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| Peirene Fountain, favored by Pegasus. Corinth, Greece |
For those who have even wondered about what it is like to
travel the world as a representative of college or university, the simple
answer is “epic”. You get to go places you would never see otherwise, get to
meet wonderful people from all walks of life, and share adventurers with the
some of the best people on the planet. What follows is one story among many I
have shared with two of the legendary heroes in the world of admission: Rich
Dawson and Barbara Marlow.
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4:15 pm
“I have a gun under the seat”. He said this in a way that
was supposed to make us feel better. His
left hand steered, his right held the phone close to his mouth. He spoke Greek
quickly, a few decibels louder than the words coming from the radio.
“Here” he said, “They want to talk to you,” as he handed me
the phone. The irony of me riding shotgun passed through my mind. It was better
than panic perhaps.
Across from us the bus was about 12 feet away. I did not
want to talk. I turned around and asked Rich squeezed into the backseat if he
wanted to be the voice of our group. Looking out the back window I could not
begin to count the number of police cars following us--more than 20 for sure.
It looked like a scene from a bad B movie. Rich reached up and took the phone.
He described the bus, said he could not see much, but we were right next to a
fleet of police was following it and us. Rich’s words came out on the radio. We
were now a part of an epic story.
8:00 a.m.
We negotiated a deal. He’d take out of Athens to places
across the isthmus, let us walk around the sites and get us back before 6. A
cloudless blue sky, not much traffic, and air conditioning. The signs were good
we’d see what we needed.
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| The Corinth Canal |
9:00 a.m.
The canal looks like the perfect place to film Odysseus’s
trip between Scylla and Charybdis, the deep blue between sheer rock faces. He
survives but men are lost. Odysseus the “many minded” man who is fated to “lose
all companions”.
10:00 am. Rich stands where St Paul was said to have been in
Corinth. It was here that the words above love first entered his head. The
city, home to heroes and sages, Greek and Roman exists in ruins, yet water
still flows from a fountain, fed by a spring favored by the gods.
11:30: Each of us stands in a different location in the
theater of Epidaurus. I am in the 54th row, the last of this ancient Greek theater.
Our driver, standing on the stage, takes a coin from his pocket and drops it; each
of us can hear the ring as if it were several feet away. The city was known as
the shrine of the healing god Asclepius, an ironic twist for our journey.
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| Theatre of Epidaurus |
1:30 p.m. While we are eating our driver tells us things have gotten
complicated. The highway has been blocked by the police and there is no way
back. A man has killed two people, set a fire on the highway and taken a bus
that stopped full of Japanese tourists hostage. He had the bus drive toward
Athens, and then had the bus turn around.
He says he thinks all of this will pass and we can make our
way through but tells us we’d better try to head back in.
2:30 The highway is blocked. Our driver says he has an idea
and takes us off the highway down into a village in which there is a small
bridge. The police are there too and will not let us cross. The driver keeps
giving us updates about the location of the bus in between times he goes to
talk to the police.
He tells us his story. He grew up in Athens, served in the military,
went to New York for ten years as a cabbie and has recently returned. He says
he has the skills to get us through.
3:45 The police let us cross the bridge. We proceed along dirt
roads. The back wheels rainbow dust into the clear Greek air. The bus has again
turned around and is headed back to Athens. He thinks he can beat it back. We
sit in silence, wondering if we will make it to our hotel to host families and
students for our evening program. We are there to talk about education in the
US, about some of the great universities and colleges that offer opportunities
for people to see the world in new ways. None of us has ever missed an event
before. We don’t know what to do. Our driver has on the radio that is
broadcasting live reports about the bus. Our driver is quiet.
4:10 I sneak a peek at the dashboard as we bump along up an
incline. We are going 70 mph. And then we crest the hill, and there to our left
is the highway. Our driver shouts in triumph. “We are going to make it!” As we
merge from to dirt to asphalt, we look and see that we are next to the bus. The
driver takes his cell phone and calls the radio station. We don’t understand
Greek but then he turns to me and hands me the phone and says they want to talk
to the Americans. He says “don’t worry, I have a gun under the seat. Nothing
bad is going to happen,” Rich takes the phone from me and calmly describes the scene
to the listeners across Greece. Barbara takes out her camera and clicks off
some photos. Both have what Hemingway called
grace under pressure.
We then suggest that it might be best to let the bus go
ahead and we can follow it in to Athens. Our driver slows the cab a bit and in
less than a minute dozens of police cars are between us and the bus. No one
tries to signal us to stop. Eerily we follow the bus into Athens, an army of police
cars and us. We get off at the first exit inside the city perimeter. Our driver
smiles and says, “I knew I could do it.”
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| Parthenon at sunset |
5:00 We arrive back at our hotel; we have over an hour to
prepare for our program. We laugh nervously and thank our driver. We give him a
big tip. He says, “I don’t think you will forget this day and I don’t think you
will forget me.”
6:30 We smile and greet the early arrivals for our program.
We show slides of some of the most beautiful schools in the world. The air is
cool inside. Everyone claps and we talk with students and families. Outside, the
Parthenon turns pink from the glow of the setting sun.
9:00 We find out that the hostage taker has surrendered
without anyone else getting hurt. On the way to his jail cell it is reported he
jumped out a window to his death. The people at the hotel think that he was
‘helped’ by the police to jump. We will never know. Our epic adventure has
ended.
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The story above is true or at least it is as accurate as I
can recall it. In subsequent weeks and over years of travel we would often joke
that we should write a book about our taxi adventures. While this one stands
out there are others that have epic twists and turns. I dedicate this tale to
those who rode with me that day and who have devoted much of their lives to
helping students and families from around the word to set out on their own epic
journey to a new world. Thank you Rich Dawson and Barbara Marlow, two of the
great leaders in the world of international admission. As you prepare to retire
I hope you will take up the challenge to write your adventures around the
globe. You taught me in many ways how to do my job well and how to be a better
human being.
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