Journey Cambridge – Zurich
On Saturday, I woke up feeling a strange mixture of apprehension, joy, regret, annoyance, tiredness…
After a normal breakfast and a last short chat with my host mother, I took the taxi at 10 o’clock. As I closed the door of my mini-room behind me, it was so clearly “this is the end”, that it almost made me laugh – or, as Olga said “part of me laughed, part of me cried”… not that I’m going to miss this tiny room (in fact, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate my biiiig room at home now!) but you know what I mean… Sitting in the taxi, I looked out of the window as we drove through all these now well-known streets and every corner seemed to have a connection to some or another memory – I was glad the taxi driver didn’t say a word and just left me to my thoughts…!
When I got out of the taxi at the coach stop and the driver helped me with my suitcase, I couldn’t believe my eyes: The only person who was already there waiting for the same bus as me was Jelmer! It was good fun to see him again and it got even better: He was waiting for another Dutch girl who would take the same flight as him from Stansted and when she arrived she was with two other girls who turned out to be heading for Heathrow as well as me; and, as I found out, one of them is also from Zurich and would be on my flight! In Stansted, we said goodbye to Jelmer and his friend and continued our loooong bus ride to Heathrow (almost 3 hours). When we finally arrived in Heathrow, we had to find out that the bus stop was basically as far away from Terminal 4 as possible, and of course Jessica (the Zurich girl) and me had to get there… The two of us and her friend (who’s German and had to go to Terminal2) first got a trolley to put our luggage on it (I had 5 pieces of luggage, can you believe this??), I was so glad, I wasn’t alone, I wouldn’t have managed it with all that stuff! Anyway, the trolley was not of much help, as our way led down stairs and one wasn’t allowed to take trolleys down there – greeeat system! When we had somehow arrived at the bottom of the stairs without breaking our necks, we first needed a coffee. It was about 13.30 and Jessica and I had to catch the plane at 15.45 – so plenty of time… we thought… We had coffee with her friend and around 14.00 started off towards Terminal 4. What we had not known was that we had to take a little train (again, of course, up and down stairs without trolleys, it was a real nightmare!!!) to get there and of course, we had to wait 15 minutes until the next one came (I won’t ever complain about the Gate E at Kloten again – that train is great!)… Once in the Terminal, we had to face the next challenge: checking in… thank God we both had e-tickets and could get our boarding cards at the machines (otherwise, we’d have had to queue for hours!) but this didn’t help when it came to the luggage issue… we cheated as much as we could (holding each others bags to hide that there was one more piece of hand luggage etc…), but I still had to pay 36 £ for excess baggage – for that, I had to go to another desk which again cost us some minutes… - to make it short, we arrived at the Gate at 15.19, one minute before the time indicated on the boarding card! We were soo proud to have survived this marathon (it really was one!) that we didn’t even care anymore that we had not had the time to get something to drink or buy magazines or anything. On the plane, we annoyed everyone because we wanted to swap seats in order to sit next to each other – there were some very stubborn elderly women who would never in their lives give up their seats although it would not have made any difference to sit on the other side of the aisle or whatever – we didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry, the whole thing was so ridiculous! In the end, we could sit next to each other and of course started talking about these annoying people, realising too late that we were now on our way back home and that Swiss German was no longer a safe secret language…! ;)
As always, a flight passes so fast if you’re talking and we really had a lot of fun – it’s so cool to get to know someone who you get along with that well immediately and the fact that we had had more or less the same experiences in Cambridge and lived in the same city at home made it quite special!
We landed perfectly on time and as soon as we left the plane, we realised that we were back in Switzerland: no more queuing, no delays of little stupid trains between terminals, quick passport controls and hardly 3 minutes before we had our suitcases! J
As soon as we stepped out the door into the waiting hall, we could just quickly say goodbye to each other and then we were already more or less surrounded by people who’d been waiting for us! She was, that is… I only saw my grandfather and he showed me that the others were still looking for me on the other side – which gave me the opportunity to creep up on them and surprise them, it was sooo funny! J And it was simply amazing to see them all again, my mother, my grandparents, my “little sister” and Isa – gooosh, guys, I love you!!!
