Just one of those days

Well well it is that time again, time to tell you more about my life!

I have been dealing with the aftermath of my wallet getting stolen, I never really appreciated having a wallet at my fingertips until now, I also never realized how many things I need on a day to day basis. Classes this week have been pretty typical, you know me trying to focus but instead looking at my split ends lol. I did get my danish test back...B+ ohhhh yeah! Living with a host family is actually helping my grades lol :]

Wednesday was a long day, a bit frustrating but in the end fine. I had a field study with my danish class to Christiania, which is this alternative commune/town place full of squatters where they live communally with no cars and smoke hash, pretty interesting stuff lol. Some of the buildings are left over from when the area belonged to the military, but many were made by residents, so no joke a lot of them looked like old shacks. We had a guided tour from a woman who came from Sweden to visit Christiania in 1976 and just never left! She told us that none of the buildings have heating! I feel frozen constantly in Denmark and I have a heated house, I can't imagine living with them, frostbite must run rampant! It was sooo cold outside that I couldn't fully enjoy the trip to Christiania, so i'll have to go back in the spring, when I will be able to feel my toes!
After Christiania I had some annoying errands to run to get my wallet stuff together, which involved going to the Kommune again to get a replacement CPR card, which by the way are expensive! Almost 200 kroner to replace what some loser stole from me! So now I just have a temporary card and i'm waiting for my real one to come in the mail.

Thursday my friend Alana came home with me after Danish class so she could have dinner with my host family, she lives in a kollegium and needed some "warm and fuzzy danish family time" as we like to call it lol :] We had quite a fun time getting home, she had never really been up north of Copenhagen where I live so the view was very new to her and she loved it! When we were walking from the bus stop to my house she was just in awe of the neighborhood I live in, she was like "okay I'm coming home with you a lot now!" I gave her a tour of the house and she met the fam. Benedicte and her bonded over music tastes so naturally Benedicte loved her ;] We ate a delicious homemade meal that Christina cooked and then chit chatted until I walked her back to the bus stop so she could make her way home. I went home and finished packing! Packing for what you ask....LONDON! Thats right I am currently in London :] But boy was it a difficult task to get to this hotel where I am typing this from!

Lets start off where I missed my train this morning because I needed to purchase some extra train zones to get to the aiport. I caught the next one, but then when I got to Norreport I had to spring to catch the metro that goes to the airport, I almost smacked an old woman in a fur coat with my suitcase because she was going too slow and I needed to be on that Metro! Now the fun starts....airports are extremely confusing, particularly the Copenhagen airport! I take for granted that I have always been travelling with other people when I got to airports, I rarely have to figure it out for myself. I wandered around the entrance area for awhile trying to figure out where I should check in for Easyjet, eventually I talked to a man working for SAS and he told me to just keep walking. So ten minutes more of walking and I found my check in! I checked in and checked my bag and went walking for security, which was up some stairs and around the corner. I got all the way there when I realized I still had a waterbottle full of liquid! I tried to drink some and ended up spilling water down my front so I decided to go back to the check in area and dump it in a bathroom sink. Alright next  attempt at security! Following the pattern of events from the last week that led to this point of course when I went through ecurity the detector went off, so I had to be hand searched, it wasn't overly invasive, but when you have to stand an on box in ront of all the other people walking through security its a bit embarassing!

I got to my terminal and waited for an hour, I was lucky I got there kinda early because there isn't a waiting area with chairs like the Seattle airport by the gate, there are just 4 stone benches for all the passengers of a flight to fight over, I got a corner! The boarding process was an absolute mess! Basically everyone just attacked the gate, there was no line really just a mass and no control from the workers, they just let us have at it. There were also no assigned seats, which was interesting, so you just get on the plane and look for an open seat and park your rear end in it. The flight was pretty smooth, once I got to London is where the extra fun started!

I waited in line at border control for an hour and a half! I don't think I have ever waited that long at airport border control before, but this way I'll be prepared if I go to London again. I finally made it through security, that was a interesting explanation..."why are you in london?" "I'm visiting my mom and studying" "You're studying for nine days?" "uhhh well its hard to explain, im studying in copenhagen and we are taking an academic 6 day trip to london for class, but I came early to see my mom who is working outside of london right now" "Right" *Stamp* Yay, I got through border control!

I got my suitcase from baggage claim and then the only thing standing in my way was having to get to Bristol, my mom is staying in Bristol which is a few hours outside London.  See I had already boughten a train ticket online to get from the London Gatwick airport to Bristol Temple Meads station, I was supposed to pick it up a self-service ticket box at the train platform. Only problem was that you needed the credit card used to make the purchase to get the ticket, and that credit card is God knows where since it was stolen! My mom decided to wire me some money so I could get another train ticket at the airport train station. The money she wired came in Danish Kroner so I had to go to a currency counter to exchange it for GBP. I had to spend a bit of the money she spent to get to the copenhagen airport this morning and a bit to pay for my replacement kommune card, I didn't know it would be so expensive, so I got 37.50 GBP. I was a little worried when I only got that much from the currency place but figured it would be enough, the ticket online I bought was like 18 GBP. So I waited in line at the train ticket counter and when I got up I asked for a ticket to Bristol Temple Meads, he rang up the price....like 58 GBP...WHAT!!!! I started to freak out, I only had 37.50 GBP to my name, no cards to use since they were stolen and no more money, nothing!

I spent a few minutes freaking out, I tried to call my mom but the number she gave me said it was not accepting calls...FANTASTIC! Was I really going to be stranded at the Gatwick airport?! No!!! After a few minutes of panicking I got my game face on and walked up to another counter and said "How can I get to Bristol for 37.50£" The desk agent told me to take a train to Victoria Station and then catch a coach bus from there to Bristol, it would be like 4 hours or so. I did just that and ended up on the coach, starving however because the tickets cost me like 36£ so I didn't have any money left for food like I had planned. The woman sitting next to me on the bus was very nice, so that made my day a bit better!

We got to the Bristol coach station and I walked inside looking for a map or a phone book or anything, and totally forgot to get my suitcase from under the bus...a few minutes later I realized that something was wrong and went running back to find the bus! Luckily the driver was just closing up to leave and I just shouted at her "wait wait I left my bag", she was kinda mad at me actually for leaving my bag, I was just like uhh whatever just give me my suitcase! I tried my mom again, no answer, I looked around the bus station for a map, no such luck! I asked a counter for a phone book and found the hotel, called them and asked to be transferred to my mom's room...no answer! UHHHHHHHH I was really starting to get annoyed! Eventually I left a message with the hotel asking my mom to call me immediately when she got back.

I had been hanging around the bus station for like half and hour and still had no idea what to do so I just decided to start walking. I asked some random strangers if they knew where the Marriot hotel was and got some not so great directions! I even got yelled at my some old drunk man for wheeling my suitcase on the cobble stones because it was to loud. If I wasn't so scared I might have just yelled at him to bug off lol. Eventually after God knows how long I spent wandering down the streets in the dark I finally found the hotel! I was so happy you don't even know it had been such a long day. I went inside and got a room key and went to my mom's room, she wasn't there! It was like 7:30, where was she!! I just crashed and an hour later she got back to the room. The first thing she said was "What happened to calling me when you arrived?" to which I replyed "I'VE BEEN TRYING TO CALL YOU FOR 6 HOURS!!!!!!" Turns out her work cell phone wasn't recieving any calls, just going straight to voicemail. I explained my day to her and then we went to find some dinner, which was much appreciated since I hadn't eaten since 11. So I was full of pizza and finally happy after the most ridiculous day ever!

I have just one last thing to say....I'M IN LONDON :]