My Experience with Ryanair

6/15/12

Ryanair. F*ck this airline. Before I vent at the ridiculousness of this poor excuse of an entity to call itself an airline, let me recap the rest of my night.

Went and had dinner at a pub with a fellow named Andy. He reminded me of a research analyst I worked with last summer. Andy had just arrived at the hostel from Florida with nothing but the clothes on his back and backpack one would take to school. He's here for an entire month. We both ordered chicken pie at the recommendation of the Canadian bartender who was trying to pass as an Aussie/Brit. Her accent was terrible. The food was awesome but pricey.

Afterwards I was able to get in touch with Haley Bruce and met her and some other UGA study abroad folk at a pub. One of the girls, I think Sarah, had a former tennis instructor visiting her. I think his named was Sven. He was from Mother Russia and worked as a head hunter in Bratislava, but for all I know he could have been in real deep with the Russian mob. He told me to send him my CV in 5 years and he would get me good job that pays lots of money. Mad respect to the Russians.

So I got up this morning at 5:30 to catch my flight out of Stansted to Barcelona at 8:35. Three hours seemed like a decent amount of time to hop on a train, get through security, and board the plane in time. I was quick to find out that I was dead wrong.

The train from Liverpool Street Station to the airport was supposed to take 45 minutes. One hour later I was sprinting to check my bag and get through security.

I walk up to check my bag and am told that I had not paid to check my bag and I would need to shell out 100 quid or leave it at the airport. Oh, and I need to make up my mind in the next 5 minutes. Damn, I thought, this airline really knows how to kick you in the crotch and steal your wallet. Little did I know it would get much worse.

So with my bag checked, I went through the security. Much to my chagrin however, my carry on had to be physically searched for a reason unknown to me. My bag was probably number 8 of bags to be examined and Mr. British TSA was taking his sweet ass time drinking tea and eating crumpets. I asked the head security official if there was anything he could do since I was in a hurry.

"Well, it looks like you didn't allocate enough time for yourself to get to your flight in time, now did ya?", he responded. Cheeky British asshole. I put this blame solely on the unions and labor laws in this country.

Turns out I had not placed a bottle of hand sanitizer inside a plastic bag. By now it's 8:10 and the doors to my flight close at 8:05. Luckily, promptness is not Ryanair's forte and the plane did not even board until 8:40.

This is the only airline I have ever seen where ad space is sold on the overhead bins. You have to pay for everything. Nothing is complimentary, except the seats, that do not recline.

So it turns out that when someone fails flight school the first time around, they are most likely going to receive a job offer from Ryanair once they pass on round two, possibly three. When we touched down the whole plane had one of those "oh" moments and a couple babies started crying. The pilot literally landed sideways and over corrected on his mistake. Unbelievable.

Even though we left late, our flight arrived on time. Ryanair must give a lot of leeway on their ETAs. The plan was that when Ross' flight got in one hour later than mine, we would train it to our hostel. What I thought was an arrival time of 1 ended up being his departure time, from Rome. Whelp, time to get to know the Barcelona airport.

London

06/13

Finally arrived in London this morning still feeling a tad groggy from the flight. The size and magnitude of the city is hard to grasp when the jetlag and sleeping pills haven´t worn off. Nonetheless, I was able to successfully navigate my way from the airport to my hostel.

St. Christopher´s Inn is in a clutch location. Located just south of the Thames I´m about a 10 minute walk from the Tower of London. I am sharing a room with seven other people one of which is a girl from Virginia named Danielle. After checking in we decided to grab some lunch at a pub. So we walked towards the area of town I´m dubbing the business district and found a place to eat. We were near the Bank of England and the stock exchange. I found it quite odd that the patrons of the pub were all wearing business suits and pounding beers at 3 pm. I guess this is Europe.

After lunch we tried to get in a quick tour of the Tower of London, but didn´t. We arrived too late and I was informed that it probably wasn´t worth it to go through with such little time. So instead I decided to make my way over tot he British Museum. Somewhere along the way I realized that the key to my locker was missing. Great. Then I got lost on my way to the museum and turned back towards the hostel. So much for my first day of sight seeing. Tomorrow will be better considering it´s my only full day left in London before moving on to Barca. The good news is that the hostel had a pair of bolt cutters on hand. Jet lag is setting in, time to take a nap before rebounding tonight.

06/14

Yester evening I went to dinner with one of the guests sharing the hostel room. An aussie girl from Sydney, named Colette. We headed to Picadilly Circus/Soho area in an attempt to find some authentic British food, we settled on pizza. Restaurants can be quite descriptive in their attempt to sell you food items. What we thought was going to be an awesome italian pizza turned out to be cheese ´zza with cut up hotdog on top. So much for authentic cuisine.

