When I left the house this morning I never envisioned taking a trip half way across Poland, and if I had I’d have at least packed some hob-nobs or a bag of malteasers.
My flight left Newcastle at 11am. It was a nice flight time in my opinion, not to early so I didn’t have to get up at sparrowfart.
I made my leisurely way to the airport and got told the flight had a half hour delay, well that was fine too since they’d finally opened the airline lounge after the covid pandemic.
A full English in there and I was on my way. Blue skies with just a few clouds, it was cracking up to be a glorious day. Even landing in Amsterdam for the connecting flight to Warsaw was a breeze, very little ques, and lots of happy Dutch people. I’m yet to understand why Dutch people are so happy but so far my evaluation has drawn me to the conclusion that it’s because they ride bicycles everywhere. I’ve settled on the reasoning since I’m much happier when I’m riding a bicycle everywhere too. Well it’s either that or the weed.
It was only when we got back up in the air that everything began to go wrong. The captain got everyone’s attention when we were about halfway. Some pilots can add a bit of charisma when they come over on the speaker, I like those pilots since most people are a bit morose when traveling and a good entertaining pilot can lift your spirits a little. This was not one of those pilots.
“Hello everybody, this your captain speaking. Unfortunately the aircraft has a small technical fault which must be seen to when we land. Don’t worry, you will all be safe as we continue the journey but sadly there is no maintainence crew at Warsaw airport so we must turn around and return to Amsterdam where we will bring another airplane from the hanger to switch to and complete the journey. Very sorry for the inconvenience this will cause blah blah.”
It’s a strange feeling going back to the airport you just left from, feels a bit like when you leave home and can’t remember if you locked the door. You go back annoyed and frustrated but you have to do it otherwise you just can’t settle, I imagine that’s how the pilot felt too.
Once we had switched airplanes we were back up in the clouds. I say clouds because there were plenty of them and the closer we got to Warsaw the bigger and meaner they looked. There was a bit of turbulence but most of the clouds were below us and that’s where they had to stay apparantly. The monotone captain got on his speaker phone again and told us so. He said the clouds were that bad we couldn’t land. There was something said about thunder and the safety of us all but all I was really thinking about was how I was going to miss happy hour on Nowy Swiat.
Nowy Swiat is like that strip of tourist bars you see when you go to Benidorm or Tenerife, where you’ll have a rowdy bunch of people going in and out of lots bars next door to each other and at least one person outside throwing up their cheesy chips next to a wall, and possibly a drunk group of guys or girls all wearing dreadful fancy dress outfits or worse still matching outfits with a printed out mask over their face of the stag or hen. To be fair Nowy Swiat isn’t that bad, most likely because all the drunken brits are still at home waiting for Poland to become a green list country.
At this point any rational thinking person would say, “Oh so did you just have to stay up in the air or have to land at a different airport!?”
The answer to this is both.
First we circled around up there for a good twenty minutes and then captain monotone came back to us and announced the most bizarre announcement you can imagine. He said that due to the storm not moving we can’t just stay in the air burning fuel so we’ll have to land at a different airport, three HUNDRED kilometres away.
Now is it just me or does this seem a bit backwards. Why not just land at the closest safe airport that’s not got a dirty thunderstorm above it, and have the maintainence come there, surely you’ll save your fuel that way? Given that I know nothing about the laws of aviation I just went along with this plan thinking they’ll have us up in a third airplane not long after to take us back to the capital once the weather had improved.
No no no, instead we had to take a four hour bus ride through the polish wilderness. The airport we landed at in Bydgoszcz reminded me of something you’d see in a war movie, there were camouflage painted hangers there and military looking security personal. I half expected to see a row of spitfires lined up ready to take to the skies.
There was a part of me that was quite liking the adventure of it all, the unknown is always more exciting than the predictable. I wondered what would come next.
In typical Polish style (some I’m told) we had another hour wait before the buses arrived to take us on the road to Warsaw. When they arrived they weren’t particularly nice buses, the seats were shaped funny and there was no electrical sockets so I had to ration my phone usage. I suppose some might say this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because I got to enjoy the scenary along the way. Those people would be right but let’s face it, after looking out the window at the tenth polish field in a row you’re ready to go back to YouTube for entertainment. I say this with a shudder because the Internet should generally be a last resort for entertainment. Maybe there’s people out there reading this thinking, ‘Well why didn’t you just meditate, you go on about it often enough.’ Well touché to you whoever you are. You’re entirely right, meditation should always be the default activity to go to any time you find yourself alone with your thoughts. The irony is that you usually have you’re best thoughts and ideas during meditation. I like to put my meditation on hold and explore these ideas sometimes, although I’m not sure I’d recommend that to others, not to a meditation beginner anyway.
Eventually we got to Warsaw. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t quite enjoyed that little trip through the polish wilderness. As unexpected as it was I got to see parts of the country I otherwise wouldn’t have. I suppose there’s a silver lining to almost all disasters if you look hard enough.