On Friday morning my mom, aunt, cousin and I all took a taxi tour out to Delphi for the day. We were picked up in a fancy Mercedes taxi and had a nice driver name Fotis that took us out there. We saw the archeological site and museum of the temple to Apollo, ate lunch at a taverna in Delphi and saw the temple to Athena and some other ruins. After we left around 5:00 we stopped for some ice cream and then again at a pretty village called Lavadia to take some pictures.
Not long after we left Lavadia we were driving down a small highway going, by my approximation, about 50 mph when a car coming in from a side road pulled out in front of us and we slammed into them. We ended up in a wheat field on the left side of the road and the other car was about 50 yards past us. The front end and right side of our car was really messed up and the other car was worse. It took 20 minutes or so to get the people out of the other car. We just sat on the side of the road waiting for an ambulance for at least 30 minutes and one never came. Finally, a family member of the other car drove up and all four of us got into his backseat (because my aunt and my mom each refused to leave their daughters’ sides) and he drove really fast and almost recklessly (even though we asked him to slow down) back to Lavadia. We went to a public hospital in the village and my cousin, who was hurt the worst started to get checked out. They were very rude and the hospital was small and didn’t seem very clean. I wouldn’t even drink out of the water fountain in that hospital. In addition, the people in the other car, who were hurt worse than us, were brought in so we were mostly ignored. We told them we wanted to leave to go to a private hospital in Athens but first we had to go to the police station to give our statements. They were even worse at the police station and the cops were yelling things in Greek and slamming folders on the desk and generally not caring about us. Finally around 9:00 (3 hours later) we were able to get into a taxi to go back to Athens, which was a 2 hour drive away. We finally got to the hospital in Athens and had a much better experience there. We were all checked out fairly quickly and my mom and I were just looked at by 2 doctors and they didn’t do any tests so they didn’t even charge us.
I ended up with a good sized bump on my head, which has now developed into a black eye and some minor scrapes and my mom had a bump on the side of her head that was bleeding at first and a huge bump on her left leg just below her knee. My aunt had some glass in her back and hurt both of her knees, although she was in the front seat with the airbag so she was the only one that didn’t have a head injury. My cousin was hurt the worst and has injuries all over the right side of her body. She has several scrapes/burns on the right side of her face, has pain in her jaw and has cuts, scrapes and bruises on her right arm and leg. The car hit more on the right side, which is where my aunt and cousin were sitting and both of their windows shattered. My mom was sitting in the middle back and I was sitting on the left, behind the driver. Our driver didn’t seem to be hurt at the time but from talking to him since the accident it sounds like he may have broken his finger. All of us woke up yesterday pretty much sore all over but we were able to walk around and see Athens a little bit and took a train back to Thessaloniki last night.
I was able to take a quick picture of the car, although I didn’t want to get too close since the people in the other car were hurt pretty badly. In this picture you can see our taxi on the side of the car that wasn’t hit, the other car with people working to get them out of it, and the massive traffic jam that we caused.
Also, here is a picture of my black eye! It's been consistently getting worse so we'll see if it looks even worse in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment