05 December 2010

Fail Trip

Fail day, fail trip, worst Saturday of my life whatever you call it the 4th of December was quite an awful day.

Saturday started out by waking up at 5AM and leaving the apartment at 5:45. As I left the building I had a weird feeling that something was not going to go right that day, it turned out that I was right in the end. I got to the train station and got on the train with no problems. I ate some food that I had brought with me and relaxed and watched the sun come up. Then I got to Lyon and that's where everything started going downhill. I looked at the timetable to see if my train was up there even though I still had two hours until it left. It wasn't but I did notice something, over half of the trains were more than 20 minutes late. I was like oh crap. You see, in order to make my plane I had to take the first train and even then I only would arrive an hour before the door to my plane closed. It was then that I realized that I might not make my flight. The train station was freezing so I finally went to the Waiting Room because at least that closed with a door and read my book as I waited for my train to appear on the screens. When it finally appeared it said it was on time. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to the platform.

I got kind of nervous because usually the train gets there at least 5 minutes before the scheduled time but this time it arrived exactly when we were supposed to be pulling out of the station. I got on and sat down and we started moving and I thought, ok maybe I will make my flight. Just as soon as we pulled out of the station the train stopped. An announcement came on but I didn't understand it very well. We waited for 30 minutes. I was freaking out. Finally when we started moving I decided to relax, enjoy the train ride and figure stuff out when I got to Geneva since I couldn't do anything on the train. I watched the scenery, the Alps covered in snow is such a beautiful site. Funny side note, I was listening to my ipod and one of the songs that came up on random was Unbelievable, that's exactly what I thought those mountains and country side looked like. We stopped a couple more times for short periods of times and when they finally announced that we were approaching the last station, Geneva, we were 45 minutes late.

As soon as we got in I took off running. I found the train to the airport, waited a couple of minutes for it to come, got on, got to the airport, got off, ran and found my gate all the way at the other end of the airport and as soon as I arrived I realized that they had shut the gate 10 minutes ago. I went down and waited in line at the information desk to see if I could get on the other flight that was in a couple of hours. After waiting over an hour in that line I finally talked to a guy who told me that I couldn't get on it and my only option was to wait until the next day at 2PM. He started transferring my information to put it on there and told me it would be 86 Swiss Francs. For those of you who aren't familiar with that currency, it's pretty much the same as the US Dollar. Also 86 Swiss Francs was three times more than what I paid for my original ticket. Also both my ticket to and from Budapest were less than that. I suddenly had a big decision before me:

Choice 1) Pay 86 Francs, find a place to stay the night, explore Geneva, relax, take the plane at two the next day, see Ada, spend less than 24 hours in Budapest then go back OR

Choice 2) Pay alot less for tickets back to Clermont, sleep in my own bed, not have to pay for meals, get homework done, and do some work for my school projects.

Which would you choose?

I chose Choice 2. I told him that that was not going to work and after giving me a puzzled look and saying that I would lose my reservation (which in my opinion was already lost) I told him that was ok and left the airport.  I called Ada on my way to the train station and a guy over heard me and asked me if I was American. I told him I was and we had a short conversation. He was there searching for an apartment because he got a job in Geneva. He was originally from Atlanta which I thought was kind of funny because that's where my Aunt Erin lives. It was kind of nice to tell someone else my story and helped calm me down because after everything I was pretty distraught. Finally I told him he should visit Bern because it's a nice city to visit once he got settled in, he told me thanks and good luck and I left. When I got back to the train station, I got my tickets and made my way to Lyon.

The trip back wasn't anywhere near as fun. It was getting dark out and I decided I should at least do some homework. I got some work done but ended up staring out, wishing I could have made my flight and listening to my ipod. When I got to Lyon I once again had a two hour wait. I got a Coke but wasn't hungry even though I hadn't eaten much except a little bit of breakfast and a sandwich at the Geneva station. Finally my train came and I got to Clermont. On the way there I realized how tired I was and laid down on my backpack with my scarf over it to soften it. I got back to Clermont at 11 and was home before 11:30. As soon as I got back I decided to eat some Easy Mac to cheer me up and then go to bed.

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