Dear readers,
I wish I was writing this article sitting on my bed, surrounded by my cats and hearing my parents and brother going about their business in my home.
But no. I'm sitting on the couch watching TV, alone in my English home. I was supposed to fly back to Basel yesterday evening, but my flight got cancelled because of the freakin' snow... Let me tell you all about my nightmarish couple of days.
I left Soham at about 8 o'clock on Monday morning. Took the bus to Ely's train station. I had to take the train to London Kings Cross. The train was half an hour late, but that was to be expected. Then I arrived at Kings Cross and looked for the train to Gatwick but couldn't find it. So I asked one of the security guys and he told me that all the trains to Gatwick were cancelled and that I had to go to Victoria Station. So I had to take the tube to Victoria. I was carrying two suitcases so it was not a walkover, trust me!
Then I arrived at the airport and waited to check-in. I checked in, passed the hand luggage checking and waited for my gate to open. It was supposed to open at 17:05. At 17:05, it said it was delayed to 18:50. I wasn't surprised though. A one-hour delay is nothing, right? Then the gate opened, so I walked to gate 109, feeling really happy that my flight hadn't been cancelled after all. There was a big queue at the gate, so I joined it. After a while, the loudspeaker announced the boarding would begin "shortly". Never trust someone who says something will happen "shortly". I should have known. A couple of minutes later, they announced that a person needed special attendance and that they were waiting for an ambulance or some vehicle. But of course, it was stuck in a traffic jam and was late.
That's when it started snowing. And that's when I thought "fuck, fuck, fuck". At around 8pm, it came: "we have just been informed that the runway has now been closed due to the snow". God. They said we'd have some other information at 10pm. Great. But only a couple of minutes later did we learn that our flight was cancelled. And all the other flights.
We were told we had to go back to the departure lounge and get our luggage back. It was chaos. Like, the whole airport needed their luggage back. And of course, we couldn't get through to the baggage claim area alone. We needed to be escorted. But before we could go, the people who hadn't checked in any luggage and had bought duty free stuff had to return those items to the shops. I still don't understand why only those who hadn't checked in a luggage had to return their stuff... Anyway. It was funny because when they made that announcement, everybody laughed. It was quite comical! I had to laugh too. Better laugh than cry, right?
After what seemed like ages, we were eventually escorted to the baggage claim area. We had to wait for a little while and then we got our luggage back. Phew. That was out of the way.
In fact, I didn't tell you about the girl I met at the airport. I started talking with her back when we were queueing to board the plane. And we discovered we only live 10 minutes away from each other in Switzerland. That was a really really really lucky encounter. If I hadn't been with her, I would have panicked like hell!
So. Where was I. Yeah. Then we started looking for some computers so we could try and book another flight. I got there, logged in my mum's account (she had booked my flight, see?) and was "lucky" enough to transfer my flight to the 24th of December, from London Luton to Geneva. My new friend wasn't as lucky, since she couldn't access her dad's account as the latter was fast asleep and wouldn't answer her calls. She could only access the account today and, unfortunately, only got another flight on the 26th of December.
Then what did we do? Well, it was obviously too late to take the train back to Soham! All the hotels were full. So we spent the night at the airport. Not the best night of my life... I barely slept. Maybe for ten or fifteen minutes at the most... We left the airport at around 7am. I went to Victoria, then took the tube again (gosh, I hate that tube) to Kings Cross. Where we were told to go to Liverpool Street station if we had to go to Cambridge. Bummer. I took the tube once again and was finally able to take a train to Cambridge. Took one hour and a half to get there, then 30 minutes to get to Ely. But that was not the end of my woes. As the bus to Soham was 45 minutes late. I was literally freezing. When I eventually stepped through the door, at a quarter past twelve (do the maths), I just cried my eyes out for at least 15 minutes. It was a mixture of relief, pain, frustration and sadness. Release of pressure.
I had lunch and then went straight to bed and had some sleep. Now I'm still really tired and my whole body aches like hell. I'm still sad of course and I really hope my plane will take off on Friday. If not, I might have a nervous breakdown... But at least I have somewhere to stay until Friday, unlike some people who've been sleeping at the airport for days now, waiting and hoping to hop on a plane!
