Conquering the Known World by Dash-8

What image does the name "Alexander the Great Airport of Macedonia" conjure up? For me, it is a lofty marble hall with brightly painted columns and at the end a gilded throne, occupied by a tall, imposing man in a white toga, who booms "Take the next flight to Outer Mongolia, and from there proceed to conquer the known world!"

In reality, Alexander the Great Airport of (Greek) Macedonia is down the end of a farm track off a minor road in the countryside somewhere not very well signposted between Xanthi and Kavala. The only thing that towers over it is the distant mountain range that divides Greece from Bulgaria. Yet the Greeks have a flair for giving one-horse places desperately imposing names, such as the villages of Megalopolis and Marathon, and the towns of Drama and Olympia.

Our arrival on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in June did not disturb the airport dog, which continued to slumber at the terminal entrance. In fact, even the arrival of our aircraft did not cause it to do more than raise a sleepy eyelid, snuffle briefly and replace its jowls onto its folded paws. Inside the terminal, we learned that we could check in at desk no. 1 and then pass through security and depart from gate no. 1. Gates 2 and 3 had a forlorn air of abandonment. After the departure of the solitary afternoon flight to Athens, the airport was due to close until the following morning. Meanwhile, the car hire official had dutifully trouped in to reclaim our vehicle, and he rapidly disappeared into the undergrowth.

Our aircraft was one of Olympic Air's Dash-8 turboprops, which relieved me, as the only other plane in the vicinity was a pensionable Boeing 727 that looked somewhat derelict. I suppose all Boeing 727s are by definition pensionable, but a fair number of them are still lumbering around the skies of the developing world--or falling out of them, as they have an appalling safety record.

Athens was reached without incident, possibly because the other passengers were Greek Orthodox and elaborately crossed themselves as we took off. More memorable was the flight out, from Athens to Thessaloniki (accent on the 'iki', please). Cyprus Airways carried me there and felt it necessary to include in the safety briefing the fact that "the Turks invaded Cyprus in 1973". Perhaps it was intended to hasten one's departure in the event of an on-board emergency--fear and loathing of the Turks, and all that. I wondered if there were any Turkish Cypriots aboard, and whether they would be unloaded without a parachute as soon as we reached our cruising altitude. But it all seemed good humoured enough. I was relieved that Olympic Air did not tell me that the pesky ex-Yugoslavs had no right to call their homeland Macedonia. But then, Alexander's empire fell apart quite quickly, and all the air travel in the world would not put it back together again.