PART of their Deep Blue Tours Mercedes cab fleet outside Athens’ prestigious Hotel Grande Bretagne. (David Ellis)
AFFABLE Aussie cabbies in Athens a star act – Aki (left) and Dimitri with one of their Mercedes cabs. (David Ellis)
IN his continuing search for the more weird and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says a couple of Aussie-born Greeks who run an upmarket taxi company in Athens using E-class Mercedes sedans and Mercedes mini-vans, are finding themselves carrying more than just backsides on seats.
It’s because wealthy Greeks and others who don’t trust airlines and road transport companies with their treasured artefacts, are using Dimitri Karoutas who was born in Mosman in Sydney and Aki Arvanitis at Kew in Melbourne, to carry these items often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres in their luxury Deep Blue Tours Mercedes cabs.
One businessman living on an island rang Aki whom he often used in Athens, and told him he was sending a broken antique 17th century chair worth E100,000 (AU$129,000) by helicopter to Athens airport, and would Aki pick it up and find someone to repair it.
Aki did so, and when the job was done drove the repaired chair 225km to the port of Patras – and from there by car-ferry across to the businessman’s home island.
And while Dimitri was once giving a Swiss businessman a tour into the countryside, the man bought an antique metre-high urn and asked Dimitri if he would deliver it to his home – albeit 2,500km away in Geneva as he couldn’t risk it being possibly broken in the air or on the road.
So Dimitri gave it to Aki who made the bizarre 5,000km round trip to Geneva and back…
These two affable Aussie-Greeks do general taxi work including airport and cruise ship transfers in Athens, and tours from a day to a fortnight in rural and regional Greece. If you’re visiting Athens, say G’day to them via www.deepblue-tours.com or [email protected]
David Ellis, [email protected]
