Please re-read the title of this blog with as MUCH sarcasm as possible.
I know I haven't posted on the blog in MONTHS, I've been busy doing too much stuff to have time to tell you about the stuff I did.
I will try to post updates about my (now completed!) time in Tver' over the Christmas break, but for now I want to tell you about the most frustrating day I've had in my entire life so far: My journey back home.
So the day started at 5am. There was a bus service travelling from a hotel in Tver' to the Moscow airports. The latest bus I could take which would get me to Domodedovo in particularly good time would depart at 6:30am and arrive around 12. My flight was at 5pm, but I thought "Meh, I can entertain myself at the airport, I have books." With this in mind, I got up at 5, tidied up the last few things from my room, and dropped off my sheets, my entrance pass and my keys to the Babushka at the door, who gave me a smile and a "Всё доброго!" (all the best!) which was an especially nice surprise, especially considering I had just woken her up at a rather unreasonable hour.
Arriving at the hotel there was another man waiting for the bus and we had a few minutes until 6:15, the designated meeting time. 6:15 came, no bus. 6:20 came, no bus. 6:25 came, take a guess? That's right, no bus.
So the other guy called a number saying "Hello, there are two of us waiting for the bus to the airport, we were told to meet at the Volga hotel at 6:15...Uh-huh...Uh-huh...Interesting...Right. OK, bye."
Not in the most reassuring tone of voice, neither.
"Apparently the next bus will only be arriving in 2 days."
"...Riiiiiiight..."
Fortunately for me I was way, way early for the flight, so I was thinking "Alright, just get the train and you'll still be there in good time." while the guy called another contact, with uch the same sort of response as previously.
It was as he was calling his mysterious 3rd contact that a car pulled up nearby and the driver yelled "AIRPORT!!", which we took to mean he would take us there. Either we were right, or this guy had nothing better to do, because that's precisely what he did.
We arrived at Domodedovo at around 10, 2 hours earlier than planned, but as I said, I had books.
After posting a quick Facebook status to the effect of "Ha, look at me, already at the airport 7 hours early, what a silly man I am." and went and sat in a rather expensive cafe just so I could charge my phone there (after all, in case of an emergency I'd want a good amount of battery power, right? Bear that in mind.)
So at around 11:30 I got a call from my friend Mark, who was also leaving the same day. He called saying he'd seen my status and suggested I meet up with him and Frances, who would be there in under an hour. Of course time flies far more with friends than pages of the Hunger Games in Russian, so we met up and...Well, we mostly waited and chatted and tried to calm Mark down (one of the world's many nervous fliers.)
Having seen Mark off on his way to his earlier departure, at the check-in we met up with a bunch of the students from Yaroslavl', which was great, since I hadn't seen them since we flew out to Russia all those many moons ago. We caught up a bit and made our way through the whole process.
Some things to note were: My suitcase being slightly over the allowance but being put through anyway (Thank God, I don't think it was physically possible to store anything from it in my backpack), being stood behind 2 people in the queue who apparently had the most difficult to examine passports in the world based on how long it took them to go through, and a security check which involved a body-scan, but during which they DIDN'T confiscate/inquire about the liquids in my washbag, despite not having been plastic-bagged...
When we got to Duty Free (I think around 3 hours before our flight was due) we heard the announcement that the flight was delayed by about an hour.
Not a problem. Inconvenient, yes, but I had left myself 2 1/2 hours between the flight and my train home, so I'd still have time (HA! Retrospect is a bitch sometimes.)
After a ton of waiting, we were finally allowed onto the plane, at which point the pilot made a series of apologies.
"The long-haul plane we were meant to be operating today had a technical fault yesterday, so we have to make do with this short-haul plane and a staff who had to be drafted last minute. We also have ice on the wings, so we'll need another 10 minutes or so to de-ice them for the flight."
Including that I'd have around 1 hour 10 minutes to make my train, no problem, right?
The flight was smooth, and we laughed and gallavanted our way through the hours before arriving at 8:10pm. 20 minutes before my train.