For some reason or another the beers on tap here taste awful. The beer is served warm and to be quite honest the "good" beer I paid for tasted like nothing but skunked natty light. Once I explained the meaning of skunked to Colette she concurred. By the time we bailed and got back to our hostel, it was about midnight and the jetlag was really hitting me hard. I climbed into my bunk exhausted and sore expecting to pass out before my head hit the pillow.

That however would not be the case. Between the traffic noise and A&E´s filming of Axe Men International in my dorm room I was kept wide awake. The german girl below me, the spanish dude, and a guy I´m pretty sure was dutch were sawing some serious logs. I don´t want to generalize, but german women snore. Loudly. Good thing I brough along some ear plugs

The sun had risen and it was time to get moving. I hopped out of bed inten on getting a full day of sightseeing in. I pulled out my watch and checked th time. Five past five in the morning. Okay I´m going back to sleep again.

7 am. Time to get moving, again. After eating breakfast I set out towards Big Ben. I decided to wake early so I wouldn´t have to wait in as many museum lines. What I wasn´t aware of is that museums don´t open until ten because as one local put it, "Us British stay out too bloody late at night".

So to kill the time I snap a couple of photos in front of Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. For being a house of God the place charges an awful lot to see the inside, so I passed. Afterwards i walked by Scotland Yard, or at least what I thought was their HQ. With about 2 more hours to kill I wandered through St. James Park and tried to get in a couple snapshots of the Queen´s casa. Unfortunately the blokes were still taking down scaffolding from the Jubilee and had the whole joint sealed off. Leave it to the Queen to pull some kind of stunt like that.

So the trip to Buckingham was shortlived and left plenty of time to check out Hyde Park. That place is cool. Walking from the south end of the pond or east, whatever directio, I saw the Princess Diana memorial fountain, Peter Pan, Italian Gardens, and the Albert Memorial.

It was an overall swell morning. With the slight paranoid notion that one of my foreign roommates was going to rob me blind while I was away, I skipped on over to the Natural History Museum. My Dad once told me he spent an entire day in one wing alone and didn´t see everything. Intent to prove him wrong I went on a mad dash through the place attempting to view everything. The place is massive though. There was so much stuff in there that it would take this whole journal just to explain the two hours I spent in there. There must have been four or five different elementary schools on field trips there today and of course they had the dinosaur wing packed to capacity. I don´t blame them though, dinosaurs are awesome. My favorite part of the place was the animals exhibit. There were stuffed birds of every species in there. I lol´d when I heard a school boy pronounce toucan like "two-cun". Brits and their ridiculous accents.

After the nat history museum I rode the tube over to the British Museum. My favorite exhibits there definitely had to be the egyptian and Parts of the Parthenon. Seeing the Rosetta Stone up close and personal was tight. So tight that I bought a Rosetta Stone paperweight. The friezes of the Parthenon were awesome as well. Most of the statues had some kind of damage done to them in the form of castration or amputation. Looters have a perverted mentality.I´m definitely going to have to come back to London for another day before I go home and check otu more sites.

Finally got a cell phone. That was a separate ordeal in and of itself but it is settled now. Also, Twix McFlurrys are the bomb. I could definitely sink my teeth into another one of those.

Got another early day tomorrow. Flying to Barcelona to meet up with Ross. Can´t wait, London has been rad but it´s on to the next one.

En route.

06/12

I´m not super keen on this whole journaling thing, but I figured there´s no better way to document what I´m about to experience. Europe. For 35 days. This is going to be dope as hell. So I´m sitting in ABIA waiting for my plane to arrive and carry me across the pond to Londontown. Right now I´ve got that song ¨London Calling¨ by The Clash stuck in my head. Man I really should have loaded that onto my ipod. Instead I´m nodding my head to Kendrick Lamar´s ¨The Recipe¨. Not my first choice but the beats are setting me into a good mood.

Thanks to Nick Martin I was able to pack my clothes for the next month into his Osprey backapck. Last night was pretty stressful trying to decide and ultimately cram enough clothing into the back for the trip. Hopefully the hostels I´m staying at hae washer and dryers to use or else I´m going to be smelling like a rain soaked wookie after a weekend at wakarusa. I should be straight though.

Journaling is great. The last time I have written in depth was my first semester of college. It´s quite pathetic really, that in the ensuing three and a half years I wrote less than in one semester. Definitely worth paying the out of state tuition for. Okay, sorry for the narcissistic tone thus far. I honestly want to be as optimistic as possible on this trip. I´m pretty hungry, maybe that´ll cheer me up.

