SomewhereSouth.net

Murf: Christchurch to Enschede

Well, as promised here the last bit of my journey. Somehow I managed to get to the airport at Christchurch and got to the checking where I more or less ran into trouble with my overweight. My checkin luggage being 28Kg and my cabin luggage beeing 14Kg the girl behind the counter wouldn't allow my cabin luggage beeing that heavy and wanted to charge for my overweight as well. I tried to convince her that I was just going home after 6 months and that therefore it was quite normal beeing a bit overweighted but no, the limits where 20Kg and 7kg and that's how it was. So I ended up loading 7Kg in my pockets and plastic bags to drop the 14Kg down to less than 7Kg, checkin my cabin luggage as checkin luggage and carrying not more than 7Kg in plastic bags into the cabin. (Cheating a bit my pockets where stuffed with heavy items like my photocamera and my coat must 've been 7Kg on it's own already but hey...) I paid the $110,- and finally went on. So I flew to Sydney, sleeping half the time as I was still kinda sick, had a nice talk with a girl who this time I *do* regret I didn't got her email addy (you meet 100,000's of lovely people so normally you just don't ask and don't regret as it would be impossible to keep in touch anyway) and after a smooth flight got out at Sydney airport for a 22 hour stopover. Got out, locked my big backpack away in a secure storage at the airport, got to Central and dragged myself into the YHA hostel where I went for a quit 4-bed dorm as I really did need the sleep that night. Well, aparently I did, I sat down on my bed feeling a bit sleepy so layd down for a while only to wake up 3 hours later, making up my bed, undressing, getting in and sleeping 'till 8am the next morning. So I skipped my partynight in Sydney, no sense, I had a great time the last night in Christchurch and was feeling not too well to have a big night out anyway so hey, why bother. I did however go shopping the next morning in Sydney. Instead of 1 there where 3 $10,- cd shops and even knowing I couln't entirely afford spending money on luxury stuff I still came out with in total round about 18 cd's waisting more than $250,- as some of 'm where in the $15,- category for beeing just released. Ah well, I did get some cd's which I wanted for years already so it's not much of a waiste. And then back for the big flight home, this time I didn't have any trouble with my overweight, they didn't weigh my cabin luggage at all and the 28Kg was suddenly no problem anymore when I pollitely answered "Home!" to the question "Where are you going?". He grinned, the lady next to him joked "Hey, that's a very popular destination!" and checked let the massive bag through. Thanx m'te! He even looked surprised when I told him that I did have to pay for it at Christchurch. Cool stuff. Anyway, I hopped onto the aircraft and only there I wasn't too pleased. I should have a window seat and got seat F which is is a Boeing 747-400 one of the 2 center seats. If you look at the seats and _ beeing the aisle it looks like this: (xxx_xfxx_xxx) But nevertheless I had a quite pleasant flight with a quick strech of the legs at Hongkong and I really slept a lot while flying all the way to London. I finally felt like using my discman a lot and listened to almost all cd's I bought in Sydney. After we landed in Heathrow I got from T4 to T1 to fix a new boarding pass, then from T1 to T4 because there where no showers at T1, got a nice hot shower after searching for it for half an hour (it was thouroughly hidden), bough some small souvenirs, went back to T1 and ran into the lady of the security check again who regocnized me and asked if I got lost. But no, just a shower and she smiled realizing that indeed after 22 hours of flying a shower is definetely a thing you need. So no further trouble there and after another couple of hours of waiting I got into flight BA105 to take me home! Sitting next to the emergency exit I had even more legspace than in the aircraft from Sydney to London... Anyway, smooth flight and landing nicely on time. I almost ran through customs, to the baggage claim, grabbed my bag (which was there right when I got myself a trolley, very very fast) and made it for the "nothing to declare" gate where they stopped me for a second asking where I came from and how long I've been away. I saw the guy doubting if he'd question me more and/or search my bag but after 3 seconds (who felt like ages) hey said "Welcome home!" and let me through. And there I was, the door opened and suddenly I saw familiar faces which I haven't seen in 6 months. Mom, Nicky, Nicky's parents and Chantal. Gave 'm all a big hug before we went for some espresso. The rest of the gang was a bit delayed, they ran out of petrol on the highway... But after a quick phonecall they decided to run to Leiderdorp (where Nicky lives) instead of the airport so we'd meet 'm there. Chantal jumped on the train back home quite soon and off we went, me seeing how it feels to drive on the right side of the road again.

