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Monday, January 07, 2008

The longest day

My flight from Bucharest to Liverpool with a company named WizzAir was scheduled for 3rd of January, 19:40. Exactly the night before this, the weather decided to go mad in Romania and after strong blizzards that lasted 12 hours, the next morning on 3rd you could not tell the cars apart from the snow. Everything was covered with a meter high coat of snow. The roads, the airports, the transportation and the city was paralysed. I call WizzAir to ask about the flight but they had no idea what to tell me, so asked me to call back around 2pm, same day.


It is meaningless to say that I had packed all my bags one day before. I really enjoyed the snow, though, it's been a while since I've seen such a perfect winter... in which you can feel it's freezing cold, but you have so much snow around you that you completely forget all about your cold hands, face or feet.

My first surprise came with the 2pm call, when I found out that not only my flight was cancelled, but it was not going to be rescheduled ever. Why? Why? Why? I still have no idea, the lady on the phone told me I could book a new place on 5th or 8th, on the same route, or on 4th to London. I asked her to book me a place for 5th, but after waiting for another 5 minutes on the phone, she told me there were no longer and places available. I had to choose the route to London on 4th, as I have my examination period now and had to study.

Therefore, my new flight was on 4th, at 6:05 am. I woke up at 2:45 and left home at 3:15, as you can imagine the city was still trapped in the snow and had no idea how long it will take me to get to the airport. When I got to the airport, at around 4am, I cannot describe the chaos that was there. People had been waiting for different flights for dozens of hours, there were children crying, only one lousy buffet open with some coffee and juice and enormous prices, of course. Horrifying.

I had to lie there, trying to get a place to sit for about 3 hours. In the meantime, the board that was supposed to display the departures and the arrivals was closed from 12 am, as probably the workers went home and did not care a bit about the hundreds of people that were stuck in that horrible airport. The display did turn on at around 6 am and a lady announced that our plane was, in fact, on another airport. But that is it... nothing else. We stood still for one more hour. One other incredibly expensive little store opened. They had no still water, no cigarettes, but people were buying like crazy something to eat... junk food... don't expect any sandwiches or anything.

I began to worry and started enquiring about tickets to any plane that was leaving from that dump hole. The WizzAir office opened and the poor girl had to answer all the questions from people. She had no idea what was going on, she kept calling and calling and calling, but nobody would answer the head office. People started screaming, cursing her and even spitting on her. Eventually, they announced the check-in opening for our flight, just to get us out of there, as the spirits were heating. The people went crazy, barging on the counters, cursing each other. They were tired, hungry and saw a hope to get out. The hilarious thing was they sort of checked us in... just to give the illusion of actually thinking of us, did not take our bags, as we were moving to the other airport, where the air plane was announced to be.

When we arrived there, at about 8-9 am... the time becomes liquid from now on.... there was nobody to tell us what to do. At the airport information desk, they did not know anything, except the fact that this WizzAir plane was there for 2 days. The flight was not announced on any board. So.... we sat down and waited... and waited.... and waited. At some point people began to shout "we want a plane", "we want a plane" and "thieves", "thieves".... Loud.. violent.... I hadn't eaten anything since 2:45, I did not want any drink, any food... I was really on auto-pilot, otherwise I would go crazy.

I eventually heard the same thing happened the day before. They took people from one airport to another and after some considerable hours they put them in the plane... after another 4 hours of sitting in the plane.. the police came and took them out by force.

It was the same situation all over again. I found another flight to London from Lufthansa and decided to buy tickets there, if nothing changed until 4pm.

The press came... all the big TV News Channels were there... people were getting more and more angry.. there was a spokesman from the airport, trying to explain that WizzAir did not pay their fees and therefore could not fly. Nobody would take responsibility for anything. There was not even a single person from WizzAir to come and say anything... anything at all....

They announced the flight leaving at 12... when it was already 11:30 and there was no check-in opening any time soon. Rescheduled for 3pm, the check-in opened at 1:30pm. We left the ground at 5 pm, arriving in London-Luton at 6:45, local time.


Me and my boyfriend still had to go from London to Leeds, which is the entire country, from south to north. After all the formalities, with the bags and the customs... it was 7:30 and we could not find any bus directly to Leeds from Luton. We had to go to London first. Out of the question. The train tickets office was closed and we had no idea where the main train station was in the city of Luton... so we decided to rent a car... Neither of us had ever driven of the left side of the road, with a right-hand side wheel.

It was poring with rain, we got a little lost until finally entering the M1 autobahn that connects the S to the N. I drove for about 300km on a perfect highway. But I was tired, having to adapt to so many new things at a single time. I eventually stepped off and let my boyfriend drive through the city, when we arrived to Leeds, as I could no longer see anything or concentrate my skills.

We arrived home at 12:30 and went immediately to sleep. It took us 2 days to recover after this journey and even last night we had nightmares about getting stuck in some sort of airport. Both of us laughed in the morning about it.

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