The following morning, before the seminars were due to start, I called in Mrs. Svarna.
"Oh, Danny!" she said as she buzzed me in and I walked across her plush office to her desk. She made it a point to remember everyone's names. She stroked her pooch.

"Hello, Mrs. Svarna. I have this problem." I explained the situation, and passed her the piece of paper, before sitting down.
"The bastards! How dare they treat you like this! Just because you're not working for the British Council! This is an outrage!" she said. "It calls for a cup of something. Tea - or coffee?"
"A cup of Nes, if you have one."
Svarna gave a deep throaty laugh. "Yes, Nescafe is the way to avoid that mucky stuff we call Greek coffee." She asked her secretary over and asked her for two Nescafes. While we were waiting for this, she said: " I know what will really impress them." She signed on the dotted line and then reached for the rubber stamps on her desk. There were four or five sitting in their holder. She took them one by one and proceeded to rubber stamp all over the bottom part of the paper extremely fast. "That will impress them!" she sighed, and we both smiled. "You have special leave from the second seminar today to sort out your administrative problems. Don't protest. The second seminar today is really only for Greek teachers of English, and would be what you call a waste of time, anyway. "
So, after the first seminar, I trolled out to the airport again, clutching my piece of paper with lots of stamps, four dotted lines, and three signatures on it.
I took it into the first room I could remember - room 16.
As it happened, this was not the right one. "Aha!" said a man I'd never seen before. He was enjoying a cup of coffee and talking on the phone while glancing at my paper. "You need room 20."
So I walked down the corridor, found the relevant room, and there was the blonde lady and the under-director of the directors having a conversation about something with the manager of the directorship. I passed the piece of paper to the under-director. He looked at it and chuckled. "So, now, you want your computer. Let's shake on it. We need a photocopy of this, and you can take that down with you."
We waited while another person was dispatched to photocopy the document, and then when it had returned in the hands of yet another person, the under-director stood up from where he had been sitting, opposite the manager. I shook his hand, shook the blonde lady's hand, and she said: "Go to room 3, and don't forget to come back in three months!"
"Okay," I said. I rushed down to room 3, waving the photocopied document. The denizen of room 3, a moustachioed gentleman in glasses, led me solemnly to the cargo area, and we waited while a boffin disappeared to retrieve my computer from its 'safe place.' He returned with it, and then went back to collect the printer, and suddenly I realised I was going to get my word processor after all. I felt light-headed, I wanted to rush up the steps to room 20 and dance with the blonde lady, I wanted to do a Zorba impersonation, anything.
I still couldn't believe it a couple of hours later when it was safe by my side in the flat where I was staying during the Thessaloniki seminars. But there was three months and then what...?