Bon Voyage!

I long for the days when a person had to travel by cruise liners.  Big, impressive, lords of the sea’s that prowled the worlds oceans delivering the rich to their vacations, the poor to new lives in the new world, and servicemen to war.  For one, your departure was an adventure.  One just needs to go visit the Queen Mary in Long Beach to get a feel for these bygone giants of human ingenuity.  And when they left port, it was a event.  Friends, relatives and complete strangers turned out to watch ships glide out of port, ticker tape flew, horns sounded.  Yes it took you a week to get from New York to London, yes Titanics happened, but there was state and ceremony to the proceedings.  Your departure was an occasion, as an important part of your trip as the first museum or the foreign boy you fell in love with. 

Things are a little different when you leave by plane at six in the morning.  Instead of tickertape and crowds you get a hug from your exhausted mother and an empty departure platform in the morning fog.  The drive over did provide my Mom a few more minutes to impart last minute advice.  Mainly, watch out for pickpockets and gypsies.  Mostly gypsies.  No really, gypsies. As my main interaction with gypsies was Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Norte Dame, I didn’t really get the concern.

A trip to the airport would never be complete without me being stopped by TSA.  This time it was my inhaler at an awkward angle that signaled my true identity of an international terrorist.  You know what they didn’t see?  A lighter.  That made it all the way to Croatia. 

I fell asleep somewhere over Sacramento and woke up when the plane slammed into Texan soil.  I had missed Continental’s famous breakfast, darn. 

If you have never made it to George H. Bush International airport, I highly recommend it.  While no airport in the States matches the grand scale and pure number of shops of Heathrow or even a European train station, Houston is about as close as you can get.  The first impression you get when you disembark is gleaming white.  Floors, walls, ceilings, and people are all blindly, glimmering white interspersed with a rainbow cavalcade of everything from bookstores and Starbucks to Duty free and fancy steak restaurants.  Everything is bigger in Texas?

Dad had made me a packed lunch, which I supplemented from the nearest McDonalds, and watched with growing apprehension as the High School group traveling on my flight slowly grew larger and larger.  Luckily they were at the front of the plane, and I was at the back, though they did end up near me in the immigration line and were far to peppy, in my opinion. 

I gleefully spent the 8-hour flight watching Thor, Jane Eyre, Water For Elephants and Better Off Ted.  I kept expecting nerves to kick in or apprehension, but they never materialized.  But neither did the excitement.  Looking back, I think I was too tired.  I refuse to consider the other option, that I was jaded about traveling at 22, but there may have been a little of that sneaking in too.   It could also have been the small child who kept screaming directly behind me that could have broken the moment a bit. 

When the plane landed I grabbed my bag and tried to sprint to immigration.  I needed to get through the border, to another terminal, then navigate the subterranean tunnels the Brits are so fond of to the bus terminal, onto a bus, out to another airport, check in, make it through security and onto another plane to Dubrovnik in six hours.  I was pretty sure I would have enough time, but it would be tight.

Rounding the corner into Customs, I nearly had a heart attack.  The line was a few thousand people deep and zig zagged back and forth across a low ceilinged room like a ride at Disneyland, except at the end was London and not Pirates of the Caribbean.  My frustration was compounded when the man at the end of the line demanded we have our paper work filled out before we entered the line. Because we wouldn’t have enough time to complete it? 

An hour later I had finally reached the front of the line when every single agent left their booths and walked away en mass.  It was 8am and time to change shifts, but the new shift did not materialize for ten minutes.  Suddenly there was 3,000 tired tourists growing slowly angrier and one guy at the end of the line still demanding completed forms before you were allowed to enter the queue.  I desperately suppressed the urge to throw my arm in the air and yell, “Charge”!

Finally folks put their tea down and sauntered out to the grumbling international corps waiting behind the turnstiles. Suddenly, I got to the front, explained I had no English contact, and was resentfully let through.  London! Or at least, Airport! 

Arriving at the Bus stop I discovered a miracle, sun, in London.  I stood outside for five minutes with my brain refusing to accept it before finding the bus and passing out against the window for the next hour. 

I wish I had more to report on the Stransdon Airport, I really do.  But when I try to remember those two hours all I get is the vague impression of sunshine, lines, a call to my parents and a bright orange EasyJet Airplane.  The fruit is subtler.  

Now, finally, finally I was in Dubrovnik, Croatia.  I had totally lost Thursday and was quickly losing Friday to planes and time changes, but I didn’t care.  As I climbed down the jet way the excitement finally began to break through the exhaustion and bubble through me.  My skin began to itch with it and every cell in me wanted to get through customs and get exploring. 

This was followed immediately by a second thought, “It’s really hot here”.