Airports and waiting in airports and waiting in airports
At different points of my journey home I plan on sleeping at the airport to save money and time.
The first time doing this on this leg was on Friday night at the Vienna airport. Thankfully, it is very easy to get to the airport from Bratislava (you just have to wait under the Novy Most, the new bridge). I got there, went and ate a dinner that I could have spent on a hostel for another night, and along with another passenger on my flight that I met at the cafe, looked for places to sleep. You'd think that a big, bustling airport in Vienna would have a place for folks to just sit down for awhile. Nope. Maybe 6 chairs in total, and all occupied.
So, we just went up to the check-in counters and I brought out my sleeping bag and slept pretty well.
In the morning, all was set, but I noticed that the crowd waiting for the plane seemed a little surly. Once it was announced that the flight was delayed, things went from bad to worse. There was a lot of yelling (not in English) and whatnot and finally, after waiting 3 hours, we were given a free refreshment back at the airport cafe. There I ran into a native Romanian who works for the tourist industry who told me all about Romanian and what I should see. She also told me that the flights on Sky Europe were cancelled to Bucharest yesterday because of the weather.
That explained the angry people and frustration. As the morning went on, the Romanians got more and more feisty, yelling and asking what was going to happen. I inquired about changing my ticket to another location in Romania, as I did not want to loose the money I had on my reservation at a hostel in Brasov. The lady told me that maybe I should go somewhere "nicer" for my holiday, and suggested Barcelona, which only further upset the crowd of Romanians surrounding me. She later recounted her statement, saying that she meant "weather wise," not wanting to further offend the passengers. I responded that no, I didn't want to go to Barcelona, but Romania, which was met by small cheers from the gathered crowd looking for answers.
After waiting 5 hours (and being promised another refreshment that never came) we saw the crew go out and assumed that we would be boarding soon. It was during this time that the Romanian lady acted as a translator to me, telling me all the things that the Romanians were saying the Austrian Sky Europe team. "I just want to go home and eat my food, your McDonald's food and wieners are awful," was one translation. It was quite humorous, because obviously they didn't know what the heck they were saying.
Finally up in the air everything went fine. We arrived around 2pm to Bucharest and when I finally made it through immigration, I noticed that all the bags had been picked up. And mine was not there. Panic struck in. My tb meds were in that bag, I only had a week supply on me. After much walking around the tiny airport I found someone who could "help" me by just saying, "yeah, they will send it on another flight at 9 tonight, although, all those flights yesterday were cancelled."
After mooping around the airport for an hour, I decided to try and at least see a bit of Bucharest. It proved to be too complicated for my little mind, and I did not see or do much of anything for the all of 1 hour total that I was there. I pretty much gave up and blew a ton of money on getting a cab back to the airport (the public transit was a nightmare to the airport, being forced off at some random stop with packs of stray dogs). I never thought that I'd ever miss Kyiv, but that day, I did.
What I did see of Bucharest was huge HUGE Communist style buildings that would have made Stalin proud. Because I speak no Romanian I felt completely unable to negotiate my way around. After living two years speaking baby talk Russian, I at least know that I can understand things like directions, prices, and basics. In Romanian, I know that "da" means yes and "merci" means thank you. That's it.
After getting back to the airport I waited and waited longer and chatted with strangers about various things. An Austrian who gave me a history lesson, a Bulgarian who was interested that an American spoke Russian, a strange woman who told some tale of not knowing where her husband is and wanting to be reconnected with him and he has all her papers, etc (I think that she was Roma, and I'll save my thoughts on that for another time, but any PCV can complete my thoughts on that verbatim).
Finally, something showed up on the board that read "Opetani" or something like that. I asked those around me "what does that mean?" No one spoke English. I then went to my baggage claim acquaintance and asked him. "Oh, that's the other airport. The flight must be going there instead." He then told me that I'd still have to wait because he didn't know if my bag would be on that flight. When 10 pm arrived, I asked if he heard anything, and he said no, that he hadn't and that it could be another hour.
In my expensive trip from the city to the airport I had found a taxi driver who read me the schedule and I knew that there were two trains before midnight to Brasov, so baggage claim dude encouraged me just to go straight to the other airport and he even called a cab for me (after I asked him to do it, several times).
There, I was not allowed behind glass doors and instead had some young security guard call the phone on the wall and let it ring endlessly while he went back to his task of "crowd control" at the arrivals area. Finally, someone answered some line and I was accompanied back to pick up my bag, which was sitting amongst other lost bags.
I then ran out of the area and haggled with taxi drivers, never my favorite pastime. Again, getting an extremely expensive fare, I made it to Gara du Nord, but not before being offered the taxi driver's services go all the way to Brasov (200 Romanian lei, if you are interested). Instead, I opted to take the train (38 Romanian lei) and arrived exhausted at the train station in Brasov at 2am and hired yet another expensive cab to take me to the hostel and woke up another exhausted woman who let me to a room full of mattresses on the floor with people under some blankets. "Don't wake anyone up, they'll kill me!" she repeated. As silently as possible, I took off all my belongings, crawled under the blanket, and counted my lucky stars that I did finally arrive at my intended destination, just a mere 11 hours later than scheduled.
The first time doing this on this leg was on Friday night at the Vienna airport. Thankfully, it is very easy to get to the airport from Bratislava (you just have to wait under the Novy Most, the new bridge). I got there, went and ate a dinner that I could have spent on a hostel for another night, and along with another passenger on my flight that I met at the cafe, looked for places to sleep. You'd think that a big, bustling airport in Vienna would have a place for folks to just sit down for awhile. Nope. Maybe 6 chairs in total, and all occupied.
So, we just went up to the check-in counters and I brought out my sleeping bag and slept pretty well.
In the morning, all was set, but I noticed that the crowd waiting for the plane seemed a little surly. Once it was announced that the flight was delayed, things went from bad to worse. There was a lot of yelling (not in English) and whatnot and finally, after waiting 3 hours, we were given a free refreshment back at the airport cafe. There I ran into a native Romanian who works for the tourist industry who told me all about Romanian and what I should see. She also told me that the flights on Sky Europe were cancelled to Bucharest yesterday because of the weather.
That explained the angry people and frustration. As the morning went on, the Romanians got more and more feisty, yelling and asking what was going to happen. I inquired about changing my ticket to another location in Romania, as I did not want to loose the money I had on my reservation at a hostel in Brasov. The lady told me that maybe I should go somewhere "nicer" for my holiday, and suggested Barcelona, which only further upset the crowd of Romanians surrounding me. She later recounted her statement, saying that she meant "weather wise," not wanting to further offend the passengers. I responded that no, I didn't want to go to Barcelona, but Romania, which was met by small cheers from the gathered crowd looking for answers.
After waiting 5 hours (and being promised another refreshment that never came) we saw the crew go out and assumed that we would be boarding soon. It was during this time that the Romanian lady acted as a translator to me, telling me all the things that the Romanians were saying the Austrian Sky Europe team. "I just want to go home and eat my food, your McDonald's food and wieners are awful," was one translation. It was quite humorous, because obviously they didn't know what the heck they were saying.
Finally up in the air everything went fine. We arrived around 2pm to Bucharest and when I finally made it through immigration, I noticed that all the bags had been picked up. And mine was not there. Panic struck in. My tb meds were in that bag, I only had a week supply on me. After much walking around the tiny airport I found someone who could "help" me by just saying, "yeah, they will send it on another flight at 9 tonight, although, all those flights yesterday were cancelled."
After mooping around the airport for an hour, I decided to try and at least see a bit of Bucharest. It proved to be too complicated for my little mind, and I did not see or do much of anything for the all of 1 hour total that I was there. I pretty much gave up and blew a ton of money on getting a cab back to the airport (the public transit was a nightmare to the airport, being forced off at some random stop with packs of stray dogs). I never thought that I'd ever miss Kyiv, but that day, I did.
What I did see of Bucharest was huge HUGE Communist style buildings that would have made Stalin proud. Because I speak no Romanian I felt completely unable to negotiate my way around. After living two years speaking baby talk Russian, I at least know that I can understand things like directions, prices, and basics. In Romanian, I know that "da" means yes and "merci" means thank you. That's it.
After getting back to the airport I waited and waited longer and chatted with strangers about various things. An Austrian who gave me a history lesson, a Bulgarian who was interested that an American spoke Russian, a strange woman who told some tale of not knowing where her husband is and wanting to be reconnected with him and he has all her papers, etc (I think that she was Roma, and I'll save my thoughts on that for another time, but any PCV can complete my thoughts on that verbatim).
Finally, something showed up on the board that read "Opetani" or something like that. I asked those around me "what does that mean?" No one spoke English. I then went to my baggage claim acquaintance and asked him. "Oh, that's the other airport. The flight must be going there instead." He then told me that I'd still have to wait because he didn't know if my bag would be on that flight. When 10 pm arrived, I asked if he heard anything, and he said no, that he hadn't and that it could be another hour.
In my expensive trip from the city to the airport I had found a taxi driver who read me the schedule and I knew that there were two trains before midnight to Brasov, so baggage claim dude encouraged me just to go straight to the other airport and he even called a cab for me (after I asked him to do it, several times).
There, I was not allowed behind glass doors and instead had some young security guard call the phone on the wall and let it ring endlessly while he went back to his task of "crowd control" at the arrivals area. Finally, someone answered some line and I was accompanied back to pick up my bag, which was sitting amongst other lost bags.
I then ran out of the area and haggled with taxi drivers, never my favorite pastime. Again, getting an extremely expensive fare, I made it to Gara du Nord, but not before being offered the taxi driver's services go all the way to Brasov (200 Romanian lei, if you are interested). Instead, I opted to take the train (38 Romanian lei) and arrived exhausted at the train station in Brasov at 2am and hired yet another expensive cab to take me to the hostel and woke up another exhausted woman who let me to a room full of mattresses on the floor with people under some blankets. "Don't wake anyone up, they'll kill me!" she repeated. As silently as possible, I took off all my belongings, crawled under the blanket, and counted my lucky stars that I did finally arrive at my intended destination, just a mere 11 hours later than scheduled.
posted by Molly | 11:12 AM
2 Comments:
Ugh! The experience sounds awful, Molly. I'm loving reading about your travels.
Forever jealous of your experiences,
Ed
Ed, I assure you that you would not have enjoyed that day. It sucked.
Transylvania has made up for it. I'll write about it when I get a chance! Thanks for reading and responding. It's nice to know that people are interested! :)
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