I spent my last morning in Regent’s Park walking through the beautiful flowers by the water. In the evening after class, we had dinner at The Lamb, a pub that Charles Dickens frequented. Then my friends and I played Apples to Apples before I had to catch a bus to the airport. It broke my heart to leave London, but I don’t have any regrets. My time in Europe was perfect, and everything has to end.
My flight left at 7 in the morning, so I spent the night in the Stansted airport, which is about as comfortable as the Stockholm airport, so I didn’t sleep at all. I landed in Munich first and had an hour to make a connecting flight. As a result, I was quite frazzled as I went through customs because I was afraid I would miss my flight, and that combined with sleep deprivation made me a mess. When I got through the line, the customs officer took one look at my face and said in his German accent, “There’s no need to be nervous. Ve are all very nice here.”
Luckily, I made my flight. When I got on the plane, I was greatly looking forward to selecting a movie and making the time pass quickly, but I soon discovered that my seat was in the front of a row across from the flight attendant’s chair. I thought that I had ended up in the only seat without a screen, but I realized that my screen pulled out from the arm of my chair and I had extra legroom and a nice person to sit next to, so everything turned out perfectly. I couldn’t sleep, so I watched 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and two episodes of Game of Thrones. It was a good flight.
Disaster struck during my second hourlong connection in Toronto. Things went smoothly until I went through the connections door without realizing that I had to pick up my luggage and re-check it, so I had to be escorted back out to get my bag, which took 20 minutes. I had to pick up my backpack and pillow again once I got back into the connections area, and I was so sleep deprived after 45 hours without sleep that when one of the employees asked where I had come from, I replied, “Toronto,” which caused one of the employees to reply, “You’re in Toronto,” and the other to exclaim, “You went in a circle!” Then they joked that I could have my backpack back but they were keeping the pillow because “it looked comfy.” Canadians really are great.
With less than a half hour remaining before my flight left, I rushed through the bag check and then almost screamed when I realized that there was a (long) security line before the connections wing. I frantically explained to a guard that my flight left in 20 minutes, and if he hadn’t let me go near the front of the line, I never would have made it. They announced my name over the speakers as part of the final call for the flight as I was still going through the security line, and then I still had to run down several hallways and an escalator. I almost ran right past the gate, but an employee called out, “Windsor?” and saved me. Then I was told that my backpack wouldn’t fit and I had to rifle through it for several minutes in vain, trying to find my glass souvenirs, until they finally let me on with it. But miraculously, I and my luggage eventually made it home in one piece.
Sarah Anderson 