Wow you guys. We should all be a little concerned that I'm on my 3rd post this month. I just got back from a half-week holiday in sunny (nope) Amsterdam with my one and only Flettmate (cuz her last name is Flett... and she's my flatmate. :D ) and it was lovely times, which you can learn more about in my facebook album.
This post is to document, as I tend to do, a series of endless struggles that happened to us on our way home.
We honestly did really well for 4 whole days, navigating the city without cell service and showing up on time to many scheduled activities/transportation arrangements. There were no failures worth noting.
Until the airport happened:
For reference, we had a 9:40 flight Amsterdam - Edinburgh with an arrival time of 10:10 GMT, followed by a 10:50 bus from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. The turnaround was a little tight, and we weren't due home until 2am, but it was entirely managable with a bit of strategic planning, which we had done.
Tuesday, November 17th: 7:30pm (CET): On time to the airport by Erin's standards and ridiculously early by mine, and all camped out in our terminal waiting for the gate to be announced.
9:10pm : Gates scheduled to close for our flight. And yet, we were still sitting there waiting for a gate to be announced.
9:40pm: If life went according to plan, we would have been taking off. But no... we were still waiting for a gate. Tensions were rising, and the airport was neither announcing delays nor offering explanations.
10:00pm: A gate?! Wow! Inconceivable! We weren't entirely sure that airports did that anymore, or if it had all just been a happy dream. I am rapidly deteriorating and getting grumpy-tired.
10:20pm: We finally enter the legendary plane scheduled to take us back to Scotland, after questioning whether it existed. Because we followed the rules and waited in the lounge for our gate number, we end up in the back of the line, and the staff announces that all remaining carry-ons would be checked due to lack of overhead space. This did not bode well for any desperate attempts to catch our bus. Somehow, though, they overlooked us and we got the only 2 remaining spaces in overhead.
10:30pm: Finally left the ground in Amsterdam a solid 50 minutes late. Conveniently, 50 minutes was the length of time we were supposed to have to catch our bus. Gotta love some irony.
10:50 pm (GMT): 2 tired, stressed out travellers powerwalk off the plane in Edinburgh, googling alternative routes and taxi options. At this point, I'm pretty much deliriously tired and angry at everything, and Erin has to persuade me that we are not taking our originally scheduled bus back to Aberdeen. A number of alternatives are discussed:
1: jump in a taxi to the connection site for the first leg of our scheduled bus journey to catch the second bus. Plausible, but tight.
2: Sleep in the airport and get the first train out in the morning.
3: Same plan, but pay for 5 hours in a hotel.
4: Take a 7 hour bus journey all over Scotland to get home before 7am and salvage a little bit of a night's sleep before class at 1pm.
11:05 pm: We chose option #1 and rushed through border control to the taxi stands. I kid you not. at 11pm on a Tuesday night, there were over 100 people queued for taxis. Extra-tired, frustrated, and completely in denial, I once again required lengthy persuasion before I was willing to abandon hope. If I hadn't changed into my comfy clothes before our flight, some rage could have happened at this point.
11:10 pm: Option 3 was ruled out due to my financial irresponsibility while in Amsterdam, leaving us with either 2 or 4. Having slept overnight in Edinburgh Airport before, I was not keen to do so again. The 7 hour bus journey did involved a 3 hour layover in Glasgow but we assumed, like rational people, that a bus station with arrivals at 12:30am and departures at 3:40 would be... you know... sheltered. So we got cash out, found the bus stance, and jumped on a bus to Glasgow.
For reference, Glasgow is absolutely NOT anywhere near on the way from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. It's very far west. But excessive bus time seemed preferable to airport sleeping, and it would still get us home a solid 2 hours before any of the early morning trains.
11:25pm: 2 very tired and irritable travellers stagger onto a Glasgow-bound bus and pass out. It is, at the very least, warm, dark, and quiet. Minimal sleep is had.
Wednesday, November 18, 12:30am: Things go from simply unfortunate to astonishingly unlikely. Upon arrival in Glasgow, we discover that the actual building part of the bus station with, you know, walls and doors and central heating, is not open during the night. We are left with an open-air glass box full of metal benches and strong flourecent lighting. It is November. It is Scotland. It is not okay to be outside in normal clothes under those conditions. However, morale shifts as we transition from irritation to potential insanity. At this point, we adopt the motto "keep laughing so you don't cry" and sit in the ridiculously cold bus depot laughing at our continued misfortune.
I had, a few days prior, joked that McDonald's and Starbucks restaurants are a sort of unofficial US Embassy for Americans abroad. Any American that I've ever travelled with knows that when in doubt, if you're lost, struggling, confused, or just needing wifi/a bathroom, there is always a McDonalds/Starbucks somewhere nearby that can make everything okay.
So, clever American that I am, I proposed that we find a McDonalds. With Erin's Glasgow knowledge and my googling skills, we fled from the freezing benches of Buchanan Bus Station to seek the warm, fry-oil sanctuary of a nearby McDonald's until its 3 am closing time. So there we sat, with hot chocolate and various comfort foods, still bundled up in scarves and coats to shake our residiual chills. We sat there for 2 1/2 hours, watching the drunk youth of Glasgow come and go. Erin watched some Netflix and I
pretty much just refreshed my Cavs app for 2 hours straight because I couldn't get a stream of the game to load. Somehow, neither of us were tired.
2:55 am: We voluntarily leave McDonald's 5 minutes early to avoid being followed by the homeless man who had been sitting at the table behind us since our arrival.
3:35 am: Somehow, 40 minutes pass in that icebox of a bus station. Thoughts of our warm, soft beds are pretty much the only thing keeping us alive. Finally, a beautiful bus appears out of the darkness to carry us to Aberdeen. Upon boarding the bus, we pretty much immediately pass out. It has been 9 hours since we arrived at the airport in Amsterdam, and we should have been asleep in our own beds an hour ago.
6:40 am: Erin taps my leg and I almost kick her in the face. Neither of us have ever been even half this happy to see Aberdeen. We stagger along Union Street towards home.
7:00 am: Bed is the most beautiful place in the world.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the 12 hour saga of a journey that was not supposed to be that difficult.
Needless to say we were completely useless and devoid of any function today.
But we made it.
