Bon Retour!

After about 24 hours of traveling, I am pleased to report that I made it home to the US in one piece.

Let me tell you about my flights. The first leg of my trip (from Montpellier to Gatwick) went fairly smoothly. I was worried about charged for overweight baggage but the lady who checked me in ignored the fact that I was 2 kilos over the weight limit, which saved me about $320 dollars in charges (I was really happy). I said "adieu" to my sister and went through security where my bag was searched at random. I always have to wonder what people think when they rifle through people's belongings. My bag, for example, had two mugs, a bunch of student evaluations, 15 packages of gum, slippers, 3 books, a whole bunch of cords and adapters, and a sachet of potpourri. That's pretty random if you ask me!

Arriving in Gatwick started ok but soon became a bit disastrous when they told me that I could not bring two bags through security (I had my backpack and my laptop which is standard, I am pretty sure, for every airport in the world EXCEPT Gatwick). So I had to fit my laptop bag into my backpack, carry my laptop and my slippers through security, and I had to throw away a few things in order to make it all fit into one bag. Drats. As soon as I got through security, I rearranged everything back into two bags which was a mistake because when I went to board the plane they questioned me as to how I had made it with two bags through security. I told them I had consolidated and would gladly pack it back into one bag, but would just turn around and repack it into two as soon as I got on the plane, so they saw reason and just let me get on the plane!

The flight from Gatwick to Detroit was very pleasant. For anyone traveling overseas I would highly recommend flights with Northwestern. The food is good, the attendants friendly, and the in-flight entertainment can not be beat. I watched 3 movies, all of which were very good, and enjoyed being the only person in my entire row (hooray, 8 seats all to myself).

Now for the real fun.

When I arrived in Detroit I went through customs and skipped grabbing my bags because I had been told in France they would check through all the way to Manchester. Well, when I arrived at border patrol, they told me this was not the case. What I had to do was pick up my bags, walk 20 feet to go through border control, walk another 20 feet and recheck my bags. Stupid... so stupid... but I did it, obviously. Then I had to go through security again and just after I had gone through security came asking for someone who was going to Manchester (me). They said I needed to go back to where I had checked my bags as there was a problem with my luggage. Turns out one of the jars of mustard I was bringing home had broken and there was glass and mustard everywhere inside my suitcase! It got all over the only jacket I had in there, not to mention my yearbooks and some of my portfolio work. Joy. I cleaned it up as best I could and then had to go through security again and wait for my plane.

The flight to Manchester was no big deal - since it was 4 am my time I slept through the whole thing! When we landed I was good and ready to get off the plane, but we were delayed for about a half-hour because the electronic ramp that they move over to the plane so you can get off was not working. It could move back and forth but could not rotate. The captain came on the speakers and the conversation went something like:

"Hello, this is your captain speaking. Yes, it appears that the jetway is not, um, is not working, so we are just hanging out waiting for it to, uh, yes, to be fixed, we're just, uh, at the mercy of the mechanics, really, so just sit tight."

"Hi, this is your captain again, it, uh, seems we have come up with a solution. The solution is not a, uh, good one, in fact it's, uh, sort of not good because we are, uh, going to move the plane forward and try and get the ramp as close to the door as, uh, possible, but, uh, there might be a bit of a gap for you to, uh, walk over, uh, but there will be people to help you jump the, uh, the gap, so it will be a completely, uh, safe operation, though not ideal. Hopefully we'll, uh, be able to get the ramp close enough to, uh, do this because if not we'll need to, uh, back the plane up to reposition it and, uh, that's a bit of a problem because, it uh, uh, appears that there is no one physically present to, uh, uh, back to the plane up, uh, at this time so uh, let's hope this works."

It worked. I went to baggage claim "1" where my bags were supposed to come out, picked them up at "2" where they actually came out, got a jolly good chuckle when I saw two people's bags smeared with mustard (who knows how that could have happened!), and drove home for my arrival at 1:00 am EST, or 7:00 am France time, making it a total travel time of exactly 24 hours.