assports but unable to show fluency in Greek could be refused permission to board. The bizarre episode underscored how, despite longtime European Union agreements to ease the movement of travelers throughout the 27-nation bloc, individual nations and companies reserve the right to erect awkward borders in hopes of deterring illegal immigration,toms shoe store. The policy became public after a telecommunications executive in Ireland, Greek-born Chryssa Dislis, complained of degrading treatment when checking in for a Jan. 6 flight from Barcelona, Spain, to her home city of Cork in southwest Ireland. "The situation was completely insane," she said in a phone interview. "How,toms shoes on sale, in an age of biometric passports, can an airline stop me from flying unless I speak Greek to them?" Her husband, traveling on a British passport, and 10-year-old daughter, traveling on an Irish one, were cleared for takeoff,http://www.336300.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=58248&do=blog&id=700477. The trio had just completed a six-day vacation in Barcelona. But Dislis was told she must fill out two tests, one in English and the other in Greek, to demonstrate her story was true. When she refused, decrying it as both illogical and illegal, the Spanish company that handles Aer Lingus flights in Barcelona, Newco Airport Services, pulled the entire family's suitcases off the plane. Both tests asked her, in each language, to read passages aloud; to present all the cash in her possession; to sketch a ladder and a triangle; to identify the spelled-out versions of four numbers correctly; and to describe their travel destination. The Greek version asked where she was going "in England," not Ireland. Dislis, 48, said she had been flying around Europe about 10 times annually in recent years, and never experienced such an unreasonable restriction on her right to travel. "I had absolutely no way out if I wanted to fly,http://www.petdostlugu.com/dolphin/blogs/entry/toms-shoes-discount-The-inquiry-s-website," she said. When she asked for copies of the completed tests,http://www.jxdongshuo.com/read.php?tid=1542015&displayMode=1, this was refused. When her husband then photographed them on the counter, the staff called airport police to have the camera seized. "The manager went ballistic. He threatened to have the police destroy all our photographs from our holidays," she said. "Fortunately the policewoman who arrived was extremely sensible,toms shoe store, defused the situation, and told the check-in desk to stop messing us about and put us on the plane." The couple did agree to delete their photographs of the tests but later retrieved them from the camera's electronic garbage bin. She recalled asking the Spanish staff if any of them even spoke Greek. None did. "So the whole exercise was completely absurd," she said. "I could have written 'Three Little Pigs' on the form and they wouldn't have known any better." Dislis went public with her complaints this week after receiving a letter of partial apology from the office of Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller. It gave her a euro200 ($260) discount card for future Aer Lingus travel but offered no indication that the airline would restrict or stop the language quizzes. She also has filed a complaint against Aer Lingus with the Equality Authority of Ireland, which