I have landed in a strange and dilapidated city. The birthplace of a vibrant genre of music forever immortalizing itself as one of the preeminent music towns. A city once considered a titan of industry but only to fall victim to bust, drug epidemic, and government bailout. Of course, I am talking about Detroit. My flight from Austin arrived late into the city and I had to book it to the gate where my plane to London was parked. After grabbing a quick bite to eat and checking the score of Game 1, I made it to my gate on time.

After settling down into my aisle seat next to the lovely couple from Devon, England who are returning from their trip to Disneyworld. They complained about weather in Florida being in the thirties (celsius). They should come to Texas and spend a week working outside with my father and then talk to me about warm temperatures.

So everyone is packed onto the plane like a bunch of sardines and we´re taxiing to the runway when the pilot comes on the mic and says too many red lights are flashing on his control panel. WTF does that mean? One flashing light is one too many when it comes to airplane control panels. As this news is broken to my fellow passengers and I, the old man in the seat across the aisle from me does the unthinkable and breaks wind. Great. Really freaking great. Of course his British wife is like, "Oh Harry, or Tom, or Chester". Whatever his name may be, that ain´t gonna fly on this flight Sir Fred the Flatulent.

I don´t personally care to stay awake for the result of our current predicament. Time to start a complimentary movie and conk myself out. This flight was brought to you courtesy of temazapem. Knocking people out and doing a damn good job of it too. Next stop, London Heathrow.

Better hold off on that sedative, we´re heading back to the gate. Maybe we´ll deplane and I can catch the second half of Game 1. But if I know airlines as well as I think I do, we will sit for another 30-45.

Good news! Our pilot pulled through in the clutch and fixed the problem with some gum and a stick of celery. Alright, now it´s time to dose off into la la land. But not before I receive my complimentary dinner.

My First Blog

Four days from now I will be catching the red eye flight from Austin to London and am hoping to God there are some bad ass movies playing during the flight or at least free booze. Long distance flights and me don't really mix well. I either become so excited at the prospect of venturing into a new country that I'm too giddy to get any rest or get screwed over with a middle seat. And I'm not talking about middle as in there's the window seat on one side and the aisle seat on the other, but when middle seats are on either side of the seat you're sitting in. Of course once you get stuck in that seat you gotta take a piss and offer an apology to every person you climb over just to head to the john. I digress. Bad seating situations aside, I'm gonna have to swallow a bottle of Melotonin or down a couple scotches before I can rest easy and not be too jet lagged when the plane touches down at Heathrow.

The past 2 weeks leading up to now have been quite hectic. Something regarding my trip has either changed or I have to keep shelling out cash to pay for train tickets or hostels. In case you haven't heard my response to, "So, what are you up to this summer?". I'm backpacking around Europe for 35 days, before starting work in August. One of my good friends from UGA was supposed to be coming along with me on this adventure, but some stuff came up in his life and he's not going anymore. It really sucks he can't go, but I've gotten over it and now this trip is all about me (let the hedonism begin). I'm gonna do Europe on my own terms and make it a memorable experience. I've liquidated all of my savings in stocks to fund this trip. It was nice owning stock in AMD and seeing the value of my holdings triple. On the other hand, the holdings in a certain computer company founded by a certain Austinite decreased roughly by half (or possibly more, but that may play to my advantage once tax season rolls around). 

With a fat sack of cash in one hand and Eurail Global Pass in the other I'm gonna try and visit as many countries as possible in my 35 day time span. A rough draft of an itinerary exists in some way, shape, or form. I start out in London. Then fly to Barcelona to meet up with Ross Cooper for 3 days. Afterwards I take a train to Madrid and meet up with my brother Brooks. Spend some time there, then take a train to Valencia. Check out Valencia for a day, then fly to Marseilles. Once in Marseilles, we're taking a train to Cannes and staying with Alexis. After an extended stay in Cannes I'm going to Genoa, Rome, Bern, Interlaken, Vienna, Prague, and arrive in Berlin on July 5th for....wait for it.......PEARL JAM. After Berlin, the rest of the trip is pretty much open for interpretation. Right now I'm leaning towards going to Belgium and The Netherlands before finally arriving back in London and flying home to Tejas. 

So that's about it. Am I scared/worried/nervous about traveling by myself? Hell naw, this is gonna be fun. Before I sign off, I'd like to dedicate this blog all my friends who dove head first into the working world after graduation. May you live vicariously through me for the next 35 days. Just kidding. Enjoy and God Bless.

-Vance Hatfield