The Actual First Day In Europe

We got on our overnight flight to Amsterdam. The flight took about seven hours. Once I got on the plane, I immediately realized that this was by far the biggest plane I’d ever been on.

Each row was divided into two seats, six seats, then two seats again. Each seat had their own personal T.V. attached to the back of the seat in front of them.

I sat in my seat. Next to me was a little girl and a Munich-native man who looked and sounded EXACTLY like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He looked so German, it was as if he was Hitler’s chosen one.

Since this was an overnight flight, the timing was easily messed up. We probably left at ten at night and arrived at noon in Amsterdam, their time. On the T.V. screen, you could choose from several movies to watch including “Gran Torino”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, “Madagascar 2”, “The Uninvited”, and “Taken.” Everyone around me, at one time or another, was watching “Taken”, about a teenager who is abducted during a trip to France and sold as a prostitute while her father tries to find her. Even the seven year old girl next to me was watching it.

The German dude was very, very loud. He asked me to give him summaries of all the movie choices.

They eventually fed us at about midnight home time. We were given the option of having the vegetarian meal or the delicious chicken and rice meal. Since I was seated in the back, I didn’t have much of a choice, because all the chicken had been taken.

When I got my vegetarian meal, I discovered it was a type of Chinese Lima Beans with what looked like crap on top and it was simply disgusting. Arnold hogged it down while watching “Caddyshack”. The bread wasn’t great either. If you threw it at someone, it would knock them out.

Arnold paused his movie and tapped my shoulder. He saw I hadn’t eaten much of my food and asked if I wanted his peanuts. He was being sweet, but very, very loud in doing so.

He shouted, “DO YOU WANT MY PEANUTS?!”

I replied to him, “No, thank you, but thank you for the offer.” I tried to keep my voice down to keep attention away from myself.

This answer did not satisfy him. He called over a flight attendant and told him, “PLEASE GET MY FRIEND SOME PEANUTS!”

They gave me all the peanuts I could want. That was when I realized he meant well. He called me “My friend”, which made me feel good.

My flight was not as bad as Ryan’s though, one of the delegates in our group. He sat next to a black woman whom he called the “Grizzly Woman”. She was huge. Once she took her seat, she asked Ryan in the deepest voice possible, “You, look, can you put your bag somewhere else?”

Ryan didn’t want to be rude, but he was terrified about what this massive creature could do to him. His voice went up three degrees to the point where he talked like a small child. Ryan didn’t want to be rude, but it was his bag. He simply told her, “My medication is in my bag and I need it.”

Grizzly Woman then grunted, unlike any terrestrial on Earth. She repeated this horrifying grunt every so often.

When dinner came, Grizzly Woman did not eat it. She inhaled it. While she was doing this, she asked Ryan for more food. He gave her the crackers.

Eventually, she fell asleep while watching “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Not only did she fall asleep, she fell asleep on the T.V., smearing her nastiness onto the unfortunate T.V. screen. She also took up the entire arm rest. Ryan had no room to move or he’d wake the Beast from her slumber.

We finally landed in Amsterdam. Since our first plane, expired this messed up everything that followed. We landed in Amsterdam around 12:00 PM. Our flight for London had already left by the time we landed.

Our leaders went up to the Customer’s Service desk and bought new tickets.

The next flight to London left at 7:30 PM.

We were basically stranded in Amsterdam airport for seven and a half hours. The meetings prior to the trip were useless because we bonded more in this time than we ever had.

To kill time, we got McDonald’s and talked for four straight hours. This was the first time I was ever thankful for the American McDonald’s. Their burger there was lean, dry, and tasted like sour fruit.

Now Chris, another member of our delegation, had a girlfriend, who was from Vietnam, but he was asking us for help because he could not pronounce her race, “Vietnamese”, correctly. We tried to help him. We went so far as to break it down for him.

“Viet…vie…itmam”, he struggled.

“No, Vietnamese”, I corrected him.

“Viet…it…it…it…”

“Alright, one at a time. Say ‘Vie’.”

“Vie.”

“Et.”

“Et.”

“Na.”

“Na.”

“Mese.”

“Mese.”

“Viet.”

“Viet.”

“Good. Now say ‘Namese’.”

“Na…”

“Namese.”

“Namese.”

“Great. Now, put it all together.”

“Vietna…vees!”

“No, Vietnamese.”

“Vietna…ree! Vietnahees! VIETNABEES!!!”

This continued for hours on end. Our plane finally arrived. We got on and prepared for London.

I got my ticket and looked at my seat number. It was row 28 in seat 3. Then I realized. 2+8+3=13.

It was a smooth ride. We arrived in London around ten. We got there and someone’s luggage was missing. So we could not abandon the lost luggage. So, once again, we waited and after and hour later, it came. It was apparently in the flight behind ours.

When we got out of the airport, we learned that the People To People buses stopped running. So, once again, we waited another hour for taxis.

One finally came and there were five of us in it. One in the front and four in the back. We were given an address to our hotel. But once we got in the taxi, we lost it.

The taxi driver was engagingly pissed off, telling us that “We can’t get there unless we had an address.”

We then turned around on the interstate and drove back to the airport. I jumped out and ran for it. Lucky for us that our leaders were still there and I got an extra copy of the address.

When I got in the car, I was welcomed with cheers, but when I looked at the address, I could not read it. Our leaders apparently had terrible hand-writing.

We spent half-an-hour trying to guess what this place was. None of us had our leader’s numbers. We were out of hope until, I got an idea.

On the back of our lanyards, there was an emergency number to the Organization that had all of our reservations. We called them. We got the address. On the paper, it said “Groygan Road”, but it turned out to be Maybury Street.

It took forty five minutes to the hotel. Since we were in England, they drive on the opposite side of the road, which messed with my mind.

We arrived at our hotel, where I first met Magdalena, our tour director.

I had been awake for thirty hours and I thought I would get a great night’s sleep.

Right as soon as I got in my room, I turned on the T.V. and relaxed.

The headline on the screen was “Michael Jackson found dead.”

How could this get any worse?