When the news came through that Cyprus was being added to the list of destinations, there was some open disdain – and not just from me. Why would they want to do that? Do Arabs want to go to a Mediterranean island? From what I know that seems highly unlikely. We joked about who would get sent there in the kind of snobby way that people in a position of privilege often do. I mean, Cyprus is where Ayia Napa is – it’s like an inferior version of Ibiza, perhaps on a par with maybe Mallorca, right? Sounds shit.
Naturally I was given the faecal end of this baton and told to get ready.
To be honest though, the very fact that it is somewhere I’ve never been before, along with it being Not Dubai make it at least a little bit appealing. So does the story angle: walking on the wild side of the island, that’s to say the western part, where there is allegedly some beautiful countryside. Not only that, but the temperature will be around about 40% cooler than the UAE at 30C.
The route to Cyprus opens later this month, but the deadline for my copy is earlier than that so I must fly to Athens first (I could also have gone to Beirut, but the flight terms weren’t so convenient) and connect from there. This essentially means overshooting the island by nearly two hours and flying back in the opposite direction again.
I arrive in the new terminal at Abu Dhabi airport. This is my first time actually travelling through it, but I have been once before; to write a disastrous promotional piece that was too shit to actually run. Terminal 3 is just another terminal at another airport, albeit one that smells new. The shops are ludicrously overpriced, the attendants in them bored stiff, and the travel stress ambiance as high as ever.
There are, at least, lots of free internet terminals and I earn my first Good Moral Point of the day by helping a nun – an actual nun – log on. I really want to see what kind of websites she’ going to visit. Does the Big Man have one? Is the Pope the webmaster? Instead I shuffle off to my gate and watch the last episode of the latest series of 24 which seems to have somehow transformed into the A Team on angel dust.
Onto the plane and as usual no one reads the ma... No, wait a second; the ancient Greek woman next to me picks it up and spends five minutes intently glaring at the ads. I sigh. (Despite this I later help her with her bags and return a shawl she’d forgotten, thereby earning my second GMP)
But then hope! The loud, gay Aussie up ahead: he’s got it and he’s stopped at one of my features. Mon the bufties! I feel like a parent at sports day. On yer sel! But what’s this? His pal – long haired, open shirted – is telling some kind of joke. Oi! Less of that mincing! READ YOU BASTARD!
But no. He puts it down. I don’t think he even got passed the headline.
Other than that, the flight is nearly five hours long and unremarkable save for irritatingly drunk English woman who loudly, in front of her drunker husband, declares that I have startlingly blue eyes when I stand up to go for a piss. I feel the blood rush to my face, which just about takes my attention away from my quaking bladder.
I have a little over six hours in Athens and I don’t much feel like spending them in the airport. Instead I collect my bag and dump it into left luggage, leaving everything in it, save for a little money and my camera. By the time I do that and narrowly miss a bus, an hour has vanished. I also have to be back at the airport about two hours before departure and suddenly my time in the city is evaporating.
The transfer into Athens takes an hour and ten minutes and travels through some of the ugliest bits of Europe I’ve seen since leaving Glasgow. The highlight is probably a Greek who gets on at Ikea and immediately proceeds to fall into a nodding-dog nap. Bored, I invent the following story while he bounces off me, vaguely trying to fight sleep:
He’s quite a good looking guy and at school always did well with the women. Not only that, but he played a bit of football and was half decent at that too. Over confident from a young age, he filled his days primarily being a shit to virtually every one he knew. He particularly enjoyed bullying nerds in the changing rooms, but didn’t know that the geeks are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth. His teachers hated him, as did his father; he cared not a jot. But then school ended and his empire crumbled. It turned out he wasn’t as good at football as he’d been told and was always just a bit too short for any teams to be seriously interested in him. He started an apprentice as a spark, but wasn’t good at it. He turned up hungover one too many times and eventually got the boot. Finally he took a job in Ikea, almost worked his way up to supervisor but then had a sexual harassment complaint (entirely justified) made against him, and only kept the job on the condition he took the early shift in the warehouse. Now he goes home at 2pm every day, spends most of the bus home falling asleep on tourists, has a nap and starts drinking again. Such is life.
If the drive into Athens is unsightly, though, it’s perhaps not surprising given there are more people in this city than all of Scotland. And besides, once you get through the ugly, tight, polluted streets, the city centre is littered only with ancient history.
Alas I only have 50 minutes to run around, sweat hard and take a few pictures, including one of the best t-shirt I’ve seen in ages.
Naturally I was given the faecal end of this baton and told to get ready.
To be honest though, the very fact that it is somewhere I’ve never been before, along with it being Not Dubai make it at least a little bit appealing. So does the story angle: walking on the wild side of the island, that’s to say the western part, where there is allegedly some beautiful countryside. Not only that, but the temperature will be around about 40% cooler than the UAE at 30C.