After a normal breakfast and a last short chat with my host mother, I took the taxi at 10 o’clock. As I closed the door of my mini-room behind me, it was so clearly “this is the end”, that it almost made me laugh – or, as Olga said “part of me laughed, part of me cried”… not that I’m going to miss this tiny room (in fact, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate my biiiig room at home now!) but you know what I mean… Sitting in the taxi, I looked out of the window as we drove through all these now well-known streets and every corner seemed to have a connection to some or another memory – I was glad the taxi driver didn’t say a word and just left me to my thoughts…!
When I got out of the taxi at the coach stop and the driver helped me with my suitcase, I couldn’t believe my eyes: The only person who was already there waiting for the same bus as me was Jelmer! It was good fun to see him again and it got even better: He was waiting for another Dutch girl who would take the same flight as him from Stansted and when she arrived she was with two other girls who turned out to be heading for Heathrow as well as me; and, as I found out, one of them is also from Zurich and would be on my flight! In Stansted, we said goodbye to Jelmer and his friend and continued our loooong bus ride to Heathrow (almost 3 hours). When we finally arrived in Heathrow, we had to find out that the bus stop was basically as far away from Terminal 4 as possible, and of course Jessica (the Zurich girl) and me had to get there… The two of us and her friend (who’s German and had to go to Terminal2) first got a trolley to put our luggage on it (I had 5 pieces of luggage, can you believe this??), I was so glad, I wasn’t alone, I wouldn’t have managed it with all that stuff! Anyway, the trolley was not of much help, as our way led down stairs and one wasn’t allowed to take trolleys down there – greeeat system! When we had somehow arrived at the bottom of the stairs without breaking our necks, we first needed a coffee. It was about 13.30 and Jessica and I had to catch the plane at 15.45 – so plenty of time… we thought… We had coffee with her friend and around 14.00 started off towards Terminal 4. What we had not known was that we had to take a little train (again, of course, up and down stairs without trolleys, it was a real nightmare!!!) to get there and of course, we had to wait 15 minutes until the next one came (I won’t ever complain about the Gate E at Kloten again – that train is great!)… Once in the Terminal, we had to face the next challenge: checking in… thank God we both had e-tickets and could get our boarding cards at the machines (otherwise, we’d have had to queue for hours!) but this didn’t help when it came to the luggage issue… we cheated as much as we could (holding each others bags to hide that there was one more piece of hand luggage etc…), but I still had to pay 36 £ for excess baggage – for that, I had to go to another desk which again cost us some minutes… - to make it short, we arrived at the Gate at 15.19, one minute before the time indicated on the boarding card! We were soo proud to have survived this marathon (it really was one!) that we didn’t even care anymore that we had not had the time to get something to drink or buy magazines or anything. On the plane, we annoyed everyone because we wanted to swap seats in order to sit next to each other – there were some very stubborn elderly women who would never in their lives give up their seats although it would not have made any difference to sit on the other side of the aisle or whatever – we didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry, the whole thing was so ridiculous! In the end, we could sit next to each other and of course started talking about these annoying people, realising too late that we were now on our way back home and that Swiss German was no longer a safe secret language…! ;)
As always, a flight passes so fast if you’re talking and we really had a lot of fun – it’s so cool to get to know someone who you get along with that well immediately and the fact that we had had more or less the same experiences in Cambridge and lived in the same city at home made it quite special!
We landed perfectly on time and as soon as we left the plane, we realised that we were back in Switzerland: no more queuing, no delays of little stupid trains between terminals, quick passport controls and hardly 3 minutes before we had our suitcases! J
As soon as we stepped out the door into the waiting hall, we could just quickly say goodbye to each other and then we were already more or less surrounded by people who’d been waiting for us! She was, that is… I only saw my grandfather and he showed me that the others were still looking for me on the other side – which gave me the opportunity to creep up on them and surprise them, it was sooo funny! J And it was simply amazing to see them all again, my mother, my grandparents, my “little sister” and Isa – gooosh, guys, I love you!!!
posted by Sabin at 3:09 PM
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