drinking in as much homebodity as possible
Last weekend i did not go out and do anything because i realized it would be my last chance to have a weekend in before what will be an exhausting business trip. But in reality this weekend is my last chance. The difference is that this weekend i knew i would be distracted by planning, or at least what little planning i actually do.
Because i am that guy who when given a budget by the company for my flight will not only stay under it, but stay significantly under it, i am flying at a bit of an awkward time. Originally i was heading out Friday night after work, quick jump to Singapore, then continue on to Athens where i can spend an afternoon bumming around before getting on another quick jump to Skopje, arriving Saturday evening local time. The awkward part of this being leaving on Friday instead of Saturday, since work only expects us to be in the Skopje office from Monday morning, and they won't pay for a Saturday night hotel.
But what made it more awkward was a couple weeks back i got an email saying "your flight has been changed". Now, this happens all the time when you book flights months before they're actually due to leave, which is why i never do that for personal travel, but business travel you do, and so here we are. My flight was changed to leave Thursday with a (now) 25 hour layover in Singapore.
You might be thinking "well, that sounds great, free day in Singapore!" But that's thinking like a retired person or a European, because in Asia - like the US - you get a piddling amount of annual leave every year and i don't have any spare.
So after a bunch of going back and forth, i finally managed to shift my flights around and now i am leaving Friday afternoon and will eat a nasi lemak or roti canai in Singapore airport, then try to sleep at the gate to get my connecting flight in the morning. I asked my boss if i can work a half-day but just fill a full day into my timesheet and she said it'd be okay, seeing as i anyway put in over 40 hours a week, every week.
But leaving Friday means i can't do a weekend laundry before leaving, and seeing as i only own 5 work tops and 2 weekend tops, that won't be great. Because, after doing a bit of research, it seems Skopje does not have any laundromats. It might be the kind of place where i need to wash my clothes with shampoo in the hotel sink.
This is what i do when i "plan" my travel. The boring mechanics of it all.
How do i get from Skopje airport to the city without taking a taxi? Because if there is any option at all that means i don't have to take a private internal combustion vehicle, that's the one i will take. There is a bus. It only goes something like 5 times per day. So i will likely spend an hour sitting around at the airport for ideological reasons. The reason places have non-existent or shitty public transport is because nobody takes public transport. It's a circular problem. The only way ordinary people (especially travelers, who do not have democratic representation) can demonstrate that there is a market for something is if they put their money where their mouth is. Sharing socialist memes on social media after taking a taxi to your hotel helps less than just sucking it up and waiting for the bus, inconvenient schedule and all.
Of course, i say that now, but after i took three budget flights, each with several hours layover, there is every chance that i will arrive in Skopje utterly frazzled and just go "fuck it" and take a taxi anyway.
I mean, because my Athens layover, i looked at the map, saw that the seaside was about 5km from the airport, and thought to myself - great, i'll just sit on the beach while i wait for my plane! But, of course, all the public transport out of the airport goes west to the city, not east to the coast. That's the other planning i was doing. Can i realistically leave the airport and get somewhere relaxing for a few hours before have to come back? Metro halfway into Athens proper, switch to a bus, which heads directly back in the same direction i came, then an hour later i travel just as far as i would have if i spent the same time walking? Ah, 'twould be so much easier in a taxi. It also would be easier if i picked up a SIM card and had signal so i could check the timetables in real-time while i was there. But EU SIM cards and Balkans SIM cards don't roam to each other by default, so actually it is more likely i will spend my Athens layover SIMless, traveling the old-fashioned way.
And then the bus from the airport in Skopje drops off in a bunch of places, none of which are anywhere near the cheap motel i booked, which is right next to the freeway in the middle of nowhere. Why did i book that one? Because, in my infinite wisdom, i wanted to be kinda outside of the tourist center to get a bit more of a feeling of the town as it really is. Also, it was very cheap. So now i have a 20-something minute walk through what Google Street View makes look like abandoned back streets to a hotel that doesn't even appear in said street view. Good times.
Anyway, whatever happens, by Sunday i will be able to get a Macedonian SIM card and check into my business hotel, at which point i will be pampered all the way to Thessaloniki, where i will get a Greek SIM card and maybe do my laundry after double-wearing everything for the first 8 days.