The route to Cyprus opens later this month, but the deadline for my copy is earlier than that so I must fly to Athens first (I could also have gone to Beirut, but the flight terms weren’t so convenient) and connect from there. This essentially means overshooting the island by nearly two hours and flying back in the opposite direction again.
I arrive in the new terminal at Abu Dhabi airport. This is my first time actually travelling through it, but I have been once before; to write a disastrous promotional piece that was too shit to actually run. Terminal 3 is just another terminal at another airport, albeit one that smells new. The shops are ludicrously overpriced, the attendants in them bored stiff, and the travel stress ambiance as high as ever.
There are, at least, lots of free internet terminals and I earn my first Good Moral Point of the day by helping a nun – an actual nun – log on. I really want to see what kind of websites she’ going to visit. Does the Big Man have one? Is the Pope the webmaster? Instead I shuffle off to my gate and watch the last episode of the latest series of 24 which seems to have somehow transformed into the A Team on angel dust.
Onto the plane and as usual no one reads the ma... No, wait a second; the ancient Greek woman next to me picks it up and spends five minutes intently glaring at the ads. I sigh. (Despite this I later help her with her bags and return a shawl she’d forgotten, thereby earning my second GMP)
But then hope! The loud, gay Aussie up ahead: he’s got it and he’s stopped at one of my features. Mon the bufties! I feel like a parent at sports day. On yer sel! But what’s this? His pal – long haired, open shirted – is telling some kind of joke. Oi! Less of that mincing! READ YOU BASTARD!
But no. He puts it down. I don’t think he even got passed the headline.
Other than that, the flight is nearly five hours long and unremarkable save for irritatingly drunk English woman who loudly, in front of her drunker husband, declares that I have startlingly blue eyes when I stand up to go for a piss. I feel the blood rush to my face, which just about takes my attention away from my quaking bladder.
I have a little over six hours in Athens and I don’t much feel like spending them in the airport. Instead I collect my bag and dump it into left luggage, leaving everything in it, save for a little money and my camera. By the time I do that and narrowly miss a bus, an hour has vanished. I also have to be back at the airport about two hours before departure and suddenly my time in the city is evaporating.
The transfer into Athens takes an hour and ten minutes and travels through some of the ugliest bits of Europe I’ve seen since leaving Glasgow. The highlight is probably a Greek who gets on at Ikea and immediately proceeds to fall into a nodding-dog nap. Bored, I invent the following story while he bounces off me, vaguely trying to fight sleep:
He’s quite a good looking guy and at school always did well with the women. Not only that, but he played a bit of football and was half decent at that too. Over confident from a young age, he filled his days primarily being a shit to virtually every one he knew. He particularly enjoyed bullying nerds in the changing rooms, but didn’t know that the geeks are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth. His teachers hated him, as did his father; he cared not a jot. But then school ended and his empire crumbled. It turned out he wasn’t as good at football as he’d been told and was always just a bit too short for any teams to be seriously interested in him. He started an apprentice as a spark, but wasn’t good at it. He turned up hungover one too many times and eventually got the boot. Finally he took a job in Ikea, almost worked his way up to supervisor but then had a sexual harassment complaint (entirely justified) made against him, and only kept the job on the condition he took the early shift in the warehouse. Now he goes home at 2pm every day, spends most of the bus home falling asleep on tourists, has a nap and starts drinking again. Such is life.
If the drive into Athens is unsightly, though, it’s perhaps not surprising given there are more people in this city than all of Scotland. And besides, once you get through the ugly, tight, polluted streets, the city centre is littered only with ancient history.
Alas I only have 50 minutes to run around, sweat hard and take a few pictures, including one of the best t-shirt I’ve seen in ages.
I get lost in the streets for a bit, curse the fact I’ve not got more time, sweat some more, find my way back to the bus stop and head back to the airport again. Annoyingly it’s much quicker on the way back and, to make matters worse, the flight on to Larnaca is delayed.
I land and am met by a heavy smoker from the Cyprus Tourist Office, who hands me a bag of bumf I won’t look at and passes onto a driver to take me to my hotel in Limassol. Assuming I’m some chilly northerner, he says, “It’s warm my friend, yes?”
“No old boy,” I laugh, “you’ve no idea where I’ve just come from.”
I land and am met by a heavy smoker from the Cyprus Tourist Office, who hands me a bag of bumf I won’t look at and passes onto a driver to take me to my hotel in Limassol. Assuming I’m some chilly northerner, he says, “It’s warm my friend, yes?”
“No old boy,” I laugh, “you’ve no idea where I’ve just come from.”