Of course, I had resigned myself to not getting the train I had booked, but it's alright, I'll just get a later one. It'll cost a lot, but hey, I'll be home, right?
Right?
Theeeeeeeeeeeeeen it all started going so much more wrong.
We got off the flight and through passport control quickly enough before making it to baggage belt 3 for Moscow.
5 minutes passed, didn't see my bag.
10 minutes passed, no bag.
20 minutes. Still. No. Bag.
Shit, what if it's got lost? It's not the end of the world, but I'd rather not have the hassle.
I looked round at the others of our group whose bags also hadn't been collected when Helen told me "Did you hear that announcement?"
"No, what was it?"
"Apparently there's a second belt of luggage from Moscow down at 10."
If you're not familiar with Heathrow airport, baggage belt 3 is quite a far way down a long hall from belt 10, but at least my bag was there. I waited around, saying goodbye to some people before finally leaving with Helen, thinking "It's alright, I can still get a train, I'm sure."
I think it's around this time I lost my amazing Russian hat, my gloves and the scarf my sister knitted specially for me. I don't know for sure, all I know is I don't have them now...I think I put them down while waiting for baggage and then failed to pick them up again. Of course, this didn't bother me at the time because I didn't notice.
On the way out, Helen was met by her parents and I was introduced. Helen's parents very kindly invited me to stay at their house and get a train the following day if it was simpler but, because I thought everything would be fine, I declined the offer.
I got onto the Wi-Fi and checked the remaining trains to Leeds. 20:30, my missed train. 22:00, the next train.
And the final train.
The time was 21:30.
So I dashed over to the terminal for the Heathrow Express and typed my way to Paddington. Put in my card.
"Your card has not been accepted, try again."
I tried again.
"Your card has not been accepted, try again."
Why?!
Tried a different machine, everything went fine. Ran down to the express and jumped on. I had to get to King's Cross for the train, and I had around 20 minutes.
I was trying to text my Mum to tell her that I'd have to be very, very lucky to get up to Leeds that night, but try and guess how much success I had. Go on, guess.
If you guess "No goddamn success whatsoever", you'd be absolutely right.
So, with all this going on, I was getting really quite frustrated, worried and overall upset.
It was around the moment that I solved a rather awful logic puzzle relating to my life based on 3 facts:
1) I had 15 minutes to get to King's Cross, buy a ticket and get on my train.
2) I was at the Terminals 1,2,3 stop on the Heathrow Express.
3) It takes 15 minutes to get from the Terminals stop to Paddington.
So yeah, kinda not mathematically possible to get to King's Cross on time, right?
As I got off the Express, swearing under my breath, I realised my hat, gloves and scarf were gone. I dashed back to my seat on the Express but, obviously, no luck.
At THIS point it was becoming a struggle not to shout as many expletives as I could at every person who existed in my vicinity.
But I'm not even close to done yet.
So, after a bit of cursing, pacing and fighting back tears/nervous breakdown, I grabbed my phone and called who I thought was Mum. Thank God I'd charged my phone, or else all hell might've broken loose.
Turns out it was Rach. At least it was a friendly voice, and I told her where I was and she told me to do what I was planning to anyway and call Mum.
So I called the home phone (apparently only JUST in time to catch my Dad just before he left the house armed with sleeping bags, food and plans to get all the way down to Peterborough to collect me) and partially explained the situation.
I only partially explained the situation because, before we could get close to making a plan, the call cut off.
I had no more credit.
Now, this was a problem, because if I had my old O2 sim-card, I could top-up fairly simply and redial.
But I didn't, I had a Russian MTC sim-card, which was great in Russia, because I could call my fellow MTC friends free of charge. Less so in England.
What's even better is that I had no way of topping up my phone without being in Russia.
So the plans had to change a little. I don't know London even slightly (I think there's some important woman here somewhere or something, and I hear there's some big clock, but that's about it), so I placed my hope of finding a hostel or hotel with the taxi drivers outside.
"Do you know any hostels or hotels near here?"
"Er, no, sorry mate..."
*next taxi*
"Do you know any hostels or hotels near here?"
