Lieber später als gar nicht.

Kristen, Rachel and I
 (note: 32 hours of no sleep = extreme bags under eyes)

I forget how much flying sucks. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time that I have ever arrived somewhere on time and with no problems. There is always some kind of problem. As of last Tuesday, well it was supposed to be Monday; I flew back to Minnesota as some of you know. My flight to London was quite the disaster to begin with when I took a short snooze before takeoff, only to realize that when I woke up we still hadn’t moved because our flight was delayed an hour. Awesome. Kristen and Rachel were meeting me in Chicago for my four hour layover, so that cut a big chunk of time out. Then on the flight, I was surrounded by all these long haired men that I think drank about 10 mini bottles of wine. One that was two seats away got drunk and was snoring like a moose and the guy behind me had his foot on my armrest. As you know I hate feet. I almost vomited. And the girl next to me had horrible breath. She told me she was running late, must mean she skipped the toothbrush. Never good. The flight seemed like an eternity though and I couldn’t sleep for the life of me. I literally just watched the time tick. I wrote ten pages in my journal, practiced my German and played every game on my IPod. I had a window seat, which is good for leaning your head against, but the problem was I couldn’t sleep. Instead I had to pee and the window seat is not conducive to that when the people next to you are sleeping. Regardless finally we arrive an hour late, but then I had to go through customs. Which to my luck I went in the visitors line instead of the US citizens line. I contemplated showing my German passport, but I figured that it might take longer.

After I got through customs, I got to see Kristen and Rachel! It was awesome getting to see them, but since there weren’t any restaurants outside the security checkpoints, we decided to just sit outside and eat German chocolate. After a couple hours, I decided I should probably get going and go through security. I said my goodbyes and made my way to my gate. Only to find out that my flight was delayed until midnight instead of 10:30 pm. So annoying, which meant I wouldn’t get in until like 1:30am. I had my American cell phone on, so I called my ride and made them aware of the bad news. Then I went and found some food since the whole day I had been eating the chocolate that I had brought for gifts because that is all I had and at the airports I didn’t have any of the correct currencies. What I found was a 5 dollar bag of spicy Chex mix or something or other, which was a generic brand and clearly you should never get generic brand because it was horrible. Instead I ate more chocolate. So then comes the worst part of the night. I was talking on the phone at the top of the stairs of my gate. My flight was now pushed back to 12:30 because the airplane wasn’t going to arrive on time. I figured we were boarding at 12:30 for some reason and I was chatting away, checking the gate randomly, and watching for people to come up the stairs off the plane since I could see it from where I was. At 12:31am, I go downstairs and there is nobody there. They had boarded so I ask one man what’s going on and he says the gate had closed early. It was the last one of the night and he told me the first flight out was at 7:30am, but it was full so I could be standby. He said I could get on the 9am one. At this point I have been awake for 32 hours and it took every bit of strength to not start crying and screaming at this man. After a lost battle of begging him to open the gate since the plane was still there, I decided to go find some internet to pass time. This was great until my computer, phone, and iPod all died. I decided to try to sleep a bit, which was hopeless because I was freezing and all I had to cover up was a thin scarf. I am not use to the air conditioning and so my nose started running, etc. All in all it was a nightmare. The second good thing that happened besides seeing Kristen, Kath, and Rachel, was that there was one spot left on the 7am flight and so after being awake for 38 hours, I finally made it home. Memo to self, never leave your gate.