Apr 5, 2015

First Week in Europe

I don't really have much time to blog today - I'm about to go to have lunch with my Grandpa and my Aunt - and, well, my boyfriend needed the best part of an hour to clean up the desk so I could set my netbook on it to work. I won't go into that right now, but my penpals will sure hear about the whole thing. (Yes, my relationship with my penpals works in a kind of "exclusive" way where they pretty much got to know just about everything and anything about me and my life. They are, after all, my penpals ^_^).

My trip started... well, it started nice but it has had a couple of bumps on the way. The flight to Panama and then from Panama to Amsterdam went without any trouble. I actually made friends on the plane to Amsterdam with a couple of adorable brothers, José and Ernesto, who are also Costa Rican, study or are already electronical engineers and were sooooo adorable! We spent the entire trip gaping about animé, talking of Dragon Ball Z and then sharing tids and bits about life and what we thought of this and that. Really, an adorable, amazing pair of brothers. Then, as all went well, suddenly in Amsterdam my flight to Budapest was cancelled. As in CANCELLED. I didn't worry, thought they would surely put me on another plane and get home, maybe two hours later. No. Shiphol was taken over by an absolute chaos, lack of proper communication, no reasons as to why all flights were being cancelled, no indications as to what would happen with us, and I ended up tagging with a group of Hungarians and making a 6 hour queue. Yes, a 6 hour queue. It wasn't funny.

It had a nice part, which was that suddenly our tiny little group started behaving like a family. We shared food, looked out for each other, guarded our luggage, listened to each other, helped each other find out what was going on and so on. At one point - after standing in line for two hours - there was a rumor that we could go to another queue in the Baggage Hall so we would be issued tickets for the next day as well as cupons for a hotel and food and whatnot. I wasn't particularly happy about that because I was traveling with no clothes. The point of my travel was to settle some accounts, pay my aunt my tax money (which she had paid out for me) and fork up clothes and books of mine to bring back to Costa Rica. So why would I bring anything other than the clothes on my back (which were very thin), my phone, my netbook and my filofax? Half our group decided to go for the other queue and the other half stayed. It was good we did. Around 5 hours and 30 minutes into the line, we learned that there was a plane flying to Budapest at 20:55 (we were supposed to be on the plane of 14:20). We started asking questions about whether there was any chance we could get on that plane. The first person told us no, but then we caught a second person who looked at us and asked us:

"Are you all together?"

We didn't even bat an eye when we replied "Yes, we are." She was gone and did her best. Soon she was back and said that the flight was completely booked, but it seemed that there were ten no-show passengers, so she would do her best. Five minutes before the take off of the flight we've got our tickets. Thanks Hyne the gate was close to where we were, so we ran and got on the flight. We tried to help other people as well, but had to run before we've got to know whether they've got on the flight or not. They did.

The days then, on Budapest, were hectic, to say the least. Honestly, I haven't been able to rest just yet. My boyfriend wanted also to get a night at Vienna, so after a day in Hungary, we went to Vienna, and did our rounds. All kind of fast, no time to call up on friends, visit or anything. Not to mention, that there was snow and rain and cold.

Next week I'm flying to Bruxelles for three days to meet a penpal. Maybe then I'll be able to rest a little. We shall see about that.

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