neyo

I’m semi-awake now, I feel maybe as though i’ve travelled through the point of tiredness, and now find myself staring aimlessly forward. Why? Well, ok, sit back, this could be a long one!

Vanessa’s flight home, to Düsseldorf was due to depart at 4.45pm, we hit the airport roughly 2.30. We queued for a while, and the queue didn’t appear to be moving very fast, but we waited regardless. Then, somewhat ‘out of the blue’, someone over loud speaker informs us that ‘ALL FLIGHTS TO EIGHTEEN HUNDRED HOURS ARE CANCELLED’. Ok, I thought myself, so now what? After herralding many stewards an attendee’s working for British Airways, a few things, became clearer:

• Literally, there was no way would flights to Germany, be actually departing.
• It wasn’t because of a ‘speculated’ strike, apparently the staff responsible for check-in’s have been re-assigned to help with baggage. Apparently due to increased ‘screening’ (thanks to the recent Terror shenanigans), it takes now 10 times longer to process backage, and thus Heathrow had become effectively a backage facilty.
• We had to rebook the flight, and it was entirely down to us to do so; over the phone. Annoying to realize the phone’s queue was CRAZY and you were left on hold FOREVER…

I ran half-way across the airport to see if there were any coaches headed that way, and apparently now, thankfully in the mean-time, British Airways battled through Vanessa’s English and re-assigned her a ticket; for 9.45am. I came back, and I was actually pleasantly surprised to hear that, I had fears it might be a couple of days, or even longer – THEN what?

So with that said, we had to find a place to crash… In an AIRPORT? Scheisse!?!! I never thought this would happen to me, but hey… Being the GENTLEMAN that I am, I didn’t think twice to ‘babysit’.

The evening itself, was actually quite fun, we took random trips to WHSmith – which was the only place really selling anything healthy. Sure there are countless places in the departure lounge to go eat, but outside in the wild part of the terminal? After spending a fair bit of money, and meeting another German fella, Martin. We realized there was actually ‘FREE FOOD’. Can you believe it? It was like God was shining light between the clouds! I thought that was pretty good of the Airport/Airline to do that, though I guess some might EXPECT it? Besides food and water, they also had these foam mattress type things, blankets & also this foil like stuff which you only see on Casualty! I didn’t really fancy looking like a Sunday Roasted Chicken, so I gave that a miss… So yeah, we grabbed loads of water, cookies and stuff like that… Picked up some cards and even portable Monopoly (haven’t played that in years!!) and the time actually went pretty quick!

A few Cookies later, and I was asleep… When I say asleep, I mean that loosely, I think I got maybe 1-2hrs sleep at the most, but regardless, it was actually kinda cool. Definitely a talking point, moving forward, and something i don’t think i’ll forget a while! Only annoying part is, wow… That’s the weekend over, gone!

You can see pictures from the day (albeit a little weird) by clicking the images at the top of this posting!