Stuck in Transit

Yes, yes, I know I'm way behind on my blog posts.

So Tuesday was supposed to be the day I flew to Edinburgh.

Got to the airport in plenty of time, simply because I've had misunderstandings with RyanAir in the past.  Check the screen at the terminal, and wtf I don't see my flight.  I keep looking to see if the screen will change. It doesn't.  I check my ticket.

Shit.

It says March 21st.

That's not today, it's tomorrow.

Panicked? Not in the least bit.  I found a pub with Wifi in the airport, emailed my host telling him what was up, and explored the ferry options to Edinburgh.  Turns out it would have been near a hundred Euros, and would have taken 12 hours compared to 45 minutes.

Airport camping it is.

This is not the first time RyanAir has had me spending 24+ hours in an airport.  In my last two weeks studying abroad, my Austrailian friend Jenna and I planned a trip to Italy.  First stop: Rome.  We got to the airport in plenty of time for us to fly out, but not enough time to check the one large bag we were sharing.  So we spent 27 hours in Düsseldorf airport, sitting in broken shiatsu massage chairs and playing cards.  The benches we slept on were next to the doors, and December in Germany is COLD.  The worst part of the whole situation was that it took a day of Rome from us, which we quickly got over.

That was noon on Tuesday when I sat down in that pub.

I didn't leave until 11:30pm that night when it finally closed.

I mostly camped out in my corner booth.  Blogged, wrote in my written journal, and read a book.  Met some Frenchmen that missed their flight and were pretty much in the same boat as me.  Between the one's terrible English and my terrible French, we got along just fine.  We made a pact to let the other know if one of us found an awesome place to sleep.

That's the thing about airports.  They are pretty much designed to be the most un-freaking-comfortable places ever.  I know its to discourage people from sleeping there, but this was a bit overkill.

All the benches were aluminum and had armrest dividing each seat.  I poked around a bit and found the only padded, non-armrested bench.  Sweet. I'm set.

Not quite.

It also happened to be right in between two employee only areas.  One of which I think was a break room, the other was where the employees went through security. 

It was so loud. All night.

I probably got all of my sleep between midnight and 3am when the next shift started coming in.  Even with my headphones on, it was too much to be able to sleep.  Plus for somereason I had a raging headache. 
I finally gave up at about 6am.  Set up in the shop in the bathroom Tom Hanks style like in The Terminal.  Washed up, changed, blogged some more.  Whipped out a jar of peanut butter, a package of rye bread, and the plastic knife I stole from the McDonalds upstairs (all of which were stashed in my backpack) and had breakfast right there by the arrivals gate. 

I probably looked like a homeless person.

This was crumbly weird bread, so I had a system down to be able to eat it.  Dip knife in PB, slap a chunk of bread into the PB, and shove in mouth.  Straight up Viking table manners.

As soon as it hit noon, I checked in, walked to my terminal, and passed the hell out until they called for boarding.  I also slept for the 45 minutes of the flight.  When I got to Edinburgh, I chugged a coffee, switched my money back to GB pounds, and boarded a bus.  My next host, David, had a meeting that day, and so I was supposed to take the bus to the West End stop, and he'd pick me up there afterwards.

Thing is, Edinburgh is in the middle of putting a new tram line down.  So the West End stop didn't exist at the moment. It had been "diverted" to several other stops.  I got off at the one closest to its original location. Sat down on some steps and started to read.

I couldn't remember if he said his meeting went till 4 or 5.  It was 3:45pm then.  Luckily it was a good book so I kept on reading until 5, when I started getting a little cold.  I walked over to the nearest cafe and stood out front to steal their wireless.

Turns out he had messaged me from that exact cafe, an hour ago.  I have a mobile phone that I bought at Tesco, but I still have no clue how dialing country codes work or even how many numbers are supposed to be in a telephone number here.

After many messages back and forth on the couchsurfing website. He finally found me.  I'm sure any other person would have been irritated by now, but not me.  Hell, I was stoked just to be here and know someone that would come and find me.

David is my first host that is an actual native of the country I'm staying in.  He's also the first host that has owned a car as well.  We walked the few blocks back to his car.  He politely offered to help me with my bag(s).  I declined, wondering which he would look more ridiculous carrying, my purse or my women's maroon backpack.

It was a short drive back to his place, which was actually located right on the edge of the North Sea.  His flat was a gorgeous one bedroom apartment located at the very top of the building, which I found out later he actually owned and didn't just rent.  After changing out of my 2-day airport clothes, we decided on just going out for some food and a pint.  Before we left, he kindly offered up his washing machine, which I eagerly accepted.  As dumb as it sounds, this was huge for me.  I had packed concentrated all purpose soap and planned on rubbing my clothes together in a sink and calling them clean.  Washing machine=clutch.

We drove up into the old town district, which is basically exactly what it sounds like.  He actually had a lot of interesting knowledge about the city and it's history.  We had dinner and a drink in a neat little pub.  Talked a bit about this and that. What he said that I thought was particularly interesting, was that there is an upcoming referendum to make Scotland an independent nation.  Whether or not it will really happen is I guess still up in the air.  Apparently some believe Scotland will not be as strong on it's own.  I, of course, know very little about anything in the UK or Scotland, but I say go for it.  From what I do know, Scotland seems to have been shat on a lot in the past. It's about time they had their own show.

We migrated to another pub that looked like it might have been in my family room from my house when I was growing up.  We talked also a bit about physics on the way back.  He mentioned that Edinburgh had a good physics department and the country was looking to attract new people to keep up the dwindling population.  Hmmm....

When we got back, David inflated a giant air mattress in the middle of the living room and very thoughtfully left a physics show on the TV for me to fall asleep to.

From Kilt Country
Tegs