Day 116 - Traveling to Swansea! (With some turbulence)

31.5.12 - Donnerstag, Thursday

Wow, I'm not sure where to even begin. The overall day wasn't too bad. I think I was a little antsy about traveling so I didn't sleep too well the night before. Nevertheless, I made it to class and did everything I needed to and got myself ready to head to the train station so Rachel and I could make our way to the airport. We had everything perfectly planned. We would get there a little more than two hours early so we would relax, all we had to do was catch a train to Mainz and then transfer to a bus which would take us to Frankfurt Hahn. We get to the train station early, also so we can relax some, only to find out our train was 45 minutes delayed. Unfortunately we only had like 20 minutes between the train and bus transfer. Which would make us late. We were getting a little frantic because we've never seen a train this late and we had no idea what our other options were. We divided ourselves and Rachel went to talk to a desk and I went to talk to buy some deodorant because I completely forgot to pack it. I come back and the guy she talked to told her about some bus somewhere that could take us there and we had no clue what he was talking about. We went outside and looked around the bus stops and didn't see anything.

I wasn't sure what to do and figured I would go ask the man at the desk if the bus we missed ran every hour, because that means we would be able to catch the train still and make it there an hour early. He said it ran every two. More panic, naturally. He then mentioned a bus and said it was out the door and to the left. Surprise! There's a whole long distance bus travel station about a block from the train station that we had never seen or heard of before. We get there, there's a sign that says a bus left ten minutes ago and the next one wasn't for two hours. We didn't have any more options at this point. It was either show up 10 minutes before our flight's boarding was going to finish or an hour late. We didn't buy insurance because the flight was only like 30€ and we didn't think it was worth it at the time. Trains are usually punctual...

We eventually got ourselves on the bus that would take us straight to the airport and tried to calm ourselves for the next two hours by just chatting and then listening to music. It was rather stressful, especially when we ran into some traffic and the bus driver was moving the bus a good 20km under the speed limit.

We get to the airport and are literally running moments after we got off the bus. We get inside, try to go through security, I saw the ticket said "passport check" but it looked like the security woman was doing checks, not the right one. He had to get out of line to go half-way through the (small, very small, 2 minutes away) airport to the passport check where the line was super long. We waited, trying not to panic, but, well, we had 2 minutes to get through security. We rushed back, a kind man let us through, and then Rachel's bag was flagged to be searched. Again, small airport, didn't have to wait long. We ran again, and found two other families had only just arrived too. Everyone was very nice at the terminal, and we boarded as the 6th and 5th to last and found seats next to each other. We stowed our bags and sat down, took a deep breath and gave each other a high five.

We arrived in London! Yay! Now next on the itinerary was to travel from the Airport into London. Stanstead Airport > Liverpool > Paddington > Swansea. The itinerary that I had printed off was really odd and confusing in comparison to Deutsche Bahn. Their's was "catch train at 7:30->8:54, next train 8:54->10:20, next train 10:20>2:20 vs. DB: 7:30-8:54, transfer time 40 minutes, etc. I asked a guy behind the desk who explained it to me saying "Everyone takes those things so literally, this is how it works." In an accent, which was awesome. So, instead of waiting an hour and a half, we jumped on the one leaving in 4 minutes and made our way to Liverpool.

We got to Liverpool and decided to look around for some food because our next trip could be an hourish and we were hungry. We walk out of the station to see an iconic red double-decker bus going to Kings Cross Station! The picture makes it a little hard to see, but it's there! We wandered a little further and wandered into some British pub that had a tasty looking menu. We got there, sat down and weren't sure what to do. After a little bit, we went up to the counter and discovered we were supposed to order there. I got a "Traditional British" item called mature cheddar and pickle sandwich. OH MAN, it was soo good. The combination sounded odd, but the two were some of my most favorite things. Rachel got a ham and cheese with English mustard and London Pride beer. Apparently, it wasn't as good as she hoped. It's beer, I'm not surprised. :p

On our way to Paddington, we noticed there was a stop for King's Cross, still unsure about time, we hopped off and ran up to the train station from the tube to find a very different looking entrance than expected to the train station itself and to platforms 9 - 11. Turns out that 9 and 10 are separated by a track... are hopes were dashed and we continued onward.

We arrived at Paddington to catch our 10:45 to Swansea which arrived at 2:20. I was tired, a little cramped, and couldn't sleep. Not to mention, a lady 2 rows away had one of those loud, penetrating voices. When she finally left, two guys walked on with the greatest young adult welsh(?) accents ever. It was awesome listening to them talk. I could have also been extra amused because I had been up for about 19 hours. Who knows.

We got to Swansea and saw Cindy and Andi waiting. Mission accomplished! We made our way back and slept.