As soon as I got out of the car I got squashed by the rest of the whole gang, Abieg, Maarten, Sabine en Jeroen. What a welcome! They had covered my car with a "Welcome home" banner and really almost squashing me, finally beeing able to hold me and talk to me again. It felt soo good to be back, hearing familiar voices I haven't heard in 6 months, hearing all the latest gossip of who did it with who and who broke up with who and, well, you know the works. Dinner was nothing less than a "patatje speciaal" for me, I missed that for like 6 months as you can't get it. And after dinner the whole gang went home again leaving me for a quiet evening at Nicky's place. The heat got me a little though, I got nauseus after beeing on the attick for 10 minutes and had to go out for a walk outside after which it dropped a bit. Found my bed at 0:00 and then unfortunately woke up at 5am thanx to the wonderfull thunderstorm. But hey, at least I was awake and surprisingly I did feel fit enough to drive back home at the planned 10:00am so I did, with my mom sitting next to me. Yes I messed up the controls the first couple of Km's (grabbing with my left hand to my gears and switchin on my blinkers while I only wanted to whipe my screen) but I really got home without too much trouble. For the first time in 6 months I drove on the right side in my own little car, all the way back home and I truly liked it having my car-stereo softly pumping good vibes into the car with that warm and nice bass underneath it where my car is so famous for. ETA was 1pm but we didn't make that, we had too much stuff to arrange so dropped my X-ray off at the dentist and went shopping for a bed and closets and such. We did find a nice bed, new even, for as little as EUR 135,- but we decided not to buy it. Maybe a bit stupid afterwards as at that time I still had my mom with me and my bank card denied any service in the supermarket later on because of insufficient funds. Aparently my creditcard bill had kicked in and I had dropped below my limits. *AUTCH!* Anyway, after dropping my mom off at the train station to get her home I dropped in at the CWI to apply for gouvernment support for the first couple of days where I won't have any job and then went home after buying some groceries and a couple of fliptop-bottles of Grolsch.

And then I was home! I quietly opened the door to find no-one around so I stashed my stuff in the hallway, said hi to the neighbours and tried to switch on my laptop to realize that you DO need a network-cable for hooking it up to the internet and that the only ones I had where in the basement where I don't have a key off anymore. SHIT! So I rang a friend of mine if he'd have some cable and he agreed to come over for dinner and I had internet on my laptop at 7pm or so. Meanwhile my roommate came in, I almost forgot Hepp and my dinner talking to her just to realize at 9:15pm that we really where getting hungry. Well, late dinner then. Hepp went and just as he left my other roommate came in so the place was full again. I wanted to go to bed at 0:00 but I was too awake so it got 1:30am and then it's a bit sad if you wake up at 5am again. So aparently I do have little of a jetlag. And that's where I started this story, sitting on my own couch with my own laptop on my lap writing one of the last stories on somewheresouth! Today will be a very busy day for me, calling loads of people and visiting loads of places to make sure all that need to be done is done as soon as possible. So finding a job, make sure that I can use my bank-card again so I can buy the neccecairy stuff like a bed, a room-divider, a printer and those kinda things. Tomorrow Nicky's parents will bring back all my stuff which is still there and probably saturday or sunday I'll retrieve all from jnieuwen's place so that all is where it should be and nothing left at other people's places. I want those things fixed this week as hopefully next week I'll have at least some temporary job to provide me with some income.

We'll see, at least I'm home. It does feel funny, it's a bit nasty that I have to plunge into the stressfull stuff straight away but still it feels good to sit behind my own laptop at my own couch again. Home. There's nothing like it!