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04/15/2002 Entry: "Hostelling in Athens"

Whew! Travel-Related-Adventure #1 is now part of the history books! Jennifer and I had decided to try to book a double room at the HI hostel in Athens, which meant we had to call them, as they only take online reservations for dorm beds. The hostel is open 24 hours a day, so I figured we wouldn't have too much trouble getting someone on the phone, despite the time difference. Friday evening I diligently looked up the procedure for interntional dialing in the phone book, got the country and city codes and phone number from the 2002 Hostelling International index, and tried the call....

After a brief wait I was rewarded with a fast pitched beep, which I figured could mean the line was busy, I dialled incorrectly, or they weren't taking calls at that time. I tried a couple more times over the weekend with the same result, so I thought I'd wait until this morning before work (when it would be late morning in Greece) to try again. When I got the same result I called the operator, who informed me that I now have to add a zero after the city code when dialling to Greece. I didn't ask if this is true in other European countries - do any of you know?
Anyway, the employee at the hostel spoke excellent english and was very helpful. On May 7th we sleep in Athens!

Replies: 1 Comment

# of zeroes to add depend where you're calling from! Look in the phone book or Lonely Planet for local info while travelling.

Posted by Jeff @ 04/16/2002 09:12 PM EST

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