Ethiopia Court Trip - Part 1: Travel

Well, the big day finally arrived and we headed to Atlanta to catch our flight to Addis Ababa via Frankfurt. Because we like to keep our lives as exciting as possible, we left Athens about 3:45 so that we would need a perfectly eventless drive into Atlanta at rush hour in order to make the flight on time. Thankfully, the sailing was smooth on I-20 and I-85. We received a recommendation from my partner that Peachy Parking was a convenient and less expensive place to park for the new International Terminal at Hartsfield. For anyone flying out of ATL, I would highly recommend them. Pulling into Peachy Parking with less than 90 minutes until flight time, they had a shuttle waiting for us, grabbed our bags, and immediately took us to the terminal and dropped us off. On return, you text them when you make it through Customs and they send the shuttle to come get you. This was also flawless.


Anyway, we enter the terminal and headed to the Lufthansa desk and checked in. Once we got through security we had about 30 minutes until time to board, so we grabbed a bite to eat. We chose the Chinese restaurant and this was in my fortune cookie:







Now, I'm not superstitious (though, I am a little stitious), except that I never step on the foul line, and I always tap the plate before each pitch, and I dribble twice before shooting a free throw, but sports don't count, right? Oh yeah, and I never talk about how easy a call night is until the call night is over. I did think this was a fun little fortune to receive just as we were heading out to Ethiopia.


We left Atlanta at about 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday, October 30 and arrived (after a short layover in Frankfurt) in Addis Ababa at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, October 31. I don't enjoy being cooped up on the airplane for so long, but the trip went fine. We changed money at the AA airport (Rates weren't posted, so I took what they gave me. How's that for good financial management? I did calculate it a little later and they gave me a fair rate.) and headed to the back of the line to get our visas. The time between the invitation for court and the travel date was so short that it was risky to send our passports away to get visas ahead of time, so we had to get them at the airport. I couldn't help but think, what if they didn't give us a visa?


After getting the visas and collecting our bags, we were supposed to look for someone with a sign from our agency as we exited the baggage claim area (but still inside the airport). We looked around at all the folks holding signs, but there was no one from our agency. We patiently waited for about 30-45 minutes and still no one came. We finally decided that we better call our contact at the agency and see what was up. Problem was, we had to find a phone and figure out how to use it. We were approached several times by people in the airport, which we weren't sure we could trust, but we finally agreed to let a woman (a taxi driver, I think) call the number for us on her cell phone and we were able to talk with one of the agency workers, who called the guy who was picking us up. The lady with the phone did ask for a tip for the use of the phone, which was certainly a reasonable thing to ask. Our agency contact appeared in the terminal about 2-3 minutes later with apologies for the delay. The information he had received said we were arriving about 11 p.m. He had actually already picked up two other couples who were on our flight (and made it through the visa line before us) and taken them to the guest house.


Abel, our fantastic agency worker, led us to the van and took us to the guest house, where we hurriedly unpacked and finally fell into bed, exhausted form the journey and ready to sleep. We were looking forward to the charm and beauty that was yet to come, but the adventure had certainly already begun.