World travel start and 25 hours of travel via Athens 🇬🇷 to Singapore 🇸🇬

On Monday evening, December 12, 2022, we boarded the plane in Frankfurt at around 8:30 p.m., my goodness, we were so excited. We had experienced a few emotional hours (saying goodbye to our families, I had a slight meltdown while packing my backpack, and we realized that it was really starting and got teary-eyed).

The flight to Athens was very relaxed and lasted 3 hours. We landed at 11:30 p.m. German time (it was already 12:30 a.m. in Athens). We were supposed to spend the next ten hours here overnight until our flight to Singapore departs. "No problem, we'll just find a quiet spot where we can sleep for a few hours and close our eyes." That was the plan. It didn't work out that way, I can tell you🙈 We quickly noticed, after we picked up our luggage, that the best seats were already taken. Because, oh wonder, we weren't the only ones who had to pass a few hours at the airport. We found a seat in a relatively quiet area to make ourselves "comfortable", and quickly realized that it wasn't that easy, because there were armrests everywhere between the seats, which made it impossible to stretch out or take a comfortable position. Chris eventually escaped to the floor and could actually sleep a little, I couldn't at all. I couldn't relax, I stayed alert in case someone approached our luggage! In addition, there was a lot of activity at the airport, planes landed again and again, new passengers arrived, hurried through the corridors to the outside or also took a seat in the seating areas. The airport staff talked loudly near us and the highlight was at 4 a.m., when the airport blasted its well-sorted music program through the speakers, as loud as in any good shopping mall. From then on our night was over!

In Athens, we also noticed that we forgot our vaccination certificates! 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼 And I also forgot a lens for my camera. Annoying!!

Well, somehow we got through the hours in Athens and lined up expectantly to check-in for our onward flight to Singapore. It was already 8:30 a.m., we were a little beside ourselves and the airport employee asked if we also had a visa on arrival?! What?! That was news to us. She gave us the website, we stepped out of line to book this visa thing with our phones (exhausted and slightly overwhelmed). Of course, it didn't work right away, and to top it all off, we had to pay for it, only to be told afterwards in Singapore, "Next time, go to website XY and apply for it, it won't cost you a thing." What a shame!

To cut a long story short, after our ten-hour flight (with little sleep and little food), checking in in Singapore (with online visa) was of course no problem at all, and we were more than happy to finally have Asian ground under our feet again.

However, we had to kill time here as well, because we arrived in Singapore at 5 a.m. and could only check into our hostel in Little India at 3 p.m. 😂 (More about that in the post about Singapore).