[travel] Anatomy of a logistical nightmare

[mattbell]

Logistically speaking, more or less everything had been running smoothly on my trip. Not that I believe in the conservation of luck, but it appears that I was overdue for some trouble.

It all started when I had the bright idea to ship my Eurail pass to my friend's cousin's house in Tel Aviv, Israel instead of sending it to the bay area and having one of the people in the bay area who is coming to visit me bring it. It seemed like a good idea at the time to get this expensive package somewhere close to me instead of relying on someone else to tote it overseas. (Eurail passes, which give you unlimited travel on all of Europe's trains, run around $800 for 3 weeks)

The first bad sign occurred when I got a very anachronistic phone call from a Eurail representative while wandering through ancient roman ruins at Ephesus. They couldn't find anyone to sign for the package, so it was being placed on hold. My friend told me that I'd have to retrieve it from the Tel Aviv DHL office in Airport City. She also gave me a note allowing me to pick up the package even though it was mailed to someone else. “Hey, that's easy”... I thought. “I should totally ship more stuff to myself that way. I can get Lonely Planet guides for $10 off Amazon instead of paying the $50 local booksellers want.”




When I got to Tel Aviv, I found that cabs were very expensive and the bus system was almost entirely undocumented. By undocumented, I mean that the only place to get a bus map was a half-hidden kiosk on the 7th floor of the bus terminal. The bus map was also only available in Hebrew, so I needed an English city map to translate back and forth between the two. No problem, I can handle some simple pattern matching.

I looked on the internet and got the address of the DHL office. Google Maps showed a location near the airport, as expected. I took a picture of the address in case I got lost.

I found the required bus to get there... there was only one such bus, but fortunately it left from right outside my hotel. Yay.

I then spent the next 45 minutes waiting for this bus. No bus. A nearby store owner said those buses were very rare.

I eventually gave up and found a far more common bus that would take me within 4km of the location so that I could get there and back with a $20 cab ride instead of a $90 cab ride. That bus came right away. I chose a drop-off point in front of the local zoo and had no trouble getting a cab. Things started looking bad soon... the cabbie, who appeared to have very limited command of English, had never heard of DHL and said that area was all houses. We went there anyway, and I soon found myself in the midst of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. No DHL office, just another street with the same name. Given the neighborhood, it was hard to find anyone with enough English skills to point me toward the office. As the meter ran up, I decided to just have the cabbie drop me off at the airport so that I could get an internet connection and find out where the DHL office really was. The security guy on the way in was not so keen on letting me in when I didn't actually have a flight to catch, but I eventually got through. However, I saw a UPS office nearby, so we diverted from the airport departure area and went there instead.

We asked the UPS people where DHL was, and they pointed us in another direction. This direction also didn't look like it was going to pan out... we passed several airline meal catering services and airline repair hangars, but we eventually ended up at DHL's loading dock. I hopped out of the cab, and it appeared that the DHL people there would be able to ge thte package for me. The meter was already at $40 and rising fast (apparently cab waiting is very expensive in Israel), and the DHL people said it would be a little while, so I paid off the cabbie and went back in.

This office was deep in airport-land... there was nothing human-scale nearby. It was also so close to the runway that landing planes screamed overhead and their jets shot 30mph warm smelly air past the entrance.

Another problem... apparently the tracking number written on my friend's cousin's release letter as wrong. So they couldn't find the package. I didn't have the tracking number on my computer since it was stored on gmail. We tried to work out various potential solutions for half an hour before I remembered that I had taken a picture of the package tracking information, with the correct number, a week ago. Now they could find the package in their database... and it wasn't there.

At that point it started to rain. It was daytime and sunny when I started this, not cold and dark, so I wasn't prepared at all.

After several conversations with various DHL staff, we determined that the package was at another office a few kilometers away.

I was nowhere near any public transit, or cabs for that matter, I would get soaked if I walked, and the correct office was about to close. However, their staff got me hooked up with one of the DHL truck drivers, and I got to ride with him and a truckload of precious packages to the correct office

In the end I got my package, and I had a nice conversation with the guy at the desk. He had relatives in Santa Monica, and he spent lots of time telling me how awesome California was. The truck driver gave me a ride in his own car back to the nearest bus station, and I caught a long bus back to Tel Aviv.


So, what have I learned?
I love the DHL employees of Tel Aviv.
Google Maps is not the pope. Google Maps is not infallible. Then again the pope isn't infallible either. But they're still different in other ways.
Always have a phone number for the place you're trying to get to as backup.

Comments

[klrmn.livejournal.com]

if you need to go to the airport again (or any other major destination) i recommend geting a 'monit sherut'. it's a minivan owned by a taxi company, which charges a set fee for the destination, and leaves as soon as it's filled up. they can typically be found just outside bus and train stations.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know about sheruts... the trouble was that the offices weren't near any sherut or bus routes, so I thought I had the cheapest public/private transit solution.