I must have been asked by Alla’a ten times when my flight left Copenhagen. I responded politely “2:30 in the afternoon” each time despite having to answer over and over again. I get a little stressed out when it comes to traveling. It probably stems from a few bad experiences when I lost a ticket (everyone from Seattle must be shocked that I would lose something) back my freshman year when visiting Marc, Biz and Gallagher and again when we missed our connection to Guatemala. Both seeming disasters were fixed, resulting in delays in my travel plans of at most a couple hours, but I’m pretty sure both experiences shaved a couple of years off my life.
These are ideas, or perhaps it’s just I hate the idea of rushing. This reason is why I’d prefer riding my bike than trying to run to catch a bus, or why I get grumpy when I don’t get to movies a half hour before they start. At any rate, for my 2:30 departure time I decided I’d leave my apartment at 10, meaning I’d likely get to the airport (depending on which train I catch) around 11:30, leaving more than enough time. Fortunately Copenhagen’s airport is big and nice and it’s quite easy to kill some time there.
So I woke up at 7, showered, spoke with Courtney on the phone, threw my pile of folded clothing into a bag while having an episode of Futurama on, made a cup of coffee and had some breakfast. A little after 9 o’clock I looked back at my ticket:
Sat 03 MAY - AUSTRIAN OS 302
DEPART COPENHAGEN DK 10:50
ARRIVE VIENNA INTL 12:35
I stared again while literally screaming “Nooooo” in what was probably the most exasperated womanly scream I have ever uttered. I do the math, and I have a little over an hour and a half to get somewhere that takes at best 1 hour to get to by train. I then throw the last few things in my bags, gather up my computer while my hands shake in a combination of anger, frustration, embarrassment and terror, and sprint out my door lugging a big backpack and my laptop.
Fortunately there are always an absurd number of taxis waiting by the train station, for reasons I don’t quite understand in a small town of 100,000. Regardless, I ran to the guy at the front of the queue and yelled frantically “How fast can you get to Kastrup (i.e. Copenhagen’s airport)!?!” He informs me “very fast … half an hour?” So I jump in, and off we go. We averaged 180 km/hr on 110 km/hr highways. This is awesome of him, because if you get caught speeding this much you’ll have your license taken away, which you can imagine might hurt your taxi cab career. For this reason he asks me to keep an eye out for police helicopters. While we are driving at breakneck speed we get to talking. The guy is from Iran, and so he asks me if I’ve visited, which I thought was a somewhat ridiculous question, but he went on to say how Americans are really well liked there and how the regime is really only supported by 10% of the population or something. I mention that although not nearly as bad, and not quite as unpopular, Americans are occasionally (not overly often) judged by our unpopular leaders as well. Anyways, the guy was super nice, and turns out he has a degree in chemical engineering, and he’s working on another degree in management (both from Lund) and then he’s hoping to get a job for a big company that specializes in packaging in Dubai or something.
At any rate, we arrived with 45 minutes before my flight was to leave; I jogged through security and checked in at my gate, and hopped on with no problems. All it cost me was 1000:- (probably $180 – the train would have cost 100:-) as well as several years off my life. It was a steep price to pay, but I don’t want to think of the headache of missing my flight, and thus my connection.
I landed in Vienna for a couple hours of wandering the duty free shops and looking at some promo stuff they had for the European football championship to be played in Austria and Switzerland this coming up this summer. Nothing quite makes you miss your girlfriend like seeing a foosball table ...
Or one of these things ...
Afterwards I had a beer and updated some old posts of my blog in a smoky bar. Between living in Washington State and Sweden, I’ve been spoiled by smoke free bars.
My flight to Cairo on Egypt Air was all in all smooth, but it is one of very few flights where I feared for my life. When we took off we took a bunch of sharp turns, plus I was sitting next to the wing and could watch it bump up and down with surprising severity. In the end I landed in Cairo all in one piece. The only problem is that it left a half hour late but managed to land at least 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled time. I found that my phone didn’t work, and Tamer was nowhere to be seen. So I tried connecting to the internet, no luck. I tried using pay phones and it took 2 separate guys who were probably both trying to extort either tips or just my willingness to take their cab to my destination. In the end, I got a hold of Tamer, and his friend Saad who was driving and we went to a duty free shop, picked up some drinks and took an eventful drive through Cairo to get to Tamer’s place.
Driving in Cairo is absolutely insane. There seem to be no rules whatsoever, and as I sit and write this I hear a car horn at least every 2 seconds. Right before I got here a bus of tourists flipped over and I read some stats on how many people die in car accidents and the number is staggering.
When we arrived I was greeted by the zoo of animals that Tamer and his mother Bahra keep. Bahra runs an animal shelter and she’s adopted quite a few from the shelter to her home. One of the adoptions is Blackie, who she found in Barcelona and was the third familiar face for me here.
The kitten she is holding she saved. This one is named ET (I think) for obvious reasons.
We then met some more of Tamer’s friends (Moe, Victor and Tawfik), who Tamer basically just left at his place for 3 hours while he picked me up. I of course struggle with names in general, but here naturally it’s even trickier. But we played some poker, and then Victor and Tamer played video games while I sent emails, left Courtney a voice mail and joined them to watch the Hornets vs. Spurs game. Eventually I headed up to the penthouse where I was staying to settle in for the "night". By night, I mean morning as the sun was coming up.
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