But the real planning is the planning that i guess most holidaymakers would do, which is try figure out what they actually want to do with their holiday. I only have 8 days in Greece after the business trip ends, and i would like to go down to the Peloponnese. Mainly because it's kinda remote, and the bottom end of it is on the Med, and i am a basic bitch who if i go to Greece wants to at least do a tiny bit of paddling in the Med.
Also it's the other side of the Gulf of Corinth that i missed years ago when i landed in Patras then crossed to Antirrio and visited Delphi before looping back round to Athens. I find i like to travel in geographical symmetries, to and fro. First the northern way, then the southern way. But i am not the type to plan out an exact route, because i don't much care for itineraries, and i don't need to collect a selfie at every UNESCO site in the region. The whole point of taking these 8 days after the business trip is because i know i will be utterly, thoroughly and completely defeated from having to spend 14 days "on" for my colleagues. I am going to need a lazy, unfocused, solitary wandering to get myself back together again.
So i just checked out some of the bus schedules in the area to get a feeling for how long it will take to travel, and which towns i am likely to get stuck in, or optimistically try to hike out of, because a whole chunk of the Peloponnese is ass end of nowhere that caters primarily to tourists with cars. But nothing will change if people don't get out there and boldly try to make their way around on buses that only come once a day.
I do have a few "nice to see it if i cans", including the theater at Aigeira (which looks to have view even better than Delphi) along the top, the pretty island of Elafonisos down on the bottom, a weird patch of sand near a village called Vartholomio in the west, and all the usual tourist stuff in the east. Kythira might be cool if i can swing it because the Phoenicians had a settlement there and i love those guys, even though all we have left of them is wine and the alphabet. Heading closer to Athens it might be nice to see the temple on Aegina. I am a sucker for columns by the sea.
But no car means i definitely will not see all of these spots, and i may even see none of them. That's fine. My planning is more like a feasibility study, i suppose. I think the Peloponnese is feasible. If Atalanta could be left on the mountain as a bairn and grow up to be badass lady hero of the Argonauts, i think i'll manage. As long as it's sunny and i can find some coffee, bread and dates every day, i will be happy.
So now i have "planned" my trip, i can try to relax into the last little piece of me time that i have until i jump on one of those ΚΤΕΛ buses 3 weeks from now. Since Taiwan is currently being hit by another typhoon, it's all wet outside, so nothing much to do out there anyway. Time to make another coffee and watch some science fiction.
Because i am that guy who when given a budget by the company for my flight will not only stay under it, but stay significantly under it, i am flying at a bit of an awkward time. Originally i was heading out Friday night after work, quick jump to Singapore, then continue on to Athens where i can spend an afternoon bumming around before getting on another quick jump to Skopje, arriving Saturday evening local time. The awkward part of this being leaving on Friday instead of Saturday, since work only expects us to be in the Skopje office from Monday morning, and they won't pay for a Saturday night hotel.
But what made it more awkward was a couple weeks back i got an email saying "your flight has been changed". Now, this happens all the time when you book flights months before they're actually due to leave, which is why i never do that for personal travel, but business travel you do, and so here we are. My flight was changed to leave Thursday with a (now) 25 hour layover in Singapore.
You might be thinking "well, that sounds great, free day in Singapore!" But that's thinking like a retired person or a European, because in Asia - like the US - you get a piddling amount of annual leave every year and i don't have any spare.
So after a bunch of going back and forth, i finally managed to shift my flights around and now i am leaving Friday afternoon and will eat a nasi lemak or roti canai in Singapore airport, then try to sleep at the gate to get my connecting flight in the morning. I asked my boss if i can work a half-day but just fill a full day into my timesheet and she said it'd be okay, seeing as i anyway put in over 40 hours a week, every week.
But leaving Friday means i can't do a weekend laundry before leaving, and seeing as i only own 5 work tops and 2 weekend tops, that won't be great. Because, after doing a bit of research, it seems Skopje does not have any laundromats. It might be the kind of place where i need to wash my clothes with shampoo in the hotel sink.
This is what i do when i "plan" my travel. The boring mechanics of it all.
How do i get from Skopje airport to the city without taking a taxi? Because if there is any option at all that means i don't have to take a private internal combustion vehicle, that's the one i will take. There is a bus. It only goes something like 5 times per day. So i will likely spend an hour sitting around at the airport for ideological reasons. The reason places have non-existent or shitty public transport is because nobody takes public transport. It's a circular problem. The only way ordinary people (especially travelers, who do not have democratic representation) can demonstrate that there is a market for something is if they put their money where their mouth is. Sharing socialist memes on social media after taking a taxi to your hotel helps less than just sucking it up and waiting for the bus, inconvenient schedule and all.
