you had to close an iron gate before it creaked up or down. very old fashioned , I was told that Winston Churchill stayed at the hotel with Rommel , WOW?!? Rommel and Churchill together in the same hotel? , To my knowledge Rommel never made it to Alexandria, El Alamein was as far as he got, anyway I asked to be picked up at midday as it was 5 before we went to bed. So promptly, at 9 the phone rang and our pickup told us to be ready very fast as we had to go through immigration and customs before we could join the ship. So we were picked up with a load of other entertainers that also were in the hotel and were piled into a bus and off to the port we drove , we waited for 1 hour to get our passports checked outside the port police, then the whole circus went to customs and all the bags were unloaded by 2 porters ( they are everywhere in Egypt) one of them could hardly push the cart he was so old, 1 more hour at customs, and then off to the general direction of the ship, but we had to unpack all to go through a metal detector and once through that , back the way we came as it was “not possible” to go this way to the ship, so we had to reload the luggage on the carts , by this time i realize that one of the porters is half blind and half crippled , of course he has to be like that in order to get more money, and i had to help them load and unload the cart because I felt for them so I was pretty dirty and hot by the time we finally got to the ship, where they pleaded and begged for more tips from everybody, ( i also got a good tip ) then we waited another half hour as the gangway to the ship was up because they were repositioning the ship, and of course , once on board, the whole luggage had to go through the x ray again, and thats it. We were on board, now to wait for our show, 3 days away.
