Listening to: Curse of the Dragonflies - Leon's Revenge
After returning and single handedly causing chaos across 4 countries... here is the recipe:
Step 1. Book a late flight with Flybe online.
Step 2. Have no printer but take down the confirmation number only.
Step 3. Get to check-in, cause chaos as you're not on the system.
Step 4. Leave Check-in 30 minutes later, on the system.
Step 5. Board plane.
Step 6. Make sure baggage are not told about the 'extra passenger' who paid but booked late enough to not be on the system.
Step 7. Make the plane 72 minutes late to depart due to an 'extra' bag (which obviously must be a bomb) - resulting in frog marching all passengers off to personally claim all luggage.
Step 8. Take off.
Step 9. Get back to the UK.
Step 10 and beyond: Cause delay on the plane that after the UK should be going to Bergerac; when it gets there late have the return cancelled as well as the following day due to flight slots, plus delaying 2 other flights due to late departure. causing problems in Austria, UK, France and a German flight.
Flybe cost me £70; I cost them £Thousands.
Priceless. Serves you right for putting a crying baby near me.
****
Madrid on the 14th.
Listening to : stonesour - xxyz rd
So, as i'm sitting in Saltzburg airport, waiting for a plane I, by rights, shouldn't be on, a coffee and ipod for company, and wondered about the transient nature of airports.
For some, just a means of business and travel, some - escape, some - just a job. To me, I always have a trance of sadness in them. Waiting - waiting for what? Just for the gate to come up. Some people are embracing, saying goodbye, others are hissing in impatience over delayed flights, for me, the amount of airports i've been in, it's transient nature is almost commonplace. The coffee is overpriced, the uniformed staff occasionally seen dashing about in a state of panic wear the same expressions, and the souvenirs are all brought in aimed at non-budget fliers.
Although, sometimes, the unexpected takes place. Like recieving a text from someone you never thought to hear from again - which makes you forget (or perhaps emphasizes?!) where you are for a split second. Or the person next to you as you arrive back who obviously isn't expecting someone to be there and drops their bag and makes a running leap. Or the guy that gets hauled off by security for refusing to stop smoking in the departure lounge.
Strolling out of the school grounds to snatch a quick 'Similar' Cigarette (the smokeless version of something pretending to be one, a popular choice of Ryaniar bucket-and-spade travellers) - in other words, a teacher requiring an excuse to get off the grounds, have a fake smoke (due to half-inclination quitting urges which will most likely turn to dust once i get to madrid) and a need to escape for 5 minutes from one class swinging off the ceilings and having chalk wars to another class of seemingly automatons with no voice capabilities installed, the small of fermenting pig excrement is enough to turn one's stomach. It hits you hard in those moments.
The gymnasium i'm at this week is typically Austrian; crisp white buildings with a bizarre range of bright, block colours in the windows obviously designed by an architect on magic mushrooms. This one is science specific- in other words, the students have the enthusiasm for languages of an empty packet of crisps and a half-eaten chocolate bar between them on a good day. Getting blood from a rock is an understatement.
Vocklabruck itself is a back-end-of-nowhere town where i and a collegue appeared to be a fascinating sideshow; in the same way if you walk around Baku people dash to have a gawk at these odd people speaking another tongue.
There's a rather scary caretaker whom i nicknamed 'Filch' due to his ability to leap out of dark corners, scream and vanish again, potentially to find a cane. His beady eyes are cushioned by rolls of fat and excess amounts of wiry hair, who had a habit of barging into classes, bellowing at the students and running away again. All he was missing was the cat.
Just a brief note on my encounter with a Wasp of a till-slave-lady in Vocklabruck, Austria at the Penny Market (the equivelent of Morrison's with an addition of rather interesting cannabis-laced iced teas on sale). After a seemingly innocent purchase of orange juice and cereal bars to eat in the dead of night at my mosquito-ridden hotel, I requested a bag to carry said purchases within on the trudge home.
I recieved a look of intense disgust, with a thick, ring-laden pudgy sausage finger stabbing first in my face, then with a gutteral spitting curse in German it revolved to some dusty bags concealed within the gloom under the till.
The sheer snarl I recieved made me wonder as if by not understanding her instructions I had unwittingly contaminated the shop by my mere presence and inability to speak a language which is by no means widely used around the world.