Of course, i say that now, but after i took three budget flights, each with several hours layover, there is every chance that i will arrive in Skopje utterly frazzled and just go "fuck it" and take a taxi anyway.
I mean, because my Athens layover, i looked at the map, saw that the seaside was about 5km from the airport, and thought to myself - great, i'll just sit on the beach while i wait for my plane! But, of course, all the public transport out of the airport goes west to the city, not east to the coast. That's the other planning i was doing. Can i realistically leave the airport and get somewhere relaxing for a few hours before have to come back? Metro halfway into Athens proper, switch to a bus, which heads directly back in the same direction i came, then an hour later i travel just as far as i would have if i spent the same time walking? Ah, 'twould be so much easier in a taxi. It also would be easier if i picked up a SIM card and had signal so i could check the timetables in real-time while i was there. But EU SIM cards and Balkans SIM cards don't roam to each other by default, so actually it is more likely i will spend my Athens layover SIMless, traveling the old-fashioned way.
And then the bus from the airport in Skopje drops off in a bunch of places, none of which are anywhere near the cheap motel i booked, which is right next to the freeway in the middle of nowhere. Why did i book that one? Because, in my infinite wisdom, i wanted to be kinda outside of the tourist center to get a bit more of a feeling of the town as it really is. Also, it was very cheap. So now i have a 20-something minute walk through what Google Street View makes look like abandoned back streets to a hotel that doesn't even appear in said street view. Good times.
Anyway, whatever happens, by Sunday i will be able to get a Macedonian SIM card and check into my business hotel, at which point i will be pampered all the way to Thessaloniki, where i will get a Greek SIM card and maybe do my laundry after double-wearing everything for the first 8 days.
But the real planning is the planning that i guess most holidaymakers would do, which is try figure out what they actually want to do with their holiday. I only have 8 days in Greece after the business trip ends, and i would like to go down to the Peloponnese. Mainly because it's kinda remote, and the bottom end of it is on the Med, and i am a basic bitch who if i go to Greece wants to at least do a tiny bit of paddling in the Med.
Also it's the other side of the Gulf of Corinth that i missed years ago when i landed in Patras then crossed to Antirrio and visited Delphi before looping back round to Athens. I find i like to travel in geographical symmetries, to and fro. First the northern way, then the southern way. But i am not the type to plan out an exact route, because i don't much care for itineraries, and i don't need to collect a selfie at every UNESCO site in the region. The whole point of taking these 8 days after the business trip is because i know i will be utterly, thoroughly and completely defeated from having to spend 14 days "on" for my colleagues. I am going to need a lazy, unfocused, solitary wandering to get myself back together again.
So i just checked out some of the bus schedules in the area to get a feeling for how long it will take to travel, and which towns i am likely to get stuck in, or optimistically try to hike out of, because a whole chunk of the Peloponnese is ass end of nowhere that caters primarily to tourists with cars. But nothing will change if people don't get out there and boldly try to make their way around on buses that only come once a day.
I do have a few "nice to see it if i cans", including the theater at Aigeira (which looks to have view even better than Delphi) along the top, the pretty island of Elafonisos down on the bottom, a weird patch of sand near a village called Vartholomio in the west, and all the usual tourist stuff in the east. Kythira might be cool if i can swing it because the Phoenicians had a settlement there and i love those guys, even though all we have left of them is wine and the alphabet. Heading closer to Athens it might be nice to see the temple on Aegina. I am a sucker for columns by the sea.
But no car means i definitely will not see all of these spots, and i may even see none of them. That's fine. My planning is more like a feasibility study, i suppose. I think the Peloponnese is feasible. If Atalanta could be left on the mountain as a bairn and grow up to be badass lady hero of the Argonauts, i think i'll manage. As long as it's sunny and i can find some coffee, bread and dates every day, i will be happy.
So now i have "planned" my trip, i can try to relax into the last little piece of me time that i have until i jump on one of those ΚΤΕΛ buses 3 weeks from now. Since Taiwan is currently being hit by another typhoon, it's all wet outside, so nothing much to do out there anyway. Time to make another coffee and watch some science fiction.