“This weighs a ton.
Travel’s a curse,
but here we strive
to lighten your
purse.”
-Monsieur Thernardier, “Master of the House” from Les Misérables
I’ve been in the UK now for about three days. I’ve
experienced a lot of cool stuff which I’ll hopefully be able to talk about
in-depth later this week. First though, I’d like to have a frank discussion
about flying.
Flying sucks. It just does. Sure, we enjoy the results, but
the process itself is miserable. If it weren’t, stand-up comedians would have
had nothing with which to pad their acts from 1950-1985. And though from here
on out I’m going to be saying many glowing things about London, for now, let’s
just talk about plane travel. Specifically, my own experiences these past two
days flying from Chicago to Dublin to London.
Act I: Things Fall
Apart (Sometimes Literally)
I have a horrendous habit of doing things last minute. I can
count on one hand the number of papers I’ve started before the night before the
due date. I’ve paid late fees on library books I finished reading weeks ago.
And even when I try to be responsible before a trip, there’s still a pretty
sizable amount of packing that gets done at the last minute.
This usually isn’t a huge deal, but for this trip there was
an x-factor. A free radical, if you will: the bag. The bag was brand new,
ordered online. Never tested. So, after a long night of packing and
procrastination, I finally think my work is done. I go to zip my bag and it
rips. The cloth around the middle of the zipper splits and snags and what was
supposed to be the last thing to worry about before settling down to watch Passing Strange on Netflix before
nodding off to bed turns into me and my mother driving all the way to the only
24-hour store in town that sells luggage, finding nothing, and eventually jury
rigging a patch out of the strap of an old backpack. The moral of the story,
children, is that it pays to have a mom who knows how to sew. Or maybe that you
shouldn’t do things last minute so that when problems arise, they do not become
life or death situations. One of those two.
Act II: Planes Are
Not Built For Vikings
So I’ve gotten to the airport fine, I’ve found my flight
fine, I understand how to get to my connecting flight once I’m in Dublin. My
bags are all an appropriate weight. We’re golden. Here’s the thing, though: I
can’t sleep on planes. Which stinks, because on an international flight, the
only other option is to stay up more than twenty-four hours in a row to avoid
becoming nocturnal.
I’ve been trying to figure out why it is I can’t sleep on
planes. I have no problem sleeping in cars. Sometimes even while driving them.
But planes are a whole other kettle of fish. And I think I’ve funneled it down
to one very basic fact:
Planes were not built for people of Scandinavian descent.
I’m a quarter Norse and this is what I most closely
resemble, physically. I am blond-haired, blue-eyed, and 6’2” with a long torso.
These last two properties mean that not only does my spine curve at exactly the
wrong place to make the average plane-seat remotely the right shape for
sleepy-time, but my knees get jammed right into the seat in front of me unless
I pay the extra million dollars for an extra few inches of leg room and the
privilege of watching the coach passengers fight to the death for my amusement.
In case you can’t tell, I don’t really know how first-class works. Also my
in-flight movie was The Hunger Games.
Act III: In Which Our
Hero Loses Some Faith in Mass-Market European Candy
So, by the time I reached the Dublin airport I was far too
tired to take full advantage of the three hour layover and very much found
myself wishing I’d just taken the one with the 45 minute layover for $20 more,
though exceptionally glad that I had the good sense not to take the 6 hour
layover for $20 less.
After quite awhile blearily wandering the airport, I finally
found my gate and sat down to do a bit of reading (Over the course of my
travels I ended up reading the entirety of Shakespeare’s King John, which turned out being incredibly entertaining and easy
to follow for a history. I don’t know why it doesn’t get much play.). However,
after King John was poisoned to death (Spoilers), I realized that what I really
wanted was something to snack on. If you think airline food is bad, just try
and imagine Irish airline food. So
then I remembered Yorkie. Yorkie is a brand of chocolate bar made by Nestlé
that I discovered when I went to Ireland after my senior year of high school.
It has the most hilarious marketing tagline I’ve ever seen.
 |
| It's like the Trix Rabbit only 100% more real. |
So I make my way through the miniature mall that is the
terminal’s duty-free section until I finally find a place that sells them,
where I am greeted with a sad fact: Yorkie is no longer not for girls. I later
looked it up and it seems that though the continent has changed, some people’s
inability to take a joke remains the same. Nevertheless, I still felt
honor-bound to purchase and then choke down this bar of incredibly dry and,
oddly, slightly spicy chocolate.
Act IV: The First
Time Airport Security Has Ever Made Someone Less
Worried About Getting Arrested
So, I finally touch down at London Heathrow and once getting
through baggage claim, I find myself confused. I don’t see any signs for
immigration and customs. So I think, okay, maybe since this is such a huge
airport they have desks at all the exits, you know, to keep lines short. So I
head for the Underground, thinking there’ll be a little booth with a
disgruntled man to check my passport and my visa and begrudgingly let me into
his country. And sure enough I did find a little booth with a disgruntled man,
but all he was interested in doing was selling me a ticket for the tube, at
which point I began to suspect that I had somehow managed to enter the country
illegally. I knew this was, on the hole, unlikely, given that this is a G8
country that just hosted one of the largest international events ever and,
therefore, probably has a pretty airtight system for ensuring that foreigners
don’t just go waltzing right across it’s border. And yet, there I was, nothing
stopping me from leaving the airport.
So, at this point extremely confused, rather nervous, and,
if I’m honest, a little bit proud at the thought of having accidently pulled
one over on the United Kingdom, I decided I had better ask someone about this.
So, first person I found with a badge, I went up and explained the situation.
She then explained to me that part of the United Kingdom’s deal with
commonwealth countries, which semi-includes the Republic of Ireland, is that
there is a freedom of travel between them and the motherland. At this point I
remember that there had been a little
booth with a disgruntled man who I’d shown my passport to when I landed in
Dublin. I had thought this was just to make sure that I was going to be allowed
to enter the UK when I got there. I guess technically, that is what was happening, but in a much
more official manner than I had thought.
Act V: Allons-y!
So, with the relief/disappointment that I hadn’t accidentally
become an illegal immigrant, I made my way to the tube station conveniently
located right in the airport and caught the next train to my new home. There’s
nothing terribly interesting about this. I’ve been on a number of subway
systems before, and as far as I’ve seen so far, the only special thing about
the London Underground its size and intricacy.
So, after a pretty tense couple of days, I finally arrive at
the tube station just a short distance from my new home. I’m not going to lie,
at this point I was a little irritable and a lot sleep deprived. But, as I
wearily stepped out of the Earl’s Court Tube Station I saw something. Something
that made me cheer right the hell up. Something I still can’t handle passing
everyday in an adult manner. That something is this:
 |
| *Dun-duh dugga-duh dun-duh dugga-duh doo-wee-ooh wee ooh-ooh* |
It’s going to be a good semester.
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