Greek Trip

 

All I can feel is a pain in my neck, and there's a sense that somewhere, outside my welded-shut eyelids, it's very bright. There are noises, distorted and distant, but becoming clearer, as if I'm underwater but rising to the surface. Then a voice, loud, clear, familiar: 'Woz, wake up, we're here!'

Here? Where the fuck is here?

I peel open my eyes and look around. I'm on a plane, the sun is beaming through the window, and a couple of hundred holidaymakers are excitedly preparing to disembark. One of these excited passengers is my mate Mark. Mark. I haven't seen him since ...? When? Was it last night? Or maybe this morning? Images and scenes are fading in and out of my mind's eye, incoherent and in no particular order.

Trying to piece everything together is challenging. I have a pain in my neck from several hours spent sleeping wedged against a plane window, and a pain in my head from an unknown number of hours of what could loosely be described as partying. There's an announcement which I can barely decipher due to a combination of the noise of my fellow travelers and the state that I'm in. I catch the ending: 'please make sure you have all of your belongings with you when you exit the aircraft.'

Belongings? I don't even know if I have any.

I stand up, gingerly. Luckily my legs seem fine, it's just every other part of my body that's failing. I check the overhead locker and nothing in there looks like it belongs to me, so I follow Mark towards the door.

The door to where though?

My mind is spinning, I'm unsure what's real and what's imagined. Am I dead? Is the bright sunshine pouring in actually the light of heaven? Or is this searing heat emanating from the furnaces of hell?

A stewardess smiles. 'Welcome to Kos' she says.

Kos? I've never even heard of Kos. 

I walk down the steps. The heat is unreal and I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie. Everyone else is taking layers off, I put my hood up and bury my hands in the front pocket. If I can just make it into the airport building, there'll be air conditioning, that'll fix me. I make it to the drab, concrete structure and discover that the interior is even more brutalist than the exterior.

There is no air conditioning, or, apparently, air of any sort.

There is one passport control booth and at least three planes worth of passengers. People are sweating. Babies are crying. It looks like a news report from a humanitarian crisis. I'm suffering at this point. It feels like my head is too big for my body, and that my brain is too big for my head. We make it through, eventually, but not without panic-inducing scrutiny by the guard.

'Why are you here, Mr Warren?'

'Er, holiday?'

'You do not look like you are on a holiday!'

'I didn't know I was on a holiday.'

'What?'

'Er, I mean, it was all a bit last minute.'

Silence.

Then 'enjoy your holiday Mr Warren, but not too much, eh?'

I must look like shit.

Next is the baggage carousel, where it dawns on me that I don't know if I have baggage, or, assuming I do, what form that baggage may take.

I scan the carousel for something that looks like it belongs to me. Round it all goes, thinning with each pass. Mark gets his suitcase, he's sorted, but I'm still waiting. Just when I'm about to give up I see my gym bag. I can tell by its deflated appearance there isn't much in it. I grab it and take a look inside. There's a pair of jeans, a woolly jumper and some t-shirts. No toiletries and no underwear.

I turn to Mark. 'Is this all I brang?'

Mark shrugs 'You said it was all you needed.'

Well, this is great. I'm in Greece and I've packed for Grimsby.

The next circle of hell is the arrivals hall. It's bustling with schemers, scammers, touts and pickpockets. Mark takes the lead, he has the tickets and a fully functioning brain, and finds our rep. She's standing behind a makeshift desk wearing a cheap uniform, even cheaper perfume, and holding a clipboard which seems to be held together with gaffer tape.

There's a problem. 'You're not on my list' she says, before showing us her list. She doesn't give us enough time to read the list, just long enough so that we can see she has one. 'Let me see your tickets.' Mark duly obliges. 'OK, right, I see. Follow me.'

And we're off, outside into the oppressive heat, where she directs us to a row of shiny new buses, gleaming like polished jewels in the afternoon sun.

Our bus is behind these.

Actually, our bus is quite a way behind these, deliberately, so that it can't be seen from the road, lest any passing scrap metal dealer might assume it has been dumped and try to tow it away. The driver is a Greek stereotype, and not in the 'Adonis' mould. He's a large, chain-smoking, bald man with a moustache and he appears to be made almost entirely from sweat. The rep has a word with him, he takes a long drag of his cigarette, nods and gestures for us to climb aboard, then exhales a plume of tobacco smoke that can be seen from space.

We board the bus and take our seats, in Greek tradition it's hotter inside than outside. The engine is running even though it doesn't look like we're going anywhere anytime soon, possibly because if it were turned off it might never turn back on again, such is its age. Above me is one of those nozzles that blows cold air, so I give it a twist. It seems to be connected directly to the exhaust pipe. I turn it off, sit back and try to coalesce my thoughts.

What happened last night? How did I end up here?