This part of spring break could
very easily be entitled “The Time We Almost Missed Every Thing.” My three roommates
and I started off early Wednesday morning in a rush for our hour long bus ride
to the airport. As soon as we reached our bus stop, we had the most unfortunate
realization we had very narrowly missed our bus (and also had not allotted ourselves
the time to wait 30 more minutes for its next run). Panicked, we began to weigh
the options of paying upwards of 60£ for a taxi (a terrifying proposition for
four broke college kids) or trying to run 20 minutes with giant loads of
luggage to a tram pick up spot with the hope it would miraculously make it to
the airport on time. Just as I reluctantly began to check my debit card funds,
a miracle appeared before my eyes. A damn bus 35 pulled up fifteen minutes
behind schedule. We were saved! With a sigh of relief we settled into our
seats, anxious the bus would make up for lost travel time.
In our experience, Ryan Air tends
not to leave on the dot, so when we arrived one hour before our flight our
worries were at bay (only shortly). At security, two of us had our bags pushed
into the random check line setting us back a precious 45 minutes. At this point,
all of us were all sweating. We had less than fifteen minutes before our flight
was to depart and we were all too aware that our gate was probably closed. Once
finally through, we grabbed our heavy bags and began to run allllllllllllll the
way to the last terminal of the airport. To my horror no one was at the gate. I
circled in confusion until a Ryan Air employee instructed to me run outside,
the plane was departing. I’m screaming to my roommates that are lagging behind
to book it. I scramble outside and my heart drops. The back stairs are already
wheeled away and I see the flight attendant’s hands in the distance reaching
down to pull the front stars. I yell, and thank the gods she hears me. Annoyed,
she motions me over and I throw myself up the stair panting pretty damn hard.
My roommates make it a few precious moments later. We made it. This was top ten
most relieving moments of my life.
We arrived in Belgium ready to buy
our tickets for the bus to Brussels’ train station to find Marina and Julie’s
cards won’t work from some reason. We spot them the cash and load on the bus we
again almost miss due to the most recently mentioned problem. We load onto our
train and sit back, ready to unwind from our mentally and physically exhausting
day of traveling. After an hour we approach our stop and unknowingly pass it.
It’s now 10:20 PM and dark outside. We have no phones, no Wifi, and no way of
contacting the place we’re staying. The four of us hop off at the next stop
after realizing our mistake. Nowhere is open, no one is around, and nothing is
in English. We desperately hope on the first train going back where we came
from and by the grace of some higher power we make it to our stop after much
freaking out. We made it! On our ten minute walk to the place we’re staying a
black cat crosses our path and we can only laugh. It had a white foot and
pretty ironically represented the almost bad luck we had had all day traveling.
Moral of the story: be punctual.
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| This is the only picture, from the infamous Herentals' train stop, that has any significance. Of course we didn't have time to take any other picture during this anxiety ridden time. |