Thessolanica and Home

Around noon on August 25, we boarded a train to Thessalonica, Greece with McDonalds in hand for lunch. This train ride was better because we had our own private sleeping car. However, shortly after eating our lunch, we were informed that there was no food on the train. We found that to be ridiculous since we would be on the train until 6:00 a.m. the next morning! Thankfully, we had packed some almonds and dried apricots just in case which we ate for dinner. Fortunately, by this point in our travels we were used to big lunches and small dinners. We did not starve.

We arrived, tired and nasty, in Thessalonica, Greece on August 26 at around 6:00 a.m. We could not contact anyone at the University to start work on the next “sacred” skull, Petralona, or check into our hotel, so we "parked" at a cafe in the train station. We bought some breakfast and killed three hours before taking a taxi to Aristotle University of Thessalonica at around 9:00 a.m. We soon found the professor in charge of the skull. He was personable and offered us coffee. After a few minutes introduction, Scott got set up and got to work. Petralona was the last skull, and the granddaddy of them all. The best part for me was that I got to help this time! Scott let me push the button that recorded the measurements he was taking! That was my one shining moment contributing to the world of science on the trip.

Once we were done, we grabbed a quick sandwich for lunch and took a taxi to our hotel...on the beach! After showering (finally), we headed out the door of our hotel, and walked fifty yards to the beautiful beach. It was the end of the tourist season, so it wasn't too crowed and there were plenty of eating establishments to choose from. We lounged with a drink for awhile, and discussed what we were looking forward to the most about being home a just a few days. Then we walked a little further down the beach and had a great seafood dinner right there by the water! The food was excellent, it was beautiful, and Scott and I were having a great time! It was just what we needed to cure our Eastern Europe and “I’ve been away from home for three months” blues. As you can see from the pictures, how could we possibly not enjoy our surroundings after three months of “hard” work!

We turned in early that night in order to get up early for our flight back to Vienna. We arrived at the airport and checked in nice and early. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave we heard our names called over the loud speaker to come to the ticket counter. What we learned is that our plane had a technical problem, so they were going to transfer us to another airline to a flight that was going to leave at 9:00 a.m. to get us to Athens, so we could make our connecting flight to Vienna. Seems pretty nice right? Well…transferring to another airline meant that they brought out our luggage, and we had to get tickets and check in all over again. Because of the massive lines that had formed by that point in the day we were pushing our limits on time. While waiting in line we saw on the departure screen that our original flight was rescheduled to leave at 9:15, so we were only saving 15 minutes that we would lose by having to pick up our luggage in Athens and recheck it with our original airline. On top of that, everyone that had to transfer airlines held up the 9:00 flight and we didn’t take off until 9:30. So…our original flight actually left before ours plus we wouldn’t have had to recheck our luggage...we were very frustrated.

Despite the best efforts of Olympic airlines we caught our flight to Vienna without incident, and arrived safely in Vienna with all of our stuff after lunch on August 27. On Friday morning, Scott finished up his work at the Vienna Natural History Museum, and then we spent the afternoon shopping, and planning and preparing for our journey back to the US on Sunday morning. On Saturday, we met our good friend Bob Lojeck (Raija had left for Finland to visit her parents), for some authentic Japanese sushi. As usual, after consuming the best sushi I’ve ever had, our conversation took us to another spot for drinks, and then dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. I can’t think of a better way to spend our last day in Europe, good friends and good food!

Finally, the morning arrived for us to travel home! Our flight from Vienna to London Heathrow went quite smoothly. We even arrived a few minutes early. However, since O’Hare and Heathrow, the two vortexes of travel, were on our itinerary we ran into big problems. Our flight to Chicago was delayed four hours. This meant that we would miss our connecting flight to Cedar Rapids, and guaranteed that we would be spending the night in Chicago. Fortunately, they put us up in the Hilton over night since the problem was technical. However, thanks to jet lag, we really didn’t sleep, which made getting up at 5:30 a.m. less of an issue to catch the first flight out to Cedar Rapids.

Our good friend Hannah Marsh was waiting for us at the airport, and we arrived back at our house at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, August 31 and were greeted by…a foiled living room! Our small group at church carried on a tradition that was started four years ago of pranking our house while we were gone. You can see that the quality of the prank is impeccable as they even individually wrapped a Starburst wrapper we had left on the table. Home sweet home!!

Romania

Saturday evening on August 22 Scott and I boarded a night train; on our list of destinations, Bucharest, Romania, and Thessalonica, Greece. Scientifically speaking, this portion of our European travels was important. Each destination held a “holy relic,” if you will, of the human fossil world.

Whatever golden ticket of science this part of the trip was supposed to be, I was not looking forward to the long train rides. Bucharest, and Thessalonica are neither close to each other nor close to Vienna. Once again all the private sleeping cars were booked on our train from Vienna to Bucharest, so we traveled 19 hours on a train in a four person couchette. I could not wait to get off that train! We “roomed” with two very nice Romanians who did not speak English, and did not stop talking, except to sleep (thank goodness). The air conditioning on the train was very poor, and passport control woke us up twice in the 3:00 a.m. hour. It was not the best night, morning and early afternoon I’ve ever spent on a train. We arrived in Bucharest at around 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, and went directly to our hotel to shower!

After lots of R & R in our great hotel room, Monday brought a brighter outlook. We had a late start to the morning waiting for someone from The Institute of Speology to meet us, which was just fine with us. A note about The Institute of Speology: it holds the “sacred” skull called Oase, the building that houses it is hidden among back streets and junk piles (the mailmen can’t even find it), and the guys that work there are serious “cavers!” They are absolutely passionate about the research they do, and they have NO MONEY to do it! Dr. Constantine, who started the institute, told us that he recently was awarded a grant of 1,000,000 Euros for his research, but because of the world wide financial crisis he was told he won’t receive a penny of it. We liked hanging out with them; they were good guys.

For lunch they took us to a great local restaurant. We knew nothing about Romania, so we asked what was good there. The suggestion we were given was Moldovan Stew, a traditional Romanian dish. Dr. Constantine did however give us the disclaimer, “I don’t know if you’ll like it, but they make it properly here.” That was good enough for us, so we each ordered one. So, it turned out …that the stew was made of sausage and internal organs of some animal of which only liver was identifiable. The other two items on the plate were a healthy portion of the best polenta I’ve ever tasted and a fried egg. Despite the mystery meat it was good! I ate most of mine, and Scott cleaned his plate. I have to tip my hat to the Romanians for making something yummy out of something so yucky!

Once we were finished at the institute, we hauled all our stuff back to the hotel and decided to eat at McDonalds for dinner. Yes, McDonalds…one adventurous meal was enough for me, so it was time for something predictable. We also picked up some lunch here before getting on another long train ride to Thessalonica the next day.

(Sorry for the lack of pics on this post. The pic of Scott working in Romania is one of the only pic worth sharing; I have another one with Scott smiling...that's about it.)