The Delphi Museum And Going Back

After visiting the archeological site, we went to the museum see some excavated artifacts. It was equally if not more interesting than visiting the site itself. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, and we learned a lot from him, and each time after he had given us the information he would say: look, what a beautiful art! And now as I am looking at these pictures I took at the Delphi museum, and I do not want to write about each of the sculptures what/who do they represent and what is their significance. I just want to say the same thing our tour guide Kosta said: look, what a beautiful art! Look at all these muscles! Look at all these imperfect wrinkles of the clothes!

The ivory and gold statues of Apollo and Athena. They were buried near the temple in the antiant times when were became deteriorated of natural causes

Did you know that you could tell just by the clothes or absence of it that the first culture represents a polititan, the second one – a warrior and the third one an athlet?

The bronze Charioteer is considered to be a most valuable exhibit of the museum was created in 470s BC

I don’t know who has lunch at 2-30PM, but apparently, some Greeks do 🙂

That was supposed to be a picture by the #marathon hashtag, but I opted for the better view behind me

A Trip To Delphi

Now, here is a little bit more about our trip to Delphi. Boris was joking about visiting the first database in the world (because Delphi is a place where Oracle lived), and I said that it’s rather the first AI :). Except for that, we knew little about Delphi, so we spent all three hours on the road listening to the tour guide who was filling us in.

As I said, the most striking part were the views on the mountains and valleys, but that’s something impossible to describe or to capture on a photo. I tried but it doesn’t represent the reality, even remotely!

Each turn of the road produced more ahhs, because each next view was even more scenic than the previous one!

I have to admit, that I either forgot or never knew that Delphi is located by the Mount Parnassus.

And similarly(or consequently), I forgot that the temple with the Oracle was dedicated to Apollo. Another thing I didn’t know was that Appollo supposedly was out of town for winter months, and at that time, Dionysios ruled the city, and the plays were presented at the theater.

The visitors could ask the Oracle for advice only when Apollo was present.

The road the visitors would take to get to the temple

The Pythias were older women, but it was not like this from the beginning. Initially, Pythias were young virgins, but because of multiple cases of rape, the decision was made to choose Pythia from older virgins (over 50).

Pythia sat in the “basement” of the temple surrounded by the smoke of burning bay leaves. Also, although it is not confirmed, but it was believed that there were some cracks in the earth from which the vapors that caused the trance emanated. Pythia didn’t say anything in response to the questions. She could just move or produce some sounds, and these signs were interpreted by the prophets and communicated to the priests who gave the meaning of the response. So it was a very complicated procedure indeed!

*Omphalos* – a conical stone that symbolizes the center of the world, located close to the Apollo temple

The Theater – the first row seats were designated for dignitaries and have backs

A gigantic Roman stadium above the theater

Flights – A Lot Of Them

My current trip was planned several months ago, but I was utterly not prepared by my departure time on October 18. Just one thing to mention: I was not packed in the morning of the day of my departure.

My flight to Helsinki had a connection in London, and when Boris and I flew to Athens on Sunday, we had a connection in London again. Both times, it was horrible: long security lines and no priority line, and taking all the things out. Both times, there was no time to stop in the lounge.

The good part was that I had a Business class upgrade on the flight from London to Helsinki, and for some reason, they had a larger aircraft on this flight, so the business class was a real thing, with all these cool seats, and a nice lunch, and a cinnamon bun for a dessert.

I arrived in Helsinki at about 4-40 PM on Saturday, and on Sunday morning, we took off to Athens, with yet another connection in London, and the flight was delayed again, and no business class this time :).

On Saturday, when I was doing an early hotel check-in, I realized that I accidentally booked one extra day, and it turned out that removing this extra day was considered a late cancellation, but it was too late to do anything about it.

That will be the end of the complaints, because the hotel is great, and we did a day and a half of touring, and now the conference is happening, and although I am not presenting this time, I do not have a second to spare!

Delphi

Just pictures for now, but there will be words as well 🙂

The best thing was the day of traveling through the mountains, but you can take as many pictures as you want, and they won’t even remotely describe how it looks and feels!

Avios Saga

This lasted for way too long! First (and I believe I mentioned it) I realized that I didn’t add my Finnair Plus number to my September reservations and for some reason, the BA website didn’t allow me to add it. I had to call BA and go through a very long wait, but in the end, they made the change, and I started to see these reservations on my Finnair Plus app.

After my first flight, I didn’t see my Avios, but I knew that with the partner points, it might take a couple of days. When no Avios appeared after a week, I called Finnair and asked what was going on. They promised to investigate, and I saw a “pending” message on the app, but a day later, all four flights showed “rejected.” When it happened a couple of times before, I let it go, but this time, there were four flights, and my end-of-tier-points period was fast approaching, so I called Finnair again. They said that it looked like my loyalty number was not on the reservation (which was not true), so I asked them what I could do to claim my points. They said it was a good question and they would send another email to BA.

Still, nothing happened. I called BA, and they said they had my number and everything; it’s just that Finnair never requested them… Everything started to look Kafkian. I called BA and Finnair every other day, and every other day, it was the same story: BA said they had all the information, but Finnair didn’t request it, and Finnair said that BA didn’t reply to their email. I complained on X and received a number of false agents’ responses plus one actual Finnair response: “We are still waiting for BA to email us.” Out of complete desperation, two days before the end of the tier points period, I called BA again and asked whether I could change the loyalty program on the tickets to the BA executive club (then I could transfer them myself). They said I could do it, but it would take up to six business days, so it wouldn’t solve my problem of receiving my missing point before the cutoff. The lady was super nice, and she said that she would try to escalate my case (although technically speaking it was not their case!), but she can’t promise.

Now, I was already Finnair Plus, and I already had enough points to maintain this status, but since I flew a lot this year, Finnair Platinum was within reach. I knew I wouldn’t have enough tier points, and I would need to exchange some of my Avios for tier points, but I was hoping to get it to the minimum.

A day before the end of the period, I asked Boris whether I should wait for another day or make the Avios exchange, and he replied that it had already cost me more time than the Avios was worth (which was true) and that I should exchange and be done with it. It turned out that I needed to change just a little bit less than the maximum allowed amount, and so now I have FInnair Platinum.

However, I didn’t want to leave the case as it was (after all, I still could use missing Avios for Avios), so I decided to find a way to complain. It took me a while, but I found a place on the Finnair website to leave feedback and share all the details about my case. The following day, early in the morning, I saw that all my missing Avios magically appeared on my Finnair Plus, so I guess this method worked :). Several hours later, I received an email from Finnair, saying: “We are sorry there was a delay, but your Avios are now here.” I emailed back, saying: “Thank you, but I also want to ensure you have better customer service in our New York office.” They replied formally, and I decided to stop.
In retrospect, I do not regret I spent that much time. The previous time I had points rejected, the number of points was small, and I didn’t want to spend time trying to resolve the issue, but that time around, I wanted to protect my consumer rights 🙂

I am a Professional!

The very last piece from my September trip. We walked around like complete tourists in Amsterdam and walked into this very touristy cheese shop, where literally everyone shops. We walked around the shop; I knew I wouldn’t be able to take anything with me, and I wouldn’t need any cheese before Thanksgiving, but Boris wanted to take something along. he liked one of the cheeses we had at the breakfast buffet in Jakarta, but we had no idea how it was called. So when the store associate asked us whether we needed any help, I first replied: thanks, we are just thinking, but then I decided to ask her. Boris started to describe the texture of the cheese he liked “as if it was dry, but not really dry,” and she immediately said: try this one on the opposite side – that should be the one.

We took the samples, and it was indeed the one. We thanked the associate, and she proudly said: I am a professional!

Then I decided to buy a set of cheese knives and forks (I thought I would bring it to Vlad and Dylon – I couldn’t possibly know this trip wouldn’t happen!). So I chose the set, and we started to check out when the same associate said: you know, they won’t allow this knife in the carry-on! The other two pieces are fine, but because of this third one you will have to check it in. Since I had a second flight the same day and didn’t want to risk getting out and getting back in, I had to put the set back on the shelf. I thanked her again (after all, she lost the sale on us, and we wouldn’t go after her if we figured this out in the airport!). She replied: I am a professional!

Indeed!

Google Knows!

The last story from my delayed flights saga. On September 12, when I already left my company’s London office and took Elizabeth line to Heathrow, I received a notification from Google (not British Airways): Flight XXX delayed arrival – 90 minutes. I don’t remember the exact verbiage, but something like that. Immediately, I looked at my BA boarding pass, but it didn’t show any delays. Since during my Chicago delay, Google was more accurate in estimating the delay time than AA, I thought that I will see the departure time change soon, but nothing came up. I arrived to the airport, waited for the departure in the lounge, still surprised that there was no delay announced, and finally proceeded to boarding. The flight was still perfectly on time, I took my seat, and soon, the boarding was complete.

Then came a usual announcement: “That’s your captain speaking,” and immediately after that he went off script: “So, you heard the thunder when you were boarding, right? Yea, it’s quite a storm going on, and now the traffic control want us to sit here and wait for the storm to clear. We will update you as soon as we know.”

Guess how much we were delayed? Yes, an hour and a half, and yes – just an arrival, not departure!

This left me wonder – how did Google know????

Flying Back And More Delays

The only flight that was on time for this trip was my flight back from Amsterdam to London. As for the final leg, I saw the announcement that my flight was going to be three hours delayed a day before, and I was only hoping it wouldn’t be another overnight delay.

That time, I had no option of going for a stroll in the city because I had my carry-on with me. Actually, if I had acted a little bit faster, I could have jumped on the previous flight to Chicago, but by the time I checked in with customer service, they were already boarding, so I decided – whatever!

It ended up spending another six hours staying in the lounge because there was already almost an hour gap between flights, but at least I was able to catch up on reading and blogging:)

The flight landed in Chicago at about 9 PM, and the good part of such a late arrival was that there were no lines at the border control, and also, there was no traffic on Sunday night, so I was at home at 10-20. I am proud of myself that I didn’t unpack but went to bed right away 😀

And More Amsterdam

I planned to spend an extra day in Amsterdam just to wander around without any particular plan. It would have been a great idea, except that this extra day was Saturday, and the streets were crowded beyond any imagination. Still, it was a nice and relatively warm day, and the city looked gorgeous. Boris wanted to take a boat tour “if it will work,” so we took the one which departed “in three minutes” from when we reached the boarding place.

Notice.s “seagull scarecrow” similar to the ones I saw in Helsinki

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PG Day Lowlands

Friday, September 13 – the Pg Day Lowlands team was brave enough to have their first event scheduled on that day :). And it went really well! I liked a lot of things about it, and I definitely want to use some of them for PG Day Chicago, including the rule that Boriss Mejias mentioned about always leaving a space for a fith person to join a group of four. I also loved the idae of Sponsor Passports, which encoraged the participants to visit all sponsor tables.

I started this post three days ago, but never had time to finish because the moment I returned to work, I had no time for anything else. But now, I have pictures taken by a professional photographer, so instead of posting whatever pictures I took, I can post really high-quality ones. So now, there just a couple of mine left :).

Here are some of them (of cause, I am shamelessly posting the pictures of myself:))