It's been a long time, but I've finally settled down in Trier.
I left Powell River on the morning of the 3rd of September for a 6pm flight to London. The flight was meant to be an overnighter, after which I would catch a connecting flight to Schiphol in Amsterdam. From there I would visit Thomas for a few days in Arnhem, then proceed to Amsterdam and perhaps Brussells, if time permitted. The weekend after we had firm plans to go to his hometown of Altengeseke in rural Westfalia for his sister's wedding.
That's what was supposed to have happened.
Instead, the flight was initially delayed, then cancelled, then later rescheduled on account of a massive engine problem due to a bird stuck in the machinery. British Airways was scrambling to fix the problem on the ground in YVR, but it quickly became evident that they didn't have the necessary facilities to do such a repair quickly. Because of this, British Airways had to cancel the flight and put us all up in hotels for the night. Overall they did quite well by us, placing us in such swank places as the Marriott, Sheraton, and Hilton. Initially they told us to come back to YVR the next day at noon to see if an alternative arrangement would be ready for that afternoon, but the next morning we all found papers slipped under our doors telling us that a new plane was being flown out from Heathrow. Due to the nine hour transit time as well as the mandatory 11 hour crew break, this gave us an estimated departure time from YVR at 3am.
That was fairly annoying, but I did manage to take the new skytrain line into downtown Vancouver during the day.
After that brief hiccough, the travel went fairly smoothly. Because there were no more flights to Schiphol until the following morning, British Airways again put me up in a hotel in London (though not nearly as nice as the Hilton). The next morning I arrived at Heathrow at 4am, bright and early for my 7am flight over the channel. There was a Dutch couple on the same flight from Vancouver connecting to Schiphol, so I got to know them while we waited for three hours. They also helped me out on the other side, with my train connections to get to Thomas' in Arnhem.
