This day was the day we would go to London. First, however, we had to spend our leftover coins. We walked over to the marketplace in groups. Over there, we split up further. One group decided to go into the market building first, while we decided to go down the street. I decided to look for seven or eight key-rings for my friends that were around 250HUF or less (I had less than 2000 Forint on me). I found some, but was then hurried along because our group decided to go and explore the market building in the remaining time we had. I followed along because I figured that I would be able to find key-rings the same price or cheaper in the building, but unfortunately this turned out not to be the case.
Upon returning, we had to do some final touch-ups to our packing before putting our suitcases out in the hallways. The chaperones then came up and checked our rooms before giving us the all-clear. We were lucky to be the first group- by the time the second group came back from the marketplace, they found that their cards had stopped working because it was past check-out time and they had to get their cards reprogrammed. We then had to load the buses before heading for the park. The bus driver was nice enough to open the bus for me to put my clarinet down so that I didn’t have to lug it around.
At the park, I learned how to make a daisy chain. After that, we climbed up the man-made hill-shaped thing (not sure what to call it) in the middle of the park to watch the mini game of soccer going on below us: two little Hungarian boys against two of the boys from our tour group. At the end of the game, the two little Hungarian boys took their shirts off, which got a few comments from some of us.
After that, we were yelled at by some Hungarian man. We don’t know what he was saying, but it was probably something along the lines of “get down from that hill,” so we got down from the hill. Angus played something or other on the ukulele and Amy updated her travel food diary.
Finally, we were taken to Budapest International Airport. It took what seemed like forever to check in all 166 of us. Security had two entrances, so we were sent in different directions so as to avoid overcrowding one of the entrances. By now, I had become accustomed to the security drill, so everything was all right.
We emerged into the duty free area. One of the shops had a promotion in which you could play roulette for free and win sample chocolates. Some people decided to play. I made a joke about what Mrs F’s reaction would be if she saw. She did see, when she came up through security after having finished directing everyone through different entrances. “You know what we always say about gambling,” she said. “You never win!” We told her it was free, and then she said, “Well, that’s alright then,” and walked on.
We had a look at perfumes, and then we went to the loo before meeting the rest of the tour group again, half an hour before our flight which was generally the time to board. We all headed in the direction of our gate before realising that we had all overlooked one thing that would hold us up: passport control.
It took us a while to proceed through passport control. Some people got to go through quickly because they had UK passports. I was the last person to go through. By the time I had joined the end of the queue for the boarding gate, there were only a few minutes to go until the scheduled time for our flight.
There is something inexplicably hilarious about 166 people delaying a plane all at once. Especially when the plane in question only has 168 seats.
We had to watch the safety video twice: in Hungarian and in English. Some people commented on how weird the people on the video looked (on Youtube, someone wrote “The Sims fly with Malev!”). The creepiest person was the stewardess who was pointing out the sign on the toilet door saying “no smoking” because the expression in her eyes was… odd, to say the least. And we had to see her again when the video replayed in English.
Safety videos are hilarious. I love how they tell you all the things that could go wrong and then at the end say, “Enjoy your flight!”
We were stuck on the tarmac for a while. I surmised that this was because we had probably missed our original take-off slot and had to wait for another one. In any case, it seemed to take forever.
The flight passed fairly uneventfully. When the flight attendant came around, I was practically deafened by the engines so Dianna, who had the aisle seat, had to relay what the flight attendant was saying to me, who unfortunately had the window seat.
As soon as we landed, I heard someone saying, “Wait, why is JJ panicking?” As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, we knew: JJ made a dash for the toilet. Meanwhile I was sitting in odd positions because I was waiting for an opportunity to use a normal toilet. (And, just like when I went to Sydney, the airport toilets were worse: in Sydney they were louder, and in London Gatwick they weren’t as clean.)
I followed the crowd to pass through security and get my luggage. Once we had collected our luggage, Mr Hey came around, saying, “Open the blue door and see what’s inside!” Someone said something along the lines of, “What is this, Play School?” Mr Hey just smiled.
I went beneath the blue sign (the blue door was staff-only) and found myself in the foyer of the terminal. We were all crammed against roughly one third of the open space. Eventually we were allowed to move directly outside where we formed bus groups. Three people joined our bus and were assigned numbers for the count-off.
At long last, we made it to the buses which took us to the Thameside Youth Hostel, which was to become our home for the next few days. The hostel came as a massive shock to us after the luxuries of a hotel, a shock which we didn’t cope with particularly well. A diary entry written the day after (probably the next morning) says it all:
We’re in London now- arrived here last night. The youth hostel hasn’t given us a very good impression of London. I was expecting the youth hostel to be as nice as the one in Sydney, but my goodness, I was wrong.
It all started when we were waiting for Mr Hey to finish talking to Bus 3. Dougal leaned out of the window, yelling, “This place is a hole!” When we went in, we were told to take the stairs if we could, so Xanthe took the stairs while I had to take the lift. I got to Room 211 first and stood waiting in the small, unwelcoming corridor until Xanthe came (there were only two keys between us, and Xanthe had one of them).
It took a while for us to work out how to turn on the lights. Thankfully, we could do so- many of the boys’ rooms did not have lights in the shower at all. Everyone ran around the hostel for a little while, yelling, “This place is an (insert word here) hole!” Eventually, a chaperone shut us up by telling us that there are normal people in the hostel, and some are in room 108, which was behind us.
There are some good things to be said about the hostel. One is that their water tastes normal. Another is that their hash browns taste nice. Last, but not least, the beds, while low to the ground, are still decently comfortable.
Our discomfort was made worse by a major stuff-up by the hostel. We had not been told to take towels (though some people brought them anyway). Mr Hey knew that hostels generally did not provide towels, so he called the hostel and paid them in advance. Alas- when we arrived, only 30 towels were available, and I didn’t get one of them. After asking around, I was told that there would be towels the next morning, so I planned to take a shower before leaving the next day instead and went to bed that night feeling a little uncomfortable.
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