"...No, I don't." (Said with a look as if to say "why the hell would a taxi driver know how to get to places?")
Well f*cknuggets.
Please bear in mind, each problem I encountered led me more towards pure, unfathomable rage at everything, so much so that in my mind I was yelling every single thing I thought, and I was getting very close to being unable to keep the yelling contained. (I'm pretty sure the few people at the station were directly avoiding eye contact with me for fear of being assaulted by the almost-teary-eyed madman that I seemed to be.)
I found a change machine nearby and headed to a pay phone to call my parents again.
We cut past any "Hello, what's the situation?"s and immediately formulated a plan. My half-brother Nick would pick me up at Leytonstone and let me crash at his place for the night. Dad gave me his number, which I carefully put into the notepad on my phone and hung up.
Feeling relieved that there was a plan, I promptly pressed "Отмена" on my phone.
Anyone who knows their Russian and how phones work just cringed right now, I'm sure. For those who don't: Отмена means cancel, so all the details I had just carefully written down were gone forever.
Fortunately for me, I'd got a load of change (which I had internally raged at because there was no space for it in the coin bit of my wallet (what with it still being filled with unused rubles). Something along the lines of "Oh of COURSE you're not going to fit in anywhere are you, you little shits? OH GREAT! YOU'LL JUST SLIP THROUGH THE GAP IN THE NOTES AREA, WON'T YOU?!?")
so I redialed.
"I'm sorry, but the number you have dialled is busy. Please hang up and try again later."
Presumably phoning Nick to confirm everything. So I couldn't call to get Nick's number because they were too busy using Nick's number.
Fortunately I had Rach's number, so I called her instead, got the number and ran for the metro.
"OK, you've got a plan, you've got the metro, everything's going to be fine, right?"
Well yes, almost, but the nightmare day couldn't possibly just let it end like that, it had one last nasty trick up its sleeve.
I got to the ticket machine, angry, tired, hungry and ugly, and jabbed at the screen with as much hatred as is humanly possible to put behind one's forefinger.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
Ok, that's fine. £1, £1, £1, £1, £1.
All the coins came back.
"Sorry, you've paid too much, try again."
So that bit which says "Tickets/Change". Half of that's a lie, then?
Fine, whatever.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
£1, £1, £1, £1, 20p. Falls through.
Try the 20p again. Falls through.
Try again. £4.20 falls out.
"Sorry, you took too long, try again."
When I get really angry, I have a nice little gutteral grunt that I make from my throat, through my mouth, nose and gritted teeth and there has been no day on which I have made that noise quite so much in my life.
Fine.
One more goddamn time.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
£1, £1, £1, £1, 10p, 10p, 10p, 10p, 10p.
Finally I own a little pink piece of paper.
I have never held onto such a little piece of paper so tightly as I did that ticket. There was no way in hell I was letting that ticket go after all of this.
...
So, after about 20 minutes I reached Leytonstone. My brother was at the station, we got Fish and Chips and went straight to his house. We let everyone know that everything was fine.
The day was finally over.
I'd managed to avoid curling up into a shrieking ball of misery in Paddington, which is always a bonus. I also hadn't murdered anyone, which was actually quite an achievement.
And best of all, home was...well, I wasn't there yet, and it was still pretty far away, but I only had to get past the National Rail to get it.
Thank. God.
The following day went smoothly. 4 hours of travel from Nick's house to ours in Skipton. On the way I received a text from MTC telling me how to topup credit using my phone.
Teensy bit late there, guys, but I was feeling happy enough that I just laughed it off.
So, what have we learned today?
If you ever get caught in a situation where things haven't gone to plan, don't tough it out on your own, call people, they'll be able to find other ways to help out. I'm so glad my family was so ready to help me no matter what, and how quick-thinking they were to adapt to the problems.
Getting angry is natural, but don't let it get in the way of thinking clearly. Clear thoughts and ideas are the only way to make rational, sensible and effective solutions.
And finally, don't kick a 24kg suitcase in frustration, it really hurts.
Merry Christmas, everybody, I hope that your days are at least smoother than that one.
