Times sports writer Marc Topkin is in Athens covering the Summer Games. In this online journal, he shares his thoughts and experiences while covering the Olympics.
ATHENS - Getting to see the ancient Olympia site, where the Olympic Games were born around 2,800 years ago was fascinating. To see the stadium where the first events were run, the ruins from what was essentially a lost city, the tunnel that is still standing were all inspiring.
Getting to Olympia was downright breathtaking.
There is no easy way to go the 200 or so miles from Athens west to Olympia. There are no direct flights, the train takes too long, and the tour bus was leaving at 4:30 a.m. and returning at midnight.
That's where Petros the Greek came in.
Dave Whitley, a writer for the Orlando Sentinel, knew somebody who had used Petros as driver before. The scouting report was that Petros had a nice car -- a Mercedes sedan -- probably mid-1970s; knew the roads; was reliable; and drove fast.
Oh, there was one other thing - he didn't speak a word of English.
We met at Dave's hotel -- four of us plus the driver -- for what would end up being about a 3-hour, 45-minute ride. We'd heard from some other American journalists who made the trip last week that the drive was harrowing, with white knuckles for all.
For the first 45 minutes or so, there didn't seem to be any problem. Then we went from a highway to a two-lane road. Or at least I thought it was a two-lane road.
What we quickly found is that the two-lane road is really three - and sometimes four. In Greece, the slower calls pull over to the right and drive on what essentially is a paved shoulder while the passing car straddles the dividing white line. That was a little edge, but seemed to work well. Where it really got interesting is when there was a car coming from the other direction doing the same thing.
Let's just say that breathtaking took on a whole new meaning.
At one point on the way home, I dozed off only to wake up as Petros swerved back to the right to avoid an oncoming car. When I jumped, he laughed.
At another point, I looked over at the speedometer and saw him pushing 120 kilometers per hour. I didn't want to do the math.
The language barrier wasn't much of an issue, though there were times when the four of us were talking and wondered that maybe he knew even English to be listening in on our inane banter.
When we did need to tell him something, we got creative. When he dropped us at the shuttle bus site (after bullying his way past the first police checkpoint), we found a bilingual lot attendant to arrange our pickup time. When we decided on our way back we wanted to go to the Press Center rather than Dave's hotel, we had to call Dave's Greek-speaking friend and have him tell him for us.
We were in good hands with Petros. He got us as close to the shotput site as he could, he was waiting for us as the appointed time, he drove fast but safely, and he dropped us at the right spot.
The meter was around 250 Euros, but we paid him the estimated price he gave us pre-trip of 300. Then we gave him a little more for taking such good care of us.
But as he drove off, we still wondered if he knew what we